Blind Luck (16 page)

Grayson stepped inside with a nod while Dave did his best not to look guilty, but the more he thought about Amy lying in his bed, the more unnatural the faces he made became. He hustled to the bedroom, where Amy was now awake but still lying down under the covers.

“What’s up?”

Dave’s eyes bulged as he snapped an index finger to his lips. “Shh.” He mouthed, “Be quiet.”

“Why?”

His shoulders now hunched as the index finger returned to his lips. “Shh.”

“What? Don’t be weird.”

Bending down, he pulled her head close to his lips. “Your brother’s at the door.”

“Why?”

“I have no idea. Is there any chance he knows you’re here?”

“No, no chance.”

“Okay, just wait a minute. And stay quiet.”

He slipped a T-shirt over his head and returned to the living room, where Grayson now sat in an armchair with a newspaper spread over his legs.

“So what’s going on?” Dave asked.

“Thorrin wants to have breakfast with you.”

“Now?”

“Is that a problem?”

“No, just unexpected. I’m going to need a few minutes.”

“Of course.”

Grayson’s eyes dropped back to the newspaper, and Dave headed back to the bedroom, where Amy was now sitting up and doing her best to listen. Dave sat beside her on the bed to whisper. “I’ve got to go.”

“Where?”

“To breakfast.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want your brother finding out that you’re here, so if I have to go out to breakfast to avoid that, I’ll go out to breakfast.”

They stared at each other for a moment. Dave expected her to be stressed, but her face was playful. His stomach didn’t allow him the same levity.

“I’m going to make this breakfast as quick as possible. Will you stay here until I get back?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, I’ll see you in a bit.”

They kissed awkwardly. Dave was far too worried about their lips making noise, so Amy shooed him away with one hand over her mouth to cover up a laugh.

Dave stepped into the car surprised to hear something different from the Japanese lessons coming from the stereo. He guessed it was Mandarin.

“Korean,” Grayson said. “I’m thinking of investing there.”

Knowing that Grayson had come to his place on Thorrin’s behalf and not to murder him for having sex with his sister was a relief.

“What does he want to see me about?” Dave asked.

“Do you like football?”

“No.”

“Ever bet on football?”

He thought of his dad’s charts, formulas and all the hours the man had spent reading magazines. “I don’t bet.”

“Thorrin wants you to pick the point total for the New York Dallas game.”

“What do you mean point total?”

“The combined score.”

He shifted his weight in the leather seat. “I have no idea. I don’t follow football.”

“Just pick a realistic number.”

“A realistic number.”

“That’s right, something you feel good about.”

“Sixty-nine.”

A red light stopped the car’s progress, and Grayson turned to Dave for the first time. “Sixty-nine, huh? Alright, you want to be a smartass? You still just made a bet.”

Grayson parked the car in front of a posh restaurant with tinted windows. Dave followed him inside to Thorrin’s booth, where he sat with a dark-skinned East Indian man to his right and an attractive white woman a decade younger to his left. Both of Thorrin’s guests were enjoying fruity drinks with wedges of orange while he picked at a plate of fruit with all the kiwi slices forked into a pile on the side.

“Welcome, Dave.” They shook hands, and Dave sat across from him. “You picked the points, I hope.”

Dave nodded.

“Good man.” He put a hand on the Indian’s closest shoulder. “Dave, this is a friend of mine, Senthur Farook.”

They shook hands, but when Dave pulled away, Senthur held him in place. “It’s an honour.”

The compliment was ignored until Senthur released his grip. His features were delicate. With smooth skin and carefully styled hair, he could’ve been a model, but his eyes were veiled as if he had seen things that stopped them from shining.

Thorrin locked his focus on Dave. He had that look people get when they know something you don’t. “Senthur is close to doing business with us, but he’d feel better if he saw how fortunate you are firsthand.”

Discomfort flowed through Dave’s body.
Fortunate.
A business deal based on how fortunate he was? He had just sat down. He needed to stop the absurdity, but before he could think of the right words, Thorrin had a firm grip on his closest forearm.

