by Scott Carter
“But were they lucky? Was there anyone winning every time?”
“The casino’s the only one that wins every time.”
Jack erupted into a coughing fit that forced Dave to rub his back. Coughing as violent as that would unsettle most people, but Dave had watched it so often that the back rubbing response had become routine. Once the coughing stopped, Dave removed a coin from his pocket and put it in his dad’s hand. “Flip this for me?”
“Why?”
“I want to see if I can guess what’ll turn up.”
“Don’t be a jackass.”
“Humour me.”
Jack sat up. “You’re being weird.”
“I’ll bet you a dollar I pick it right.”
“Make it five.”
Jack’s fingers struggled to manipulate the coin, but this was competition, so he focussed. Dave watched every detail as the coin flipped through the air. “Heads.” He rushed over to the far corner, picked up the coin and smiled. “It’s heads.”
“Monkeys can do that, boy.” Jack had already turned his attention back to the T.V.
A rush surged through Dave that led him to a shelf, where he removed a pack of cards. “Do me another favour?” he said, taking the cards from the pack.
“No.”
He put the deck of cards in his dad’s hands. “Pick a card for me.”
“No.”
“Just pick a card for me, see if I can guess it.”
Jack tossed the deck across the room sidearm, and the cards scattered over the ground. “Luck’s for losers. You hear me? A winner makes their luck. Study the odds, learn the best plays, work your craft. That’s how you profit. There isn’t a man alive that got rich by crossing his fingers. I made every bet with that mentality. And if you embraced that more, if you weren’t so afraid of what could happen, maybe you’d be pitching curveballs for a living instead of counting other peoples’ money.”
Dave looked at him, and his eyes screamed, And look where it got you, before he bent down to pick up the cards. Two weeks before, he would have nodded while his dad ranted against luck, but something had changed. He would never admit it, but it felt good to believe he had a gift. He turned to his dad with the cards extended.
“I believe that worked for you, but there might be another way.”
“And there might be a golden egg in my shit, but I wouldn’t want to be the one checking my drawers.” Jack watched his son for a moment. He had always loved the way Dave’s brow furrowed when he had to control his temper and wished he was capable of the same look. “You’re a good boy,” he said with a wheeze. “You need to smile more.”
Dave looked at his dad, and the longer he looked, the more what he had to do became clear. He needed to visit Otto one more time. He looked at his watch. Otto was never in the office past eight, which meant that Dave would have to go to his loft.
Otto didn’t like anyone coming to his home, but with every hour counting, Dave decided to rely on the vintage of their friendship. Fifteen minutes later, he stood in Otto’s lobby, which was located in a former bread factory converted into luxury lofts that housed twelve very wealthy, very private owners. He looked straight into the surveillance camera for a beat, took two deep breaths and keyed Otto’s number into the buzzer.
“You’re late,” Otto’s voice sounded from the intercom.
Dave looked at the intercom for a moment. “It’s Dave.”
“Dave? What are you doing here? I thought you were my Thai food.”
“I’m sorry to do this to you, but I have to see you.”
“Okay. I mean it’s you, you’re welcome here whenever you want. I’m going to buzz you in, but give it a five count before you pull, or it won’t open.”
Dave didn’t get a thanks out of his mouth before the door buzzed. He waited for five and was opening the door when he noticed a delivery man jogging up the steps behind him.
“Is that going up to the fourth floor?”
The man squinted to examine the bill stapled to the top of the bag. “Four-ten?”
“Perfect, that’s me.”
He hoped paying for and arriving with Otto’s food would put his friend in a good mood, but with two full bags in his arms as he stepped in the elevator, he began to worry that Otto had company.
Otto was half in the hall as Dave stepped off the elevator, and his face contorted into confusion at the sight of the delivery bags. “You’ve got my food?”
“I do.”
“Did you tip him?”
Dave followed him inside the loft. “I did ”
“You shouldn’t have. Fucker’s late every time. And I mean every time.”
He took the bags from Dave’s hands and opened them. “Have you eaten?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“Are you sure? Because there’s a lot of food here.”
“Positive.”
Too much adrenaline was speeding through Dave’s body for him to eat. Otto pointed a chop stick across the room at a white pool table with blue felt. “What do you think of that?”
“It’s amazing, the place looks great.”
“Slowly though. Once I decided to stay here for awhile, I started dressing it up.”
With fifteen-foot ceilings, one wall of windows, and three thousand square feet of open-space concept, the loft was every bachelor’s dream. He had five T.V.s. There was a sixty-inch in front of a horseshoe of leather couches, three twenty-seven inchers by a desk in a far corner and a twenty-two inch in the kitchen. All of them were wall-mounted, and all of them were plasma. A cricket match played on the sixty and three different baseball games on each of the twenty-sevens. Each of them earned flashes of Otto’s attention between bites of cashew-nut chicken and glances at Dave.
“So what’s up?” he asked, shooing a large hot pepper to the other end of the container.
“Do you ever remember me being lucky as a kid?”
