HIS LUCKY DAY
By Bobby Mathews
*****
PUBLISHED BY
His Lucky Day
Copyright © 2012, Bobby Mathews
*****
For Misty and Noah
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Eddie Whittaker sat at the army surplus desk in his cramped office and tapped one pudgy index finger against the smooth, white lottery ticket. He was grinning so broadly that the cavities in his rear molars were visible. It was his lucky day, no doubt about it.
Nineteen million dollars. That’s how much he was worth now. Eddie couldn’t believe it. The jackpot was thirty-eight million, and there were only two winning tickets. Eddie had one. It really didn’t matter who had the other. All he had to know was that half of it was his. He still couldn’t believe it. It was enough for a new office. Maybe something with some nice plants, and a secretary to water them.
He pushed the lottery ticket around on his desk a little. It was his key to freedom, and, in truth, he was a little frightened by the thought. Nearly paralyzed, in fact. Eddie wasn't sure his legs would work, and his head felt like a balloon about to explode from too much helium. He giggled. Three stories below, he could hear the rumble of midday traffic, like rolling thunder from the ground.
Maybe he wouldn’t work at all. Get a little place on the beach and watch as the world went by. No more divorce cases. No standing outside a motel room window, pointing a camera with a low-light lens, clicking away and hating himself for it. He could get his teeth fixed, stop using matchsticks to pick between them after meals. Maybe buy a hairpiece, or get plugs. He could stop worrying about rent. He could buy a new car. A world of possibility opened before him. Maybe money couldn’t buy happiness. But it could buy an awful lot.
Allen wasn’t the only big winner in the family anymore. Allen was the one with the big downtown CPA firm. He was the one who had it all – the big house, the Mercedes, the pretty wife. He had it all, and that was just another assurance to Eddie that nice guys really did finish last. Little brother Eddie had always taken a backseat. Until now. Now, there was nothing holding Eddie back. He didn’t have the money yet. But he would. He looked at the grimy office, with its warped filing cabinet and dusty baseboards. He deserved better.
Good news travels slowly. Eddie sat in his office and called everyone he knew. There was a seemingly endless procession of busy signals and phones that just went on ringing. He tried his parents. He tried Allen. He tried ex-girlfriends. There was no one to listen. He tapped a matchstick against his front teeth and thought about it for a little while. There was always Rita.
Eddie took his overcoat down from the hanger on the back of his office door and slipped into it. He picked up the lottery ticket and put it into his wallet. When he put the wallet back into his pants pocket, it didn’t feel right. He pulled it out and put it into a side pocket of the overcoat, where it was easy to his hand. He locked the door to his office and went outside.
He couldn’t wait for the elevator. His feet tapped and his legs shook. Finally, he took the stairs two at a time down to street level. By the time he was on the sidewalk, his pulse was pounding in his temples, and the blood rush had caused a dull roar in his ears. A fine sheen of sweat appeared on Eddie’s brow, and he wiped it away with an ancient, yellowed handkerchief. He tried to get himself under control, but it was no use. His heart galloped on, like a horse without a rider. He walked two blocks to Hannigan’s, a little bar he frequented, and went inside.
It was quiet in the lush darkness of the bar. Above the bar, glasses hung suspended from a ceiling rack, their globes catching the ambient light like an alcoholic’s chandelier. The bar itself was an oversized horseshoe scarred with old cigarette burns. The rush didn’t start until after five-thirty, when the yuppies came in to down a few before going on to their quiet lives in the suburbs. A few hardcore drinkers sat at the bar, nursing their drinks. Eddie avoided them. There was really only one person he cared to see at Hannigan’s. Eddie seated himself at a small table near the door and waited for Rita.
He didn’t wait long. She swept over as soon as she saw him, her strong teeth chomping down on a wad of Juicy Fruit gum. Her hair was red and teased, and there were laugh lines at the corners of both her eyes. Her tight white tee-shirt glowed in the murky darkness of the bar.
“You don’t give up, do you?” She said. Her voice dropped. “It’s not going to happen again, I told you. It shouldn’t have happened in the first place.”
“I’m not here for that,” Eddie said. “I just wanted to drop in. See you.”
“So you see me. I’m working. Now, you want a drink or not?”
“Sure,” Eddie said, and ordered a beer. Rita brought it and left. Eddie watched the other patrons and drank most of the bottle. When he was almost finished, Rita came by and picked up the bottle.
“You’ve had enough,” she said. “Just go, all right?”
“Can I call you? We ought to talk about the other night.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. You’re fat, you’re lousy in bed, and you’ve got nothing going for you.”
“Rita, I need to talk to you. You gotta listen to me.”
“Give me one good reason.”
“I can give you nineteen million of 'em,” he said, and sat back to let her figure it out. She played the lottery every week, same as him. Checked the numbers every day, same as him. She’d come to it sooner or later. He watched as understanding dawned in her small blue eyes.
“You’re kidding,” she said. “Not you.”
“Me and somebody else. Only two winning tickets this week, Rita. You still want me to go?”
“I – I don’t know what to say,” she said. “This is going to take some getting used to. Maybe we should have that talk.”
“No, we shouldn’t,” he said. A grin broke across his face. “I came by to tell you that you’re right. It won’t happen again. I’m done with you.”
He threw a five-dollar bill on the table before he left.
Back at the office, Eddie tried a few more calls. He found an old address book stuffed back into a corner of the long, shallow middle drawer of his desk. It was no use. There was no one he could tell. Eddie almost gave up until he found a number he hadn’t called in years. He dialed Allen’s cellular number, and the phone rang twice in his ear. A worried voice picked up.
“Yes?”
“Allen, that you?”
“No, this is Jimmy Rivenbark,” he said. The voice on the other end of the line was quivering like a high-tension wire. “I work with Allen. Who’s this?”
“His brother, Eddie. What’s going on?”
“We’re at Sisters of Mercy emergency room. Allen’s had some kind of attack. I thought we contacted all the family members, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. Sisters is on West Fifteenth, right?”
“Right.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
The drive across town took less than fifteen minutes. Eddie hurried into the lobby, his steps quick and stuttering against the hard tile floor. Ahead of him, a young woman in a nurse’s cap sat at a chest-high podium that read, “Information” in large green letters across the front. The woman was reading a Stephen King novel. When Eddie approached, she put the book facedown on the desk so that should wouldn’t lose her place. A blue nametag on her starched white blouse read “Erin.”
“Can I help you?” She said.
“My brother was admitted to the ER,” Eddie said. He gave Allen’s name. “Is he still there?”
Erin entered Allen’s name into the computer terminal on the desk. She looked up and smiled.
“He’s not in the ER anymore,” she said. “He’s been taken up to the eighth floor for observation. It’s room 814.”
“Observation?”
“Standard procedure,” she said. Erin consulted her computer again. “He was admitted to emergency two hours ago, and they’re just getting him settled into a room now.”
“Thanks,” Eddie said, and turned to go.
“Wrong way,” Erin said. “The elevators are over there.”
“Thanks. I always get nervous in hospitals. I never been in one where something good happened, you know?”
“I know what you mean,” she said. “I always thought that a hospital is somewhere that you come to get better, but you can never really get well in one.”
“You really think so?” Eddie said.
“Sure,” Erin said. “It’s the smell. Alcohol and disinfectant everywhere, it’s enough to make me sick, and I’m a nurse. If your brother really wants to get better, tell him to get home as soon as he can.”
“I thought I was the only one who noticed the smell.”
“God, no,” Erin said. She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t stand it.”
Eddie smiled with his mouth closed.
“Thanks,” he