Blind Luck

by Scott Carter

  “You have to try the chicken satay,” Dave said. “It comes with a peanut sauce that will blow your mind.”

  “I don’t eat chicken,” she said without taking her eyes from the menu.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they have bones.”

  “So you’re afraid of choking.”

  “I don’t eat anything with bones.”

  “Because you’re unlucky?”

  Dave’s tone sent a ripple of anger through her body. “Don’t be a dick.”

  He looked around to see if any of the other patrons had heard her before leaning into the table. “What?”

  “Don’t treat me like I think I’m a victim. I don’t feel sorry for myself, and I’m not looking for reasons to feel bad.”

  The tone made Dave smile. This was another side of her, and he wanted to see more of the complexity. “I was joking, but I can see it upset you, and I didn’t mean to do that, so I’m going to go to the washroom, and when I come back, we can enjoy our meal.”

  The washroom smelled of vanilla. As he washed his hands, he thought of how he’d like his washroom to smell the same, until something on the floor captured his attention. Money has a way of cutting through life’s muck, and the only thing left to be determined was the denomination. He bent down to find that it was a twenty, picked it up and stuffed it in a pants pocket.

  When he returned to the table, Amy passed him a glass of wine. “I thought it would be nice to have a drink. I hope you like red.”

  “I love it.” He preferred white but had no interest in fuelling her paranoia, so he sat down and raised his glass. “I just found twenty dollars on the floor of the washroom.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “Don’t say that. This is the first time I’ve ever found money in my life.”

  “Maybe you haven’t been looking.”

  “Looking where? On the floor? I was just washing my hands, I glanced down, and there was a twenty.”

  “And you never wonder why it’s that easy for you?”

  “I just said I’ve never found money. And besides, it’s only twenty dollars.” A waiter with thick wrinkles in his forehead approached the table with a platter of cold spring rolls. “Compliments of the restaurant,” he said in an Eastern European accent.

  “Thank you.” Dave picked up the platter to offer Amy a spring roll.

  “What’s in them?”

  “I’m not sure.” He picked up the largest one and took a big bite before inspecting the rest. “Vegetables. And coriander. Are you a fan of coriander?”

  Amy nodded as she reached for the closest spring roll and took a small bite. Not five chews later, her eyes bugged. She pushed the seat away from the table and shoved a finger in her mouth.

  “What’s wrong?” Dave asked.

  What was wrong proved more unexpected than choking. She probed for the pain’s source until she hit something pointy like wire, only thicker and sharper. Pain raced along her jaw line.

  Dave now stood beside her, but she ignored everything he said. The tip of the metal slipped through her fingers twice before she got a good enough grip to pull. The more she pulled, the more the pressure on her gums was relieved, until she felt the object dislodge itself. For a moment she considered not looking at whatever had just stabbed her, but she needed to know what had almost lodged in her throat.

  This time Dave’s eyes popped when her fingers left her mouth to reveal a black staple. Not a nine-to-five office staple, but an industrial strength, staple-gun staple.

  “Is that a staple?”

  She placed the staple on her bread plate. Sharp and wet with blood, the metal couldn’t have looked more out of place.

  “Did it cut you?”

  “I bit into it.”

  “I’ll get the manager.”

  “I just want to go.”

  “Are you sure?”

  The look in her eyes as she nodded made him want to go to the kitchen and beat every staff member that had anything to do with the staple in her food until their apologies brought happiness back into her eyes. He passed her the car keys.

  “I’ll meet you in a minute. I’m just going to settle up here.”

  The waiter approached, but Dave knew Amy didn’t want to draw any more attention to herself, so he stepped in front of the man. “Is everything okay, sir?”

  “Not even close.” He held the bread plate with the staple in the centre only inches from the waiter’s face. “She bit into her spring roll, and this stuck in her gums.”

  They hadn’t taught the waiter about this in staff meetings. He had a response for hairs, dish cleaning bristles and bugs, but an industrial staple forced honesty.

