Ride the Lucky

by Kendric Neal

  “What about Jess?”

  Silence. He knew to let it play out. They'd been having this discussion for a while. “I don't know, I don't want to have to worry.”

  “You'll worry anyway, what's the difference?” The silence told him she wasn't convinced. “Look, time is short, she's more than capable, and I think we made it clear what would happen if she ever turned our place into Animal House again.” After the proper pause, he continued, “This is her chance for atonement.”

  “You're thinking we'd pay her?”

  “No. I think watching her brother should be expected, but we can give her something.”

  “A concert.”

  “That's perfect. We'll let her choose.”

  “With a cap. Remember Drake.”

  “Highway robbery.”

  “And a ride?”

  “We'll offer, she won't take it.”

  “What if she invites Danielle?”

  “She won't. She'll pick someone with a car.”

  “What if it's a boy?”

  “We won't say anything.”

  “What if it's Caleb?”

  “We won't say anything.”

  She thought so hard, Neely could feel the vibrations. “I think you're right,” she said, finally. “I think this is what she needs.”

  “Okay, I've got a busy day now. Leave tonight?”

  “Tomorrow morning. Have you called them?”

  “I will as soon as I get off. It's off-season, I'm sure they've got room.”

  “In the lodge.”

  “You sure? A private hot tub doesn't appeal?”

  There was that silence again. She loved the lodge, she loved a private hot tub even more. “Okay. If they've got a cabin, otherwise the lodge south side.”

  One of the reasons she loved the lodge was the room service. Croissants, fresh-squeezed juice and cafe au lait in her robe on the balcony in the morning was the height of luxury to Hope and they didn't offer it to the more far-flung cabins. At least, that's what they said in the book. He'd asked the concierge their last trip if “something could be arranged” and after a quick fifty changed hands, was told, “just talk to me next time.” He'd make the call now and surprise her. Breakfast and a private hot tub?! What decadence—

  He loved the side of her that indulgence brought out, and here they were only talking about it. He could feel her body responding over the phone. “Alright, if Axel is there, we're going to splurge and have the prix fixe on Saturday.” He paused while she tittered happily again. “Let me go finish up business and I'll call you this afternoon. You want to text Jess about it?”

  “I just did. She's in.”

  “Did you tell her about the concert?”

  “Yes.”

  “What'd she say?”

  “AYFR? What does that mean?'”

  “Are you for real? A weekend without us and a free concert? 17-year-old bliss.”

  “Good. Love you.”

  “Love you too. Bye.”

  Ritchie's Counter had lousy food and crappy coffee, which is why Neely was a regular as he could be sure not to run into any of the partners. He texted Falk first—he was their best freelancer and could probably bring in five or six guys. Oops. People. One of Falk's best techs was a 33-year-old woman with green hair, a pierced lower lip and a giant-sized chip on her shoulder. “Avail tomorrow?” After that, he blasted the same email to the others. He needed a show of force to greet Jason the next morning. He made a note to check the stockroom for shirts. They'd printed up a batch of co-po's with the new logo since he'd last seen the guys—people—it'd be a nice touch if they all showed up with them on. It had to look these were regular employees, like Donaldson/Danning TeG had these people waiting in the wings for moments just like this when they had to fix someone else's—

  —the tires bit as he cut to the right. Thank God he'd bought a new GTS last year, thank God it had traction control and side airbags, thank God he—metal on metal, not a screech but a “thwack”… He didn't know he'd caught, he just felt it tug and release. The Mercedes said no and righted itself, the kind of discipline he—

  “You alright?”

  She was heavily made up and wore her hair in a fashion so out of style it was probably hip now. But there was nothing hip about Cherry, the waitress pushing 60 who was now looking at him with mild concern.

  “Couldn't be better. New account, big deal, all good.”

