Blind Luck

by Scott Carter

  “A few times,”

  Jack tapped the table with an index finger. “I’ve got a hundred that says you can’t eat ten today.”

  “A hundred?”

  “Yep. If you don’t eat ten, you owe me a hundred. But if you do, I give you a hundred and pay for your burgers.”

  “How much time do I get?”

  “As much as you need.”

  The man wiped sauce from his hands before extending his podgy finger. “You’re on.”

  They shook. Five minutes later. Jack had four more burgers in front of the man. In the first ten minutes, he finished two more burgers, bringing the total to four. He dabbed a heavy sweat from his brow with a napkin before unwrapping another burger. Dave moved from the seat beside the man to one that opened up behind them. The more the man ate, the more he sweated, and the more he sweated, the more he swelled. Nothing had tested Dave’s gag reflex like that before. Burger, ketchup, processed cheese, relish, special sauce and burp mixed with the sweat. Jack didn’t move at all. He just sat back, sipped on his drink and watched the big man go.

  Thirty-two minutes later, on his eighth burger, the mouthfuls turned to nibbles, and he thoroughly soaked each piece in his Sprite to make swallowing easier. His eyes bulged like someone had pumped them up with air, while sweat stained both sides of his shirt. Another bite, and his Adam’s apple jumped with a harsh gag.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Jack said. He removed two fifties from his wallet and placed them on the table. “Maybe a little visual incentive will help.”

  The man’s eyebrows narrowed like he wanted to swear, reach across the table and strike Jack, but his stomach couldn’t handle the jostling, so he pulled a handful of money from his pants pocket and put it on the table.

  “I’m done, you fucking sadist.” He gestured to an ATM. “I’ll be back with the rest.”

  The man waddled to a machine near the front doors while Jack pumped his fist in the air.

  At the first stoplight, Jack passed Dave twenty dollars. Dave didn’t know how to respond, so his dad prodded him with a wink. “Just don’t show your mother.”

  “How did you know he couldn’t eat the burgers? That guy was huge.”

  “Because people always exaggerate. That’s the curse of pride. You paid fifty for a pair of jeans, you say thirty-five, you make fifty-grand a year, you say sixty, you can eat eight burgers, you say ten.”

  Dave looked at the twenty with thoughts of baseball cards. The day marked a series of significant moments in his life. He’d attended his first funeral, and he’d watched his first proposition bet.

  Seven

  Dave stared at Shannon’s freshly covered grave after the ceremony ended, with thoughts filling his head of their perfunctory exchanges, morning greetings and lunches. They’d shared an unspoken bond, relied on each other to make every day of work more bearable, and as a result, more meaningful. Most of the people in attendance made their way to the parking lot, but Dave felt someone standing behind him. He pivoted to see a handsome man he guessed to be in his late thirties. With an overcoat, dress pants and a square jaw that centred under a thick mane of hair, his exterior appeared healthy at first glance, but a closer look revealed the man’s eyes were too dry, and the flesh beneath them hollow and drained.

  “Dave, right?”

  Dave took a moment before nodding. The man extended a large hand.

  “I’m Shannon’s husband, Tim. We met at that dinner thing for Christmas.”

  “Of course, yeah.”

  “Do you know when the other funerals are?”

  Dave saw the fog in his eyes. He saw the dam of denial that compelled Tim to ask expected, cliched questions so he wouldn’t throw himself in front of the closest moving car. Dave knew he had to play along. “I haven’t heard.”

  Tim surveyed him from head to toe before focussing on his face with the type of awe autograph seekers show celebrities. “How did you survive?”

  The question stunned Dave. The right thing to do was to be nice and help the man with his shock, but the words shook him. “I was in the washroom.”

  “You definitely picked the right time.” Tim patted him on the shoulder. “Take care.”

