Blind Luck

by Scott Carter

  “You’re okay with it?”

  “I’m okay with anything that makes you happy.”

  “Thank you.”

  Grayson took a bite of the fudge and gestured to Dave. “I knew it would be good for you to spend some time with him.”

  Amy’s eyes dropped to the floor. Being reminded that she’d met Dave through Grayson made her uncomfortable.

  “You two are obviously more than friends, which is fine by me as long as it benefits you. But remember, I have a business relationship with him that precedes your relationship, and if that business doesn’t work out, it’s going to be awkward.”

  Dave dropped his hands below the table so Grayson couldn’t see that they were unsteady. “Actually, I want to talk about that.”

  “That sounds dramatic.”

  “Dave says you’re forcing him to work with you,” Amy interjected.

  “And what else has Dave said?”

  Grayson locked eyes with Dave, so Dave answered. “I told her you said that I’d owe the money you planned on investing if I didn’t pick a stock, and I said you threatened that you’d make me pay what I owed.”

  Grayson leaned back in his seat, and a wry smile filled his face. “He’s not lying to you.”

  Amy looked like she might cry.

  “He’s just being melodramatic. We said all of that. We just don’t mean any of it.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “His luck only becomes a factor when he has something at stake, so the more risky a venture we bring him in on, the more important it is that he believes the stakes are high, even grave.”

  “So he wouldn’t really owe you the money?”

  “No.”

  “Really?” Dave asked.

  “That’s right, it’s all motivation.”

  “And you would never hurt him?” Amy asked.

  Grayson released an amused scoff. “I’m an executive, Amy, not a thug.”

  Dave felt confident enough to press the moment. “So I’m free to stop working with you whenever I want?”

  “Of course you are, but being that everyone is profiting from this partnership, including the two of you, I see it as my duty to make sure you participate.” His eyes locked on Amy. “If you don’t like the idea of him being coerced, talk to him, get him motivated to make a profit, and we can avoid these dramatic charades all together.”

  “What about the extreme betting?”

  “We took you to see how much money people are willing to invest in a man with your gift. I promise you that you won’t ever be running from a dog.”

  Grayson forked the last of his cake until his phone buzzed. “I’ve got to get going.” He kissed Amy on the cheek one more time. “Stay this happy.”

  They watched him leave, and Amy ripped open two more packs of sugar and added them to her coffee before stirring the liquid counter-clockwise. “What if you’re lucky?”

  “Amy…”

  “What if you’re lucky, and you have this incredible life waiting for you, if you just accept it?”

  “That would be very sad.”

  “Exactly.”

  “But if there is something to this string of events that has been working in my favour, there’s nothing I can pursue as long as Thorrin feels I’m his employee.”

  “Maybe the incentive they are giving you is what you need to bring out your luck.”

  “Incentive? They intimidate me, manipulate me and hustle me. None of that is incentive.”

  “Yet you’re making more money than you’ve ever made in your life.”

  “It’s bound to stop, and I have no interest in owing them money.”

  “What if it doesn’t stop, and you’re walking away from a fortune?”

  “Everything stops eventually. And if there is something working in my favour, I have no control over it.”

  “Because you haven’t embraced it.”

  “What exactly do you want from me?”

  “I want you to embrace your potential.”

  “I can’t embrace anything as long as Thorrin’s in my face. So let me deal with that, then we can talk about potential.” Two hours later, Dave walked through the internet café towards Otto’s office.

  Seeing a bunch of teenagers and tourists at Otto’s place of work always surprised him, but they made for effective camouflage, and the business actually turned a profit.

  He knocked twice on the back door before entering to see Otto hunched over a birdcage, where a lime-green parrot sat on a perch.

  “Good morning, Otto. Good morning, Otto,” Otto repeated in his best parrot-talking-human voice.

  Dave smiled. “It’s almost noon.”

  Most people would have been embarrassed, anyone else at least startled, but Otto didn’t even turn. That was his gift. He had the ability to become totally lost in himself at any moment.

  “Fucking bird. I paid two grand for this thing. The guy assures me it’ll be talking in four weeks. I’ve had this thing three months now, and not a fucking peep.”

  Dave removed three stacks of money from his jacket and put them on Otto’s desk. “That’s the rest of what I owe.”

  After a quick inspection, Otto tapped each stack. “Should I be expecting the cops to follow you through the door? How’d you get all this?”

  “The stock market.”

  “Well, you’re on quite a run. Got any leads for me?”

  “No, this just came together.”

  “Things seem to be coming together for you a lot lately.”

  “That depends on how you look at it.”

  Otto ran an index finger and a thumb over his chin. “Well, you don’t owe money any more, and any day you don’t owe money is a good day. Now get out of here before you pass this streak on to my clients and put me out of business.”

  Twenty-Eight

  As he sprinkled some pepper over a bowl of tuna, Dave decided it was time to move. The apartment didn’t feel like home any more. Every morning he woke up alone there, he felt like he was in a stranger’s place, and every night he lay in bed, he felt the vacancy. The colour of the walls seemed different than what he remembered, the scatter rug a shade or two darker than when he’d bought it, and the brown couches he’d loved so much before now felt like somebody else’s decision.