  She didn't look convinced although he was sure he'd been convincing. Waitresses and bartenders—maybe they were the hardest ones to lie to. You weren't supposed to do that, to look someone in the eye like that and be anything but gracious as they expressed their concern. It was all a show anyway, wasn't it? What condolences were there for someone who'd just lost a loved one? You said something, they nodded, you both moved on…that's all. It was necessary, it was part of human socialization, it just was the way it was. You didn't hold onto their hands with a leathery grip and say something unsettling. You didn't look them in the eye with blame or anger. It wasn't done, it violated the rules…

  Neely realized Cherry had moved on to another customer and he wasn't sure if she'd said anything else or not. He didn't feel like waiting to find out and left a double-tip instead. He found himself thinking about her on his way home, imagining she'd nodded at what he'd said, accepted it, and went on with her work. He didn't like that he didn't know and the uncertainty brought back an unsettling reminder of his awkward youth again. It made him think of Dunn…his first friend at college. Dunn had helped him find his confidence, he'd been a mentor back then, a guide to coolness, to the kind of acceptance that had always eluded Neely.

  Dunn was also the guy. The guy you went to to score, to find out how to get a doctor's note to get out of an impossible deadline, or to ask what kind of head Paige Roland gave. Dunn knew it all and didn't have to work at it. He could tell you who to go to for everything from test scores to fake IDs, from mushrooms to high-grade heroin, from M80s to AKs. He'd been Neely's friend since orientation, though Neely never knew what Dunn had gotten out of it. They'd even shared a house for a while after graduation, Neely a whiz at computers and Dunn already working mysterious deals he told Neely nothing about, coming home with pockets stuffed with cash.

  They'd drifted apart, their worlds so different it was inevitable, but they still enjoyed the odd evening together drinking and recounting college adventures, like the time they'd held a gun to Keith West's head and made him run butt-ass naked through SpringFest. Ha ha, good old harmless fun. Just the usual Tom Sawyer stuff… Keith sure as hell left Drea Teller alone after that, didn't he? Wouldn't even talk to her in the hall. She and Neely were supposed to be going together, they'd made promises after all, she shouldn't have taken up with Keith in the first place. Sure, Keith was better-looking, nicer, more flush with cash, more attentive, more generous, hell, he was a better boyfriend all around, but that wasn't the point. College love affairs were a battleground and you used what you had—when your friend was a guy like Derek Dunn, you didn't sit around and talk what-ifs, you took advantage.

  Hope couldn't stand him.

  She'd told Neely after the first time they'd had dinner together she thought Dunn was a lowlife scum and she couldn't understand why Neely was even friends with him. Neely was stunned. He'd expected, in fact, to feel jealous as Hope would naturally be drawn to Dunn like so many other girls were. They'd tried a few more times, but it had only gotten worse. Dunn could be entertaining as hell, tell great stories, buy them great dinners, compliment the hell out of Hope whom he saw, as anyone in their right mind would, as a 12 out of a possible 10. Yet she remained detached, aloof, polite but unengaged, sociable but reserved, and when they drove home, in silence usually, she would, if prodded, confess to an intensely growing dislike for the guy. Neely finally gave up trying to understand it and simply saw less and less of his old friend. Hell, his wife didn't have to like all his friends, did she?

  But he'd thought it was possibly more than that, as he'd come
to view Hope as a better judge of character than he was. She saw friends, animals, civil servants, airline employees and waiters in the sort of clear-eyed illuminating light that had always eluded Neely. He'd hated a guy they'd met on a river tour in Europe and felt bad for the guy's long-suffering wife when Hope told him the husband was nice, it was the wife who was horrible. By the end of the tour, Neely knew she was right. What worried him was she had picked up on it in the first half-hour while he'd taken over a week.

  One would take that at face value and maybe distance himself from an old, albeit treasured, college pal, but Neely had a moth-to-the-flame attraction to his old buddy Dunn, something Hope also pointed out to him with some annoyance. He was fascinated to have a guy who consorted with criminals on his friend list, simple as that, and he wasn't ready to relinquish him. On the occasions these days when he met Dunn for drinks, Hope was tight-lipped as the day approached and dead silent later that night. She asked no questions and pointed no fingers. She was, as he now thought about it, the way he and Hope were whenever Jess went out with Caleb, her good, good friend who also happened to have gang tattoos on his neck and a car worth $45,000 more than he could possibly afford.

  The horn startled him.