  “That’s disgusting, sir. Of course the wine will be on us, and I’m sure the manager will write you up so that your next dinner is free of charge.”

  Dave looked at him like there wasn’t going to be another dinner.

  “Is there anything we can do for your lady friend?”

  Dave pointed to the kitchen.

  Inside the car, Amy inspected her mouth in the pull-down mirror. Her gums hadn’t bled much, but a puncture mark as if she’d stabbed herself with a toothpick stood out below a molar. She couldn’t stop thinking about what would have happened if the staple had made it to her stomach, or even worse, lodged in her throat. As her hands shook and her gums throbbed, she couldn’t imagine this happening to anyone else.

  Dave hunched into the car holding a paper bag. He put his closest hand over hers, which was surprisingly cool. “I’m sorry that happened to you. Does it hurt?”

  “A little.”

  “Can you eat ice cream?” he asked, pulling a covered plastic dish with two scoops of chocolate from the bag.

  “How’d you get that?”

  “It was the least they could do.”

  “It wasn’t their fault I walked into their restaurant.”

  “Don’t say that. What happened to you sucks, but it happened to you because some sous chef rushed his job or the chef smoked a joint. The reason it happened had nothing to do with you.”

  She tossed the ice cream container on the dash unopened. “That’s easy for someone who just found twenty dollars to say.”

  “Twenty, not twenty thousand. You’re too smart to think like this.”

  “And you’re too arrogant to see what’s in front of your face. You found twenty dollars, and I had a staple in my spring roll. Even you should see the pattern.”

  Amy opened her mouth again to inspect her gums. She thought of tetanus, blood poisoning, and the flesh eating disease. “I need to rinse my mouth out.”

  “I want to take you to a friend’s place,” Dave said.

  “I just want to go home.”

  “You need to see this. You’ll be doing me a favour.”

  “I almost ate a staple, Dave. I want to go home and rinse my mouth out.”

  “I really need to share this with you. We’ll be a half-hour, tops.” “Okay.”

  She grabbed the ice cream from the dash and ate it without saying a word while they drove. It was some of the best chocolate ice cream she’d ever had, but she couldn’t stop herself from probing every spoonful with her tongue in search of a staple, glass or fingernails. It wasn’t until the car pulled into a hospital parking lot that she paid attention to the surroundings.

  “I don’t need medical attention.”

  “We’re not here for you; my friend’s a doctor.”

  “I don’t like doctors.”

  “Then just think of him as my friend.”

  Every step toward the hospital’s front doors made her more uncomfortable. The sight of a nurse on a smoke break made her think of judgment, pain and death. Dave pointed to a row of plastic chairs.

  “I’m going to go find him. Why don’t you grab a seat?”

  She stepped closer to him so that no one else could hear. “Promise me you’re not getting him to look at my mouth or to ask me questions about why I think it happened.”


  “I promise.”

  The only seat available was beside an extra large man with sweat stains under each arm and a small bag of sour cream and onion chips in his lap that accentuated the size of his hands, so she chose to stand. A young girl with headphones caught her attention next. The girl hammered a pop machine with a fist until it dropped her desired can.

  She couldn’t have been more than sixteen, yet heavy bags under her eyes in the shape of upside down triangles made Amy wonder what was going on in such a short life to leave her so drained.

  Dave returned with a big smile. “Good news. Now I didn’t tell you this before because I didn’t want to build it up then have it not happen, but we’re all set. A friend of mine from university, Rick, is a doctor here, and about a year ago he asked me to come in and read to a group of kids. Now I haven’t done this for awhile, but it’s a pretty special experience, and he was able to fit me in. I thought you’d want to check it out.”

  “Tonight?”

  “After our dinner, it had to be today.”

  They stepped onto the elevator beside a nurse scribbling on a clipboard.

  “I can’t picture you reading to kids,” Amy said.

  “I never would have thought of it on my own, but Rick is a persuasive guy, and after my first visit I got hooked on how excited the kids get.”

  “Then how come you haven’t been for awhile?”