“This is Mr. Senthur’s associate,” he said with a gesture to the woman on his left. The word “associate” tends to be reserved for old white men in suits, but she was beautiful. She had shoulder-length brown hair, large eyes, and a nose that turned up at the tip enough to create a bulb but not enough to be piggish. Her smile made everyone at the table wish it was directed at them. “So, what we want you to do, Dave, is tell us her name.”

“What?”

“Tell us her name.”

“I have no idea who she is.”

“I know.”

“I’m not a mind reader.”

Senthur rose, his hands to the table, and spread five one thousand dollar bills in front of him. Dave had never seen a thousand dollar bill before. He scanned the restaurant to see if anyone had noticed, but Thorrin’s voice demanded his attention.

“We have guests, Dave, don’t be rude.”

“You’re betting on this?”

“Tell us her name.”

Senthur raised his glass, saying, “Take your time.”

“This is stupid.”

The response prompted Senthur to push the money into a pile. “You’re not in the mood?”

Thorrin put a hand on Senthur’s wrist to stop him from taking the money off the table. “Oh, he’s in the mood. He just prefers to make me sweat a little, and as much as I enjoy the drama, I have to insist that you choose a name, Dave.”

Dave looked around the table for signs that this was a joke, or that Senthur and the woman were merely plants to further disorient him. But the expressions were too real for a setup. Senthur’s eyes were too intense and filled with too much anticipation to know what was going to happen next.

“You’re serious?”

“Very.”

He turned for a last appraisal of her features. Her eyes, nose and teeth all seemed exaggerated until a name flowed from his lips. “Karen.”

Senthur began to slide the money from the table while gesturing at the woman with his glass. “I’m sorry, my friend, this is Cassie.”

Thorrin sat stunned that Dave had chosen the wrong name until the woman stirred.

“He’s right.”

Senthur’s head snapped towards her. “What?”

“He’s right about my name.”

“How so?”

“I go by Cassie, but my legal name is Karen.”

Thorrin clapped aggressively, nodded at Senthur and took the money from the table.

“How did you know that?” Senthur looked at Dave as if he weren’t human.

“I didn’t.”

“Very impressive.”

Dave’s attention shifted from Thorrin to Grayson and back again. “What are you trying to accomplish with these set-ups?”

“This wasn’t a set-up.”

“It had to be.”

Senthur tapped Karen on the arm. “Show him your license.”

She finished her drink before grabbing her purse. This wasn’t a person who went unnoticed. Everyone at the table watched her shake the last of her drink’s crushed ice into her mouth, the way her long fingers slid into her purse, and the way her smile took up half of her face as she absorbed the stares. She removed her license from a green suede purse and passed it to Dave. He looked at the license to see: Karen Nina Marshall.

Thorrin stirred his drink with the oversized straw. “Why did you choose Karen?” he said to Dave.

“I don’t know.”

“Sure you do. You could have said any name, but you said Karen.”

“She looks like somebody I knew named Karen.”

He’d met Karen Nichols his sophomore year of university. Karen was an aspiring actress that looked far too cool for someone majoring in accounting. The closest he’d come to asking her out was at a pub. They were waiting in line for drinks together when he took the opportunity to compliment her on her performance as Lady Macbeth in the department’s fall play. He’d never seen the show, but he’d seen her name on the promotional flyers for weeks.

What he hadn’t known was that the play had received vicious reviews citing her overacting as the central flaw. She took his comment as sarcasm, and they never made eye contact again, yet she remained in his fantasies well into senior year. He hadn’t thought about her in over a decade.

Senthur turned to Thorrin and gestured to Dave with his drink. “I like him.”

Thorrin met his glass to make a clink. “Who wouldn’t?”

Dave sat at the table for an hour, until only Thorrin and Grayson remained. They celebrated with drinks, but his mind was still on the money. So what if they were cooking the hooks on these bets, and he was their front? Watching some eccentric gambling junkies with money to burn get hustled was an easy price to pay to even his debt with Otto and put enough money away for his dad to live at Palson Avenue for the rest of his life.

“Do you want a ride home?” Grayson asked.

Dave nodded then leaned into Thorrin. “When do we do this again?”