  This one had an angry edge that told him he wasn't just dealing with a rude driver, he was dealing with a rude driver who'd just been given an excuse to be rude. The light was green and no one was around but the honking asshole, which meant it had likely been green for a while. Neely hit the gas and made himself stop thinking about Dunn—instead working on thoughts of Eagle Crest and the delights of the weekend to come. It was harder than expected…there was always that cloud hanging over it, that “survivor's guilt” that made him wonder if he really deserved an idyllic weekend with his wife when that poor Native American kid wouldn't have another weekend at all, idyllic or otherwise.

  Neely pulled off at the rest stop, half-heartedly convincing himself he needed to pee. All this talk of Dunn. All this talk of Native Americans. He pulled out his smart phone and dialed up the scores. The damned Panthers hadn't covered a single spread yet, good thing Hope had surprised him and he hadn't had time to put that one through last night. That had been a lock just a few years earlier, ah well, at least the Browns had come through…they'd lost by more than the spread.

  These moments were suffused with guilty pleasure now. He'd sneaked it before but never with the gut-wrenching shame. It somehow made it sweeter and more illicit, like sleeping with your neighbor's wife, or better yet, your best friend's. He scrolled quickly through the others, then jabbed the browser button to pull up his stocks. Funny, it was still gambling, but somehow that one was respectable. Commodities, futures, trifectas, over-unders, one's business, one's sports, who's kidding who? Lesher up another point and a half, that was what, $675?

  That had been another benefit of knowing Dunn.

  This was the Bible Belt, bets weren't so easily placed in a town like Charlotte, and when he'd started they didn't have things like offshore bookies you could access on the internet. No, you had to know a guy, just like the old days, and Dunn of course, was that guy. They often bet together in the early days—they enjoyed hashing out their line-ups, razzing each other's choices, ribbing the winner, needling the loser. It was fun over a beer or two, the kind of pleasure Neely missed more and more as he got older. Dunn moved on to other pursuits, bigger game presumably, though he still liked to throw a few thousand in here and there for old time's sake, but Neely's passion had never faded. He knew that might be the reason Hope hated Dunn, he represented that side of Neely's life she couldn't stand, the side that changed him. She'd made him promise a long time ago that he would stop and by God, he had, hadn't he? That was a bad time, he'd almost lost her, he would have said anything to avoid it. The thing is, he'd meant it. He'd said it and meant it and deleted his phone book and closed his accounts and shut it down forever.

  Okay, not quite forever, but he'd tried, hadn't he? He'd meant it. That counted for something.

  Now here he was pulling into rest stops to check scores, playing fast and loose with his habit like a damn drug addict skulking in the shadows. At least she'd never said anything about the stocks. She'd even taken an interest, though he went out of his way to hide the fact that he was day-trading. He checked the ticker in the morning and when he got home. He never let her see him shifting dollars, buying, selling, finagling—that came while she was on the phone or in the bath. He'd set up his office so she couldn't see the screen when she came in. She teased that he was looking at Russian porn. He teased her back, saying he wouldn't have to if she understood him the way Svetlana did. But here he was on a tear and he couldn't even share it with her. Up over $6,000 for the week and had to keep it to himself. Just give her share prices, percentages, that stuff was dry and serious-sounding, it all made it seem okay. We're up, honey. We're up. That's all she needed to know. We're up.

  CHAPTER 3

  The woman was crazy anyway. That stuff was for the movies—the wise old Indian imparting wisdom, issuing warnings about angering the spirits or the gods or the rocks or the trees.

  If they'd had any real wisdom, wouldn't they have found a way to hold onto their country? If they'd had a direct line to the spirit world, why the hell hadn't they used it then? Why wait and haul it out for some poor working joe just trying to make his way home one night?

  Eagle Crest was a godsend.

  Thank goodness, he thought, Jepp came through when it did or he might not have come up with this. The $6,000 gain he had in stocks, it was money already spent. Hell, even the year-end bonus he could expect from—see, there he went again. Defeats the purpose of running away if you take all your worries with you.

  He opened his eyes and peered through the mist.

  They were in a cottage down by the creek, its most extraordinary feature being a hot tub in the middle of the room built where the well used to be. The whole property had at one time been the largest farm on the mountain and all the cabins and cottages were outbuildings. They had stayed in several of them before—the Barn, the Blacksmith's, the Crib—and all were beautiful but their favorite was the Well. It was after their second stay that Hope turned to him on the drive home and said dreamily, “sex was good in the Well.”