  He forked two stabs of tuna into his mouth before deciding to call his landlord. He sifted through the top drawer of a cabinet in search of his personal phone book, past the yellow pages, several take-out menus and a pad of paper before realizing he’d left it at work. A wave of dizziness warned him not to sit down. A flash of his desk at work crumpling like a pop can replayed itself in his mind. He thought of his phone book in the top drawer of the desk, yet another thing gone forever, and reduced to a memory no more reliable than dreams. He considered how long people would have thought of him if he had died and everyone else had lived. Most acquaintances would have mourned him for a week or two, but before long, he would fade into the recess of their memories, reserved for things they didn’t want to think about. And his dad, well his dad already claimed he didn’t know who he was some of the time, so he figured it wouldn’t take him long to choose to forget that Dave ever existed.

  The thought of telling Thorrin he wasn’t going to participate in his tasks any more made him a type of nervous that caused him to lose control of his body. His stomach churned with unease, his palms and upper lip sweated, and the speed of his heartbeat left him too worked up to do anything routine.

  This wasn’t the first time he’d felt this way around an older man. Small talk was never a problem, and dealing with new people proved easy enough, but asking permission or confessing anything left him as insecure as a ninth grade student with a speech impediment the day of an oral presentation. And it never got easier with age. Whether he was ten, twenty or thirty, he always avoided being vulnerable around older men.

  The day he’d quit his triple A baseball team in Grade Twelve, he’d planned on telling his dad as soon as he got home. He decid
ed against excuses or avoiding the issue and focused on admitting that he would rather work part time and spend his money taking any girl that would go with him on dates instead of enduring another practice for a game he’d lost interest in. But the plan changed when he walked through the front door. When his dad asked how practice went, instinct told him to feign a story about working on his curveball. It wasn’t just the fear of his dad’s anger that stopped him from telling the truth, the biggest motivator was avoiding the disappointment. He tried to tell himself that he didn’t care about making his dad proud, but when he stood there with a chance to be an adult and an opportunity to show he was his own person, he clung to the comfort of lies. It took two days before the coach called home to tell his dad that he’d quit the team. He could tell right away from his dad’s tone what the conversation was about, so he tried to psyche himself up for a battle to defend his decision. But his dad never asked him about his decision. He just gave Dave the penetrating look of disappointment that his son feared so much. Dave felt that look every time he was with him for the next seventeen years.

  The same feelings had haunted him when he’d decided to quit his job as an accountant. The need to take some time off had underscored his thoughts for months.

  He had no plan or alternative career in mind; he just needed a change of pace for awhile. One morning after a meeting with a particularly dull client, it struck him that there was no better time to take action. He drafted a resignation letter as fast as possible, but he knew he would have to wait a day to give it to Mr. Richer, because he was out of the office. The rush of freedom, possibility and change flowed through him after he left work. It was all about to happen, but when he returned to work the next morning, he felt so anxious that he had to skip breakfast. In an attempt to shun the jitters, he walked straight into Mr. Richter’s office, repeating “I quit” in his head, but there was no quitting with Mr. Richter. He was the type of nice you’re lucky to meet five times over the course of your life. The word “quit” burned in his mind, but he couldn’t will it to leave his lips. He couldn’t disappoint Mr. Richter.

  Amy had created an opportunity to get out of his bizarre situation with Thorrin, and he hoped he could look the man in the eyes and not have his tongue betray him. He didn’t sleep a minute that night. After four hours of lying in his bed running scenarios through his imagination, he decided to wait out the rest of the night on the couch in front of the T.V. Reruns of Seventies sitcoms followed one after another, but they did little to distract him. Losing Amy worried him. He figured it was possible Grayson would retaliate by ending their relationship, so he asked himself if it came down to it, would he suck it up with Thorrin to preserve what he had with Amy, or lose Amy to free himself from Thorrin?

  In the muck of his sleep-deprived mind, the question had merit, but the more he thought about it, the more he realized that even if he kept working with Thorrin, eventually he would lose his money, which would put his relationship with Amy in just as much jeopardy.

  Just before seven, he fell asleep. Exhaustion shut him down, and when he awoke four hours later, the fear in him made a plea that it would be better to tell Thorrin the next day, but he knew where that feeling had led him in the past, so he sprang up and headed for the shower. Thirty minutes later, he stood in front of Thorrin’s receptionist, who recognized him and escorted him to Thorrin’s office. Dave wondered how many business people in the city would sacrifice their morals for such access. With dark hair and a deep tan, the receptionist looked younger than she was. Her face was full, but an easy smile drew emphasis to her beauty. She walked Dave through the open space to Thorrin’s office.

  “Here you are, Mr. Bolden.” Nobody had called him Mr. Bolden before he’d met Thorrin.

  Thorrin was looking out his floor-to-ceiling windows when Dave entered the office. His suit jacket hung on his chair, and when he turned to Dave, his face wore the weight of a stressful start to the day.

  “Dave.” He spread his arms. “I’ve been having a bitch of a morning, but I’m feeling better already with you here. What brings you by?”