“Lucky?”
“Yeah.”
Otto smiled a toothy smile as he leaned back. “No.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Because you had to be the most unlucky guy I ever saw around girls.”
“I’m serious. Do you remember me winning a lot in games or getting good grades without trying very hard?”
“You did both of those things all the time, but that had nothing to do with luck. You were the best athlete I knew, and you always were smarter than the rest of us.” Otto washed a bite of food down with a swig of beer. “Why are you asking me about luck?”
The question shamed him. Put so bluntly, it robbed the recent events of their magic. “I don’t know. I’ve been on a bit of a streak.”
Otto smiled again. “Then you came to the wrong place, partner. Because I service people every day who believe they’re on a streak or about to turn things around, and if any of them did, I’d be out of business. Now what did you really show up at my place at night for?”
“I need a bankroll.”
Otto waved a chop stick as if conducting an orchestra. “You just broke even.”
“I’ve got an opportunity.”
“In the market?”
“Better than stocks.”
Otto put down the container of chicken to lean back in his seat. His eyes were now fully focussed on Dave. “How much?”
“Fifty.”
The number pulled Otto to a standing position. “Fifty? That better be one hell of an opportunity.”
“Can you do it?”
Otto returned his attention to the cricket match for a moment before turning back to Dave. “For you, yeah, I can do it. But that’s more than you’ve taken all year combined.”
“I know.”
“Fifty’s a high-risk number, you know that’s going be double the interest.”
“You don’t have to worry about that.”
“I’m not the one who has to.”
The team in the dark shirts on the T.V. scored a run, much to Otto’s liking, and just like that,
he was on to other things. This was Dave’s problem now. He had been sponsored, trusted and treated like a friend. What came of the loan was up to him.
Fifteen minutes later, Dave pulled a metal box from the cabinet in his living room, opened it and removed three large stacks of money. The momentum felt natural to him for the first time, and counting the money made him think of winning more. He hailed a cab at the closest corner to his apartment. The new impulse to pursue money felt good, and he didn’t need Thorrin or extreme betting for a payoff.
“Hello, my friend,” an East Indian man in his late thirties said.
“Hi, the horse betting complex on Queen Street East, please.”
“No problem. You like the horses?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never betted before. What about you?”
“I hate horses. A horse trampled me when I was a kid.” The cabbie held out his right arm to display a long scar where the bone had broken through the skin many years before.
“I don’t blame you.”
“My friend, what is jaundish?”
“Jaundice?”
“Yes. Jaundice.”
“It’s a yellowing of the skin. Babies get it.”
“Will they die?”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“My baby has jaundice.”
Dave looked into the mirror at the man’s brow contorted into a look of worry that appeared like it could last forever. “That’s horrible.”
“Very.”
“He won’t die.”
“How do you know this?”
“Because it’s common. Lots of babies get it.”
“Do me a favour, my friend?”
“Sure.”
“Say a prayer for my baby tonight?”
Dave nodded. They didn’t say another word during the ride. Dave didn’t want to tell him what he thought of prayer.
What he wanted to do was win a million dollars, track the cabbie down and give him half. That would be living a prayer.
Dave walked into the betting complex and stared at the ticker tape listing the day’s races. Everywhere he looked, a T.V. hung from the wall playing a horserace. The place surged with anxious energy, which made it difficult for people to hear each other, but Dave was too focussed to be affected. He approached the betting booth and the burned-out looking man in his fifties ready to serve him.
“Evening,” the man said.
Dave nodded. “When’s the next race?”
“Ten minutes.”
“What are the odds for the long shot?”
The man scanned a sheet. With what was left of his hair shaved close to his scalp and a whistle dangling from his neck, he looked more like a gym teacher.
“Little Scamp, lane six. A hundred and fifty to one.”
“Good. I’ll put fifty thousand on Little Scamp.”
The man paused for a moment to see if Dave was serious. “You know something I don’t?”
“I don’t know anything about horses.”
The man broke into the type of hearty laugh people wish they could will. “Well then, good luck to you.”
Dave looked at his ticket while ordering a beer. Seven and a half million dollars.
The bet felt more right than anything he had ever done.
He walked down a set of stairs with the plastic cup of beer and took a seat in anticipation of the race. He scanned the movie-sized screen for his horse in lane six. Sitting among such anxious energy felt weird, but he reminded himself that these people weren’t like him; these people were all convinced they knew something about horseracing. The starter’s gun fired, the gates opened, and the horses raced down the track. Little Scamp fell behind ten yards in.
Dave told himself to relax, but after a few seconds he couldn’t sit any longer, so he stood and moved to the aisle to get a better view of the screen. Little Scamp pulled ahead, and folly caught up in the adrenaline of the moment, Dave exhaled a grunt.
He a fist through the air. “Go, go!”