Thorrin’s eyebrows rose. “You’re initiating this now?”

Dave nodded.

“Let’s do something with numbers, something to do with accounting.”

Thorrin and Grayson shared a smile. They looked at him like a young fighter who had finally found his confidence in the ring. Thorrin extended Dave’s cut from the bet with Senthur.

“Something with numbers it is.”

Twenty

Dave’s finances were the most organized part of his life.

This didn’t mean he’d saved money or managed his bi-weekly cheques well, but it did mean he was well aware of exactly how he’d wasted it all. He tallied up the money Thorrin had given him since they’d met, and a smile filled his face. This was the type of money that bought more than things; this was the type of money that made problems go away.

The phone buzzed, and he answered it, hoping to hear Amy’s voice. Grayson greeted him instead. “Are you still feeling confident?”

“I feel like making money.”

“Then you’ll be happy to hear Thorrin set up a challenge for six this evening. I’ll text you the address this afternoon.”

“I’ll be there.”

He hung up wondering what awaited him. Maybe he would have to predict someone’s tax return, or whether or not a specific business turned a profit that day, or maybe he would have to state how many people in a room owed on their taxes. Whatever the case, with Thorrin pulling the strings, he felt confident more money was coming.

It wasn’t that he didn’t want to believe that luck worked in his favour, but the same way he didn’t believe in religion, the Prime Minister’s addresses or alien sightings, he didn’t believe in luck. He had to admit, however, that the string of unlikely coincidences was rare, so he figured it was time to get another perspective.

After looking up books online, he settled on a bestseller titled
Lucky You
and contacted the author and professor of math from the local university. Dr. Nora Burns, via email. He detailed his story of survival at Richter’s accounting firm, and two hours later he had a reply and meeting for coffee with a woman who had sold more than a million copies of books analyzing patterns of luck in peoples’ lives.

The first thing he noticed about Dr. Nora Burns was her youthful face. She was younger than he’d expected, no more than forty, and while she wore the spectacles of an academic caricature, a beaded bracelet around her neck and tattoo band around her wrist made him think of a world traveller.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” he said while watching her pour the most cream he had ever seen anyone add to their coffee.

“After reading your story, I had to.”

“Do you think luck was involved?”

“It’s impossible to say without knowing more about you, but with a situation like yours, it’s worth an investigation.”

“The last thing I want to be is investigated.”

“I understand. Just hearing stories like yours helps my research.”

“Like mine?”

“Like three generations of males in Montreal who were hit and killed by taxis exactly twenty years apart, on the same block. Like the seventeen members of a Saskatoon church choir that had seventeen different reasons for showing up late on the morning of May 1,1950, when the church blew up from a gas explosion.”

“So?”

“Do you mean do I believe in luck?”

Dave nodded. She set down her coffee and leaned back to get a good look at him, as if she was deciding whether or not he was worthy of the information.

“I’ll tell you what I know for certain after years of research,” she said as she broke a blueberry muffin in half, “People that are considered lucky have common traits. First, they are people who put themselves into chance situations more often than the average person, and second, they share a resilience that allows them to persevere in all aspects of life. Which means that luck isn’t a blessing as much as it is a learned skill. And being unlucky is the reflex of living a stunted life with an increasingly pessimistic attitude.”

Dave thought about her words for the rest of the afternoon, and the deeper he dug, the more he had to admit that her theory was not that different from his dad’s view on luck. “You can’t win if you don’t play,” the elder Bolden would say. And as trite and clichéd as his dad’s words sounded, Dr. Burns would agree. Boil the two ideologies down, and they were the same. Academic or street-wise, they both argued that luck and risk need each other.

Meeting Thorrin at a penthouse condo to participate in a high-stakes challenge against chance definitely qualified as risky, so as he sat down at a table across from Thorrin, a Chinese man with frosted tints and an older blonde woman with hair like a helmet, he did so confident that he moved with life’s flow. The condo was so stunning, it was difficult to concentrate on the moment. Everything looked like it had been bought that morning, and as he looked over the railing at the indoor lap-pool below them, he wondered if his dad had ever seen such extravagance.