  Dave took a breath. He could feel a shift in his body, and suddenly his legs were limp and his words eager to please.

  There was no time to waste, no way to set it up to make things easier, so he stepped forward and spoke. “I want to tell you to your face that I don’t want to work with you any more.”

  Thorrin looked at him for a moment before sitting down in the chair behind his desk. “That’s aggressive.”

  “I appreciate that you believe in me and I’m thankful for the money, but at the end of the day, I’m just not what you want me to be. Eventually I’m going to lose you money.”

  “So you’re playing hardball with me?”

  “I’m just trying to be honest.”

  “No, no, no. That’s fine. You’re like any good businessman, you want what you’re worth.” Thorrin opened a side drawer of his desk.

  “I just want out.”

  Thorrin removed a stack of money from the drawer and placed it on the desk. The stack was too thick for Dave to guess its worth.

  “Maybe I have been remiss. You deserve a bonus—it’s good for motivation.”

  “I’m not trying to extort you.”

  He pushed the stack across the desk. “Pick up the money.”

  “This isn’t about money.”

  “Everything’s about money.”

  “Not this.”

  “Pick up the money. Go on a shopping spree, get drunk, get a blowjob and stop pretending this is so strenuous.”

  “I want out.”

  “Let’s not forget you asked me to set up more challenges at one point.”

  “I want out.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  Thorrin rubbed at the nape of his neck, and his face contorted in disgust before he stood up. Again, it surprised Dave how tall he was. “At this point I’m starting to want you out. You’re ungrateful, you’re rude and you’re a whiner. But you’re a resource, and if you think I’m going to dump someone as profitable as you, you’re out of your mind. You want out, buy your way out.”

  “How do I do that?

  “You pay me what you’re worth.”

  “And what am I worth?”

  Thorrin leaned on the window ledge. From Dave’s perspective, his body was outlined by the seemingly endless overcast sky. Dave knew there were people who never saw a view like that in their entire lives.

  “Why don’t you take risks?” Thorrin asked.

  “What makes you think I don’t?”

  “I wouldn’t be in your life if you were a risk-taker. You would have never been an accountant, and you wouldn’t have needed me to show you your gift. I’m offering you a chance to be rich, and you’re doing everything possible to pull away.”

  “I take risks.”

  “When?”

  “When I’m in control.”

  A smirk filled Thorrin’s face. “Then you don’t take risks at all. When I started in this business, I was making a hundred thousand a year at the top investment company in this country, and I risked the immediacy of that money in pursuit of one hundred million. And do you know what I found out? I discovered that the money’s great, but in the end, the rush of the risk is even better.”

  “Not for me.”

  “Not for you? Okay, you want out? Pay me a million dollars and leave the city. I don’t want anyone else around here benefiting from you.”

  Dave felt his throat tighten. “I’ll leave the country, but I can’t pay you a million. I have six thousand dollars in the bank.”

  “Then you keep working with us.”

  Dave thought of owing Thorrin money, losing Amy, and stress eating at him every day. The combination gave him the strength to hold his ground. “I didn’t come here to ask you. I came here to tell you I’m out.”

  Thorrin’s head snapped straight, and his eyes opened larger than Dave had ever seen them. “Don’t be brash. It’s not goo
d for your father’s health.”

  “Are you threatening my dad?”

  Thorrin stood again, removed his suit jacket from the chair and put it on. “Directly. I’ll have him dragged into an alley and shot in the back of the head like a junkie, if it comes to that. And don’t even think of looking at me like a desperado because you’d be dead before you gathered up the nerve. But it doesn’t have to be that way.” He sat back down in the chair. “I’m going to write down an address. Do you remember Senthur?”

  With his mind still stuck on the talk of his dad, Dave offered Thorrin a blank stare. Thorrin snapped his fingers twice to get his attention. “You remember Senthur?”

  Dave thought of guessing the woman’s name, the men racing from the pit bull, and the sound the man had made when the pit bull tore into his back. He nodded.

  “Good.” Thorrin passed him a piece of paper. “Now you have two choices. You can be civil, meet us and make more money than you will in the next year, or…” He couldn’t help but smile, for these were the type of moments that charged him. “Or you can buy your way out. Either way, I expect to see you tomorrow at noon.”

  Twenty-Nine

  After Thorrin’s threat, Dave needed to see his dad, even if his dad didn’t particularly want to see him. With his shoulders slouched, Jack wiped at a glob of oatmeal that had dried to his shirt while he stared at a soccer game on the T.V. as if Dave weren’t in the room. Dave didn’t mind, though, because if anyone could set him straight about luck, it was his dad. The man had floated on the highs and sunk in the lows, and if there are forces that control outcomes, Dave was confident his dad knew about them. He sat in a chair adjacent to Jack’s bed. A bag of baseballs leaned against the dresser, and he traced the seams of one while he spoke.

  “In all your years of gambling, did you ever meet anyone who was really lucky?”

  Jack didn’t answer, so Dave tickled his feet until he pulled away.

  “What the hell’s wrong with you?”

  “Have you ever met anyone who was really lucky?”

  A question about gambling surprised Jack enough that he turned from the T.V. before answering, “I saw a few guys go on some runs.”