  Dave got in a cab and headed for Thorrin’s office. He pulled the second envelope Thorrin had given him from the inside pocket of his jacket, as if by holding it he was closer to giving it back. The thought of writing down a few stocks from a newspaper to give Thorrin what he wanted crossed his mind, hilt in the end he didn’t want to deal with the ramifications of losing the man’s money. The risk simply wasn’t worth the daunting odds of a return. He wanted to give back the money, excuse himself politely and forget they’d ever met.

  A converted warehouse space in the city’s west end framed Thorrin’s daily business. The location worked because it was close enough to downtown to be a minute away from the action but just far enough outside the city’s core that a ridiculous amount of space came at a reasonable price. The lobby’s speckled floor and the wooden banisters on the staircase made Dave think of Seventies cop movies. A woman in her fifties with a large nose and far too much eye make-up pointed at him with a pen.

  “Who are you here to see, sir?”

  “Uh, Mr. Thorrin. My name’s Dave Bolden.”

  “Take a seat, Mr. Bolden. I’ll let him know you’re here.”

  A seat meant the gorgeous black leather couch flanked on either side by silver stand-up ashtrays. Dave felt the leather hug his back as he sat down.

  He was wondering whether he could swing an accounting gig from Thorrin’s interest in him when he looked up to see Grayson standing beside him.

  “Did you get here easy enough?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. We were going to send a car, but we thought it best to give you your space.” Grayson spread his arms to draw attention to the surroundings. “Let me give you a tour.”

  They stepped into an elevator that couldn’t fit more than four people. The tight dimensions made Dave feel claustrophobic for the first time in his life, until the elevator stopped at the fifth floor, where the doors opened to reveal a huge, open office. At first glance Dave guessed it was about five thousand square feet. He followed Grayson through the space, where white veils circled office stations, pool tables sat throughout, and trees in cement blocks painted white ran two lines through the middle of the room.

  Dave couldn’t take his eyes off of a bed that was suspended a foot off the ground by four chains hanging from the ceiling and veiled by a see-through white curtain.

  “What is this place?”

  “It’s a think tank. Minimal employees, client wining and dining, a merger of work and play.” Grayson pointed to a door at the end of the room flanked by two horseshoe pits. “That’s Mr. Thorrin’s office down there.”

  They passed a bar area elevated six inches from the rest of the floor. Everything about the place was dreamy. The bar’s floor was aqua, the white seats formed buckets like giant ice cream scoopers, and a series of circular lights were built into the floor.

  Grayson led the way past a woman with short, slicked back hair talking on a headset as she pecked at a laptop before they reached Thorrin’s office. Grayson pointed to an L-shaped cream couch.

  “Have a seat, and I’ll tell Mr. Thorrin that you’re here.”

  Dave waited for Grayson to disappear behind the door before he sat down. A woman behind a see-through curtain that circled her office space caught his attention. He stared to see if she would acknowledge him, but she never did. A model with buck teeth on the cover of a fashion magazine lying on a side table caught his attention until Grayson reappeared from behind the door.

  “Follow me,” he said, holding the door open with one hand.

  Thorrin’s office was equally opulent. With a stainless steel fridge, stove and two mahogany tables, it looked more like a living space. They passed a half-moon of suede couches before turning a corner to find Thorrin sitting behind a desk. He rose with an extended hand
while Grayson left the room.

  “It’s good to see you again, Dave.” His hands clasped together as he leaned forward on the desk. “How do you like the place?”

  “It’s different. You’re an investment company, right?”

  “Not an investment company—outside of the banks, we are the investment company in this country. We have over a hundred professionals and other offices in Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Boston and New York.”

  “Why was a guy like you going to a boutique accounting firm like Mr. Richter’s?”

  “He’d been handling a section of my finances for thirty years. Before he had his own place, and long before I started this company.” He sat down and traced his jawline with a thumb. “So, what do you have for me?”

  Dave put the envelope of money in front of him. “Just this. I came to return your money.”

  Thorrin sat upright again. “Why?”

  “Because I’m not a good luck charm. Trust me, if you knew more about my life than the facts you’ve pulled out, you’d believe me.”