  “That’s a fair question. I could say work or too many late nights, but I don’t have a good reason. But I do know you made me want to come back, so let’s have look.”

  They stepped off the elevator to a series of unused stretchers. Amy followed him down the hall until he met a man coming out of a side room.

  “There you are.”

  The man raised a mug of coffee. Dave gestured to Amy. “Rick, this is Amy.”

  “Pleasure to meet you.”

  She wiped the sweat from his hand on the thigh of her pants, surprised to find his so clammy. Purple bags under his eyes made him appear older than he was. Puffy and sensitive, they were part of the price for regular nights with little sleep.

  “They’re ready when you are.” The doctor pointed into the side room.

  Amy followed Dave inside the room to see about a dozen kids, none of them more than six or seven, playing with action figures and toy cars in small groups. All of them were bald or close to it, their skin drained, whether they were light or dark-toned, and their eyes rimmed with the distinct yellowing of sickness. A nurse with a smile that filled her face stood from a chair.

  “Welcome,” she said in a thick Caribbean lilt. She turned to the kids, and they all looked at her as though they were used to her leadership. “Our reader’s here, people. Gather around the chair, please.”

  Dave grabbed the book set out for him on the desk before sitting down: The Little Bear Cub.

  “Good evening. My name’s Dave, do you remember me?” Some of them did, lots of them didn’t, but only a girl whose attention was focused on a plastic flower answered.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t.”

  “That’s okay, I haven’t been here in a while.”

  The girl held the flower up to the ceiling before breaking into laughter.

  “I’m going to read The Little Bear Cub. Whose selection was that?”

  A Chinese girl with a fake tattoo of Superman’s S on one of her forearms stretched her hand high.

  “Great pick.”

  Dave read, and the more he read, the more it surprised Amy. He hadn’t struck her as the type to make funny voices for kids. Stoic, intense, thoughtful—absolutely, but she had never seen him so vulnerable, and for the first time, she thought of him as a father. Dave waited until the drive home to connect his plan for taking her to the hospital. “So what did you think?” he said, waiting for a stoplight so he could turn to face her.

  “You were amazing. I mean, you were amazing with the kids”

  “Thank you.” The light turned green before he wanted it to, so he had to continue with glances away from the road. “Every one of those kids is terminal. No one our age is unlucky when kids as wonderful as them are dying.”

  Her eyes narrowed as if he’d just spat in her face. “That’s why you brought me there?”

  “There’s no way you can believe you’re unlucky after seeing those kids.”

  “I thought you brought me there to share an experience with me.”

  “I did. An experience that’s related to how you view life.”

  “You are the most dogmatic person I’ve ever met.”

  “I’m trying to make you feel better.”

  Spasms in her hands turned to full shaking as frustration surged through her body. “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

  “I’m not looking for you to say anything specific. I’m just saying, next time you feel unlucky, think of those kids.”

  As angry as he’d made her, she wanted to believe in his passion. No child should die, and maybe that was enough to cling to. The day had solidified a few things in her mind.

  Seeing Dave read to kids made her the type of happy that sparked her to imagine reading a book with him to kids of their own.

  Twenty-Four

  The nightmare always started with Dave in the toilet stall and his head hurting so much, it was difficult to think. He winced at the Tylenol’s bitter taste, then the realization shot through his body. In one minute, the truck will crash through the front windows, and in one minute they’ll all be dead. The obligation to save his colleagues overwhelmed him so much that he never moved. Sometimes he thought of running into the room and pulling the closest person as far back from the windows as possible, other nights he thought of ways to lure people to the back of the office or washroom, but every night he stayed in the toilet stall. He didn’t want to see the truck, he didn’t want to die, so he tried to call out instead. “Come here. Get away from the windows, get to the back wall.” But nothing ever came out. He couldn’t will a word, syllable or yelp. Then the sound of the crash came. The volume was so loud that he ducked his head and used his forearms to cover his ears. It’s at this point that he wished he were dead, and that he could trade places with his colleagues’ shattered bodies for being such a coward. But he never died, and it was always at that exact point that he woke up.