Little Scamp ran smooth, but a horse two lanes over kicked in down the stretch, causing the room to erupt into an explosion of cheers. Dave waited for Little Scamp to match the challenge, but the horse never did. The room divided into winners and losers before he had time to process a thought. Some people shared high-fives, and others tore their tickets into tiny pieces as if that could erase the reality. Dave sat truly surprised that he’d lost the race.
He’d made his way to the washroom to run cold water over his face when he bumped into a heavy-set man wearing a Leafs hat. “Sorry,” Dave said, but the man just brushed past, mumbling something about the lotto. Dave watched as the man tossed a crumpled up ticket against the wall. He stared at the crumpled paper for a second before fishing his own lotto ticket from his wallet and heading for the bar set at the back of the building.
The urge to make up for one loss with another opportunity was what his dad called chasing his losses. He knew there would be a T.V. that didn’t broadcast the races in the bar, and he knew he would be able to check the lottery numbers. The corner seat at the bar was open, so he sat down and arched his neck to get a look at the screen.
He ordered a pint to be polite and waited for the ticker tape to reveal the numbers. With his ticket flat on the bar, his eyes darted between the screen and his own numbers until the ticker tape ran the winning combination—thirty-two, seventy-nine, forty-five. Not only hadn’t he won, but not one number was correct.
His eyes turned sombre as he stared at the T.V. screen for more than an hour, until he admitted that if luck truly existed, he didn’t possess any.
Thirty
Dave didn’t take risks, because he feared the complete humility of being a failure. As he sat in the living room with the horse race replaying in his mind, he knew that unlike in the movies and on television, risks are most often not rewarded. Realizing dreams is difficult, and despite what every teacher preaches, a best effort doesn’t equal success. For a moment, he wished again that he had died in the crash and that one of his colleagues had lived instead. As much as Todd had annoyed him, there was no denying the man had more ambition, more promise, and more skill. But the moment vanished as fast as it appeared, because no matter how he framed it, he was glad to be alive, and the accompanying guilt made him want to forget everything he knew and start again. Everything except Amy. Before’d he met her, when he’d felt like a failure, he would take a nap, watch T.V., or go out for a drink. Now all he wanted to do was call her. Before the accident, he hadn’t known her, and now, along with his dad, she was all that mattered. He remembered Grade Ten, when during a Family Studies class, the teacher had asked everyone to write down the age that they envisioned getting married and having kids. He’d written down twenty-four for both, yet just months away from his thirty-sixth birthday, he had never had a relationship last longer than three months.
He had once attributed that to a combination of a fear of commitment and meeting all of his dates at bars, but as he sat there defeated, he realized that he’d never had a relationship for longer than three months, because he had never been in love. Sure, he’d said it a few times out of obligation, but he had never put any weight on the word. He never cared what happened next, never missed them, and never regretted his actions until that moment, when all he wanted to do was call Amy and tell her how shitty he felt.
The muscles in his forearm twitched as he reached for the phone and keyed in her number as fast as possible, but ten rings later she hadn’t answered, and her voice mail didn’t activate. Thoughts of Grayson punching her flashed through his head. He tried to steady his mind, but the flashes continued. Yes, the man was her brother, but he’d also watched a man die and showed no reaction, so anything felt possible. Amy could be in danger because he hadn’t cooperated with Thorrin. He thought of an article he’d read about a woman who dreamed that her son was on fire every night for three nights. After she woke the third night, the loss felt so real that she had to call her son. Five minutes into the conversati
on, his dormitory caught on fire, and because he was awake, he was one of only a few to get out of the building alive. Dave told himself his imagination was in control and that these thoughts were nothing more than negative projections based on his own fatigue and despair, but they felt so real, so possible that he needed to see her.
As he drove to her house, he repeated a promise to himself. Let her be okay, let us be happy, and I'll make our relationship my life’s work.
The steps to Amy’s complex were filled with puddles, but there was no time to step around them, so he splashed straight through. Two presses of her buzzer didn’t feel like enough, so he leaned his thumb in a third time. After a moment, a light came on, then Amy answered the door wearing a University of Toronto sweater and track pants. She didn’t look happy to see him.
“I’m sorry to just show up, but I called you, and your voice mail didn’t pick up. I wanted to make sure everything’s okay.”
“Everything’s not okay.” She turned from the door and Dave followed inside. Her tone conveyed that this was personal.
“What are you talking about?”
“Grayson told me you said you’d leave the city to stop working with them.”
“When did you talk to him?”
“I can’t leave the city, it’s hard enough for me to leave my home. And you know that, which means you don’t care about not being around me.”
“That’s not true. It was just something I said; I’d say anything to get out of this situation.”
“I believe that.”
“They’re not going to let me out of this twisted scenario.”
“Who?”
“Thorrin and your brother. They’re not going to let me out.”
“Are you saying my brother lied to me?”
“They’re not going to let me, but if there’s one good thing that can come of this, it can be you living without fear.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I lost fifty grand betting on horses tonight. Fifty grand in one race.”
“What?”
“I was trying to make a hundred times that, and I lost all my money on the first race-that’s anything but lucky.”