  “I knew enough to know you need this money. I know you have a father in an expensive senior’s home, and I know you borrow money from less than reputable people to keep him there.”

  Dave’s face flushed. He wanted to leap across the table and hit Thorrin until he stopped moving, but even anger knew that wasn’t a good idea.

  “I don’t know what you think you’re going to get out of me by digging into my personal life, but let me save you the trouble—I’m not worth it.”

  “I disagree.”

  “Think about it, if I was really as lucky as you say I am, why would I need to be in debt to anybody?”

  “Because you don’t know you’re lucky.”

  Dave shifted his weight to one side of the chair and back again. “Look, you can talk your way around this all you want, but the truth is, I’m just another guy.”

  “You don’t believe, do you?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t either.” Thorrin rose from his seat. He looked broader through the chest and longer of limb standing up. “Come with me.”

  Thorrin walked around the desk and past Dave into a connecting room, where Grayson sat on a couch watching stock tickers on two flat screens. Thorrin removed a pack of playing cards from a shelf filled mostly with books before gesturing to Dave. “Take a seat.”

  Thorrin sat down in a chair closest to the windows so that the three of them formed a half-moon around a glass coffee table with a ying/yang sculpture the size of a candy dish in its centre. He removed the cards from the package and shuffled the deck three times. Each shuffle made Dave more uncomfortable.

  “What we need is a concrete demonstration of your capabilities. Grayson, can you choose a card for me, please?”

  Grayson turned his attention from the screens for the first time and responded as if he’d been waiting for the question. “Ace of spades.”

  “Of course. The ace of spades it is.” Thorrin fanned the cards in his hands and extended them to Dave. “Pull me out the ace of spades.”

  Dave looked at the cards for a moment. The stupidity of the request annoyed him as much as the situation unnerved him. “It’s not going to happen.”

  “Choose a card.”

  “We can do this a hundred times, and it won’t happen.”

  “Choose a card.”

  “Okay, to stop this insanity, gladly.” Dave picked the third card from the left, smiled and flipped it towards Thorrin and Grayson to reveal the six of hearts. “You see? No magic. I’m just like anyone else you put a deck in front of.”

  Thorrin nodded at Grayson, who got up to walk over to Dave’s far side. Thorrin pointed the cards at Dave. “Don’t confuse luck for chance; there’s nothing random about you. For luck to kick in, you need to have something at stake.”

  Grayson removed a gun from somewhere in his suit jacket. It wasn’t the first time Dave had seen a gun, but it was the first time a barrel had hovered inches from his head.

  “Something to gain or lose,” Thorrin continued.

  “What the fuck are you doing?”

  Thorrin fanned the cards before extending them again. “Now, choose a card.”

  “You’re going to kill me over this?”

  “Choose a card.”

  “Because that’s what’s going to happen. I’m not what you think I am, and I don’t want to get killed over it.”

  Grayson cocked the gun’s trigger and pressed the barrel’s cold steel against Dave’s temple. “Choose a card.”

  Dave snatched a card to get it over with, looked at it with disbelief and turned it slowly towards Thorrin to reveal the ace of spades. Thorrin smiled the universal smile of being right. “There we go.”

  Grayson took a few steps back with a sly grin before opening the revolver to reveal the gun as a starter’s pistol.

  Thorrin unfolded a stock sheet and spread it out on the table. “Now you can choose a stock.”

  Sweat beaded on Dave’s face. The room seemed too bright. Each breath felt filtered, and only his disbelief kept him from passing out or running for the door. “I don’t know what you did to the cards, or how you fixed the outcome, but that wasn’t luck.”

  Thorrin tapped the sheet. “Enjoy your gift, Dave, pick a stock.”

  The moment overwhelmed him. He was trying to figure out how they set the cards up when Thorrin raised his voice. “Pick a stock.”

  “It’s your money. You want me to pick a stock, you’re willing to stick a gun to my head, I’ll pick a stock.”