  It took a moment of steadying his breathing before he noticed the door buzzer. He sat up and listened for a second to make sure this wasn’t another dream. One glance at the clock reinforced that anyone knocking at the door that early was not someone he wanted to see. Grabbing a T-shirt from the back of a chair, he moved towards the door with heavy legs to find Grayson’s smug smile filled the peep-hole as though he were working a Hollywood camera.

  “You’re kidding me?” Dave said loud enough that he hoped Grayson could hear before pulling the door open.

  “Morning,” Grayson said, raising what was left of a banana.

  “You can’t keep coming here whenever you like.”

  “We brought the office to you,” he said, stepping aside so Dave had a clear view through the window of the stretched Mercedes idling in front of the complex.

  “Give me a minute.”

  The clock clicked to eight fifty. As much as Grayson’s intruding presence unnerved him, there were worse ways to start a day than with a limo ride. His mind raced in anticipation of what they wanted as he stepped outside. Were they blaming him for lost money? Or had Grayson found out how often he was seeing Amy?

  The same stout driver he’d met before opened the limo’s side door. This time he was chewing gum like his heart would cease beating if he stopped.

  Dave ducked his head on the way into a seat beside Grayson and across from Thorrin. The flat-screen flashed stock prices and codes. “Good morning,” Thorrin said. He passed Dave a mug of black coffee followed by a tray of cream and sugar, which Dave waved off.

  This was the first time Dave had seen Thorrin in leisure wear. Dressed in a beige short-sleeve shirt and slacks, he looked more relax
ed, like he was heading for the golf course. “Grayson told me you don’t like to bet,” he said, placing his own mug of coffee in a holder on the glass table between them.

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, you should.” He tossed a folded newspaper from the seat beside him into Dave’s lap. “New York beat Dallas thirty-five, thirty-four. You picked the game dead on.”

  Dave thought of the day he’d told Grayson to pick sixty-nine as a point total. He opened the paper to find the game score and accompanying article circled in red. He considered the odds of getting the score right. Number of games, multiplied by the spread, multiplied by the wager. He’d watched his dad obsess over probabilities enough to know that even fanatics find it difficult to predict a score.

  Grayson sifted through a bowl of mixed nuts in search of a cashew before turning to Dave. “How much do you know about football?”

  “Almost nothing.”

  “And the beauty is you don’t need to,” Thorrin added. Grayson and Thorrin often finished each others’ sentences. Having a conversation with them was more of a teamed verbal assault than a rank and order relationship, and their words flowed as cohesively as rhythmically.

  Thorrin shook a manila envelope until two stacks of money fell onto the table. “Here’s your share of the football game.”

  “I don’t believe you came to my place this early to pay me, so what’s up?”

  “I want you to pick another stock for me.”

  “That’s not a good idea. Even with you guys making this work, I feel better about sticking with something I know.”

  “Grayson’s made it incredibly easy for you.”

  Grayson tapped a printout to draw attention to the paper in front of him. “We’ve noticed that you’re most effective when pressure is intensified, so I made a list of the year’s most precarious stocks for you to choose from. Some have gone from duds to through the roof and others quite the opposite, but all of them have proven entirely unpredictable, even for the country’s most renowned experts.”

  “I don’t feel good about it.”

  “You’re doing an excellent job of proving that luck has nothing to do with intelligence, Dave. You need to stop blaming us for scamming people and start embracing what you can do. I want to do business with you, and it isn’t negotiable. I like you, so I’d prefer to do this as partners.” Thorrin pulled a red Sharpie from his breast pocket, spun the printout towards Dave and passed him the marker. “Now lets be civil and make some money. You’re an accountant, you know how this works. Anyone who makes large sums of money takes risks. Risks that could ruin them at any moment. Stockbrokers, land developers, professional athletes, film and television producers, plastic surgeons. They all take risks that could ruin them financially at any moment. But if they’re good, then they’re rare, they’re doing something few are capable of, and as a result, they are paid extraordinary amounts of money. Risk is a part of success.”