  That's all it took.

  They'd always been enthusiastic practitioners of vacation sex, making up for lost time in their busy lives, but it had been of a particularly high-caliber in the Well. After eighteen years of marriage, such things gained more and more importance. They'd spent several anniversaries and a handful of birthdays there since and hadn't been disappointed on any of them. They'd even landed in the double-digits the last time.

  He looked at the wall mirror mounted on the divider, surprised at the relaxed face that looked back at him now. His chestnut hair had a shade of gray at the temples these days, but it looked good on him and he was known to grow out a handsome salt and pepper scruff when they were on longer vacations. He'd become a devoted runner in college, and since then he'd kept his trim athleticism almost without effort, as he and Hope made healthy eating a priority. Hope, meanwhile, had grown, if possible, even more fit through a devoted yoga regimen. With the kids becoming more self-sufficient, she spent more and more time practicing in the studio above the garage while she worked the phone for her job. Neely marveled at her naked figure now—he used to joke he hadn't known what the word “lithe” meant until he'd met her. An outgoing cabbie in NY once poked him in the ribs and whispered approvingly, “She got some cookies in the oven.” It had been a favorite refrain of his ever since.

  He'd torn her clothes off the moment the valet drove off in the golf cart.

  It had been wild and violent and uninhibited and she'd howled and banged the headboard and dug her nails in until it'd ended in a crescendo. That was another advantage of the Well, it was set off away from the other cabins and had the adjacent stream to help drown out sounds of passion, as screaming orgasms were a luxury not easily indulged in the depths o
f suburbia. The Well gave that back to them and it was worth the price of admission alone. Afterward they relaxed in the hot tub and debated going on a hike. Instead they settled for cocktails on the lodge deck and a phenomenal dinner in the dining room. Osso bucco for him, pasta primavera for her, by a roaring fire and with an excellent, if extravagant, bottle of Poggio Antico Brunello di Montalcino Riserva.

  They got their hike in the next day. It was later in the year than their usual visits and they worried it might be cold, but their luck held—it stayed in the 60s all day. It was also clearer than they ever remembered, with million-dollar views that extended into infinity. Neely felt the accident drift out of his consciousness and an intoxicating calm take hold that he'd forgotten was even possible. No phones, no TV, no radio, just nature, the smell of burning locust, the feel of the hot water and massaging jets, good food, good weather, and good sex (eight times in four days, not a record, but who's counting?). Blissful.

  A knock interrupted them. “Why do they always have to come when we're having sex?” she whispered.

  “Because we're always having sex.” What a delight to be able to do it in the late morning. If they shocked their hotel maid, well… can you shock a hotel maid?

  “Come back later!” he yelled as both of them giggled.

  Finally, they fell asleep and earned a much-needed rest. Neely woke first and felt a rush of excitement from the unexpected freedom. Hope was dead asleep, privacy assured. He pulled out his phone and went out on the deck where the signal was strongest. He could check the stocks in front of her, but as to his other, um, interests—those had to wait. He rested with his back against the railing while the scores came up. That gave him maximum field of vision in case she stirred.

  He'd gotten surprisingly good at being secretive.

  It wasn't in his nature, he knew. He was the world's worst liar and had been told by at least two respected coworkers he was too honest to go far in business. He'd taken it seriously enough to take steps to remedy it and the unexpected benefit was he was much better prepared when Hope finally gave him his ULTIMATUM. By compartmentalizing it (it's just a stress reliever), rationalizing it (some people have hobbies far more expensive), and eventually hiding it (there's no need to upset her), he'd been able to pursue his gambling jag (as he put it) unimpeded for two years. And somehow, the knowledge he was so good at hiding it had emboldened him. A bit too much, as it turned out, as he'd racked up some serious losses for a while there. He'd been clever there, too, he'd landed on the one solution she wouldn't get wind of. He'd drawn against Jess's and Cullen's college savings accounts and used the money to balance everything else out. That bought him time, he just had to make good those losses before the next six-month financial statement.