  With closed his eyes, he fired an index finger to the page. Thorrin circled the name Dave pointed to with a blue Sharpie.

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I leave now?”

  “Absolutely. Grayson will take you wherever you like. I hope you understand I would’ve been doing you a disservice not to show you what you possess.”

  Dave’s face showed no expression. In any other surroundings, Thorrin’s words would be dismissed as crazy, but when you own five thousand square feet decorated with leather, mahogany and the finest technology, the words pass as business.

  In Grayson’s car, Dave looked out the passenger window in an effort to create as much distance as possible. Advanced Japanese lessons played on the stereo. Grayson mouthed the words for ‘Would you like to stay the night?’ then turned to Dave. “Why so quiet?”

  The question surprised Dave. “You pointed a gun at me.”

  “It was a starter’s pistol.”

  “You sure about that?”

  “You were never in danger, you just had to believe you were.”

  “I almost pissed myself.”

  “It’s unfortunate we had to startle you, but you needed to see for yourself.”

  “All I saw were two crazy people capable of a cheap card trick.”

  “Your selection had nothing to do with us.”

  Dave turned his head back to the window until he pointed at a low-rise apartment building up ahead. “This is me up here. The corner is fine.”

  Grayson pulled the car to the curb before shutting off the engine. He turned off the Japanese lessons and locked those intense eyes on him. “I have another offer for you.”

  “I pass.”

  “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “No.”

  “Well, I do, and my sister, she’s wonderful, but she has to have the worst luck on the planet. I want you to spend an hour with her so she can absorb some of yours.”

  “Do you hear yourself?”

  “Your hour is worth two thousand dollars to me.”

  Dave wanted to get out of the car, but two thousand dollars triggered the learned response. He had senior’s home payments and loan payments, and he wanted a trip to the Bahamas.

  “She must be in bad shape if you’re willing to pay me two grand for an hour.”

  “I wouldn’t take her to Vegas with me. You won’t repeat a word of this, but you need the context to appreciate
her situation. She’s divorced, suffered four miscarriages, developed a wheat intolerance in her twenties; she’s on her eleventh broken bone, and she’s colour blind.”

  Dave didn’t listen past the miscarriages. “That’s no fun.”

  “No, it isn’t.”

  “Save your money, though, hanging out with me won’t do anything for her.”

  “I disagree.” Grayson removed a thick envelope with an address written on the front. “There’s half the money and her address.”

  Dave knew it was risky, but loan shark interest and unemployment made resisting the size of the envelope impossible.

  “Meet me there tomorrow at four.”

  “What do you want me to say to her?”

  “It doesn’t matter. Just be around her for an hour.”

  Dave stepped out of the car. He considered handing the money back until Grayson leaned across the passenger seat. “Thank you.”

  Dave shut the car door and watched Grayson drive away. Dave knew what it felt like to wish change for a family member, and if it was as easy as paying someone two grand to fix his dad’s problems, he would have done it years ago.

  Eight

  Dave saw a gun for the first time when he was thirteen. That night he’d dreamed of track and field day at school. His relay team positioned him lead off, but when the starter’s pistol fired, he couldn’t move, no matter how hard he tried. All he could do was watch the other runners get smaller down the track. The part of him that observed the dream play out as if he were God knew that it was an anxiety dream. This part of him was most frustrated, because he couldn’t will any movement.

  A school bell rang loud as he tried to move, until everyone on the track surged en masse towards the school. He wanted to scream, to beg for another chance to race, but the moment passed. He stood alone on the track and prayed for the bell to stop ringing until a part of him recognized that the noise came from the waking world. His mind rushed from sleeping, to groggy, to terrified. The doorbell should never ring at two in the morning. He thought of his mother, who was full of enough sleeping pills she would sleep through a car crash, let alone a doorbell. Two weeks earlier, he’d broken a picture while wrestling with his friend Marlon, and she hadn’t woken up-not when it smashed to the floor, not when they swept up the glass, and not when they giggled while doing a pathetic job of staying quiet.