Blind Luck (18 page)

“Don’t you feel relieved?”

“I feel shaken.”

“What about the rush? Doesn’t it feel better knowing it’s okay to take a chance?”

“I didn’t get hurt because I was with you.”

He put down his glass without taking the next sip. “I didn’t jump with you. You could have died, but you didn’t. You could have been injured in any number of ways, but you weren’t. And you weren’t because you’re just another person.”

“Another person who was with you.”

“You can’t really believe that.”

“I live it. If anyone other than you took me skydiving today, I’d be a tragedy on the evening news.”

He dragged his pint across the table so that the glass screeched before leaning in enough that other people couldn’t hear him. “I’m grateful to make some money from whatever hustle Thorrin’s running with your brother, but you’re too smart to believe in this hocus-pocus. There is no such thing as lucky or unlucky, things happen because they can.”

“That’s what you believe.”

“That’s how it is. Babies die because they can, people get heart diseases because it’s possible, and cars crash because drivers make mistakes.”

“Why are you in denial?”

“I can ask the same of you.”

The waiter asked if everything was okay, and they both nodded politely. Amy waited for the waiter to head to another table before shifting her weight. “Does the thought of believing that you’re special scare you that much?”

“No, I’d love to believe I’m special, but I’m not. What scares me is the fact that
you
believe I am.”

Twenty-Two

As soon as Dave stepped into 29 Palson, an orderly escorted him to his dad’s room. With his hair pulled into tight cornrows and a clean-shaven face, the orderly appeared to be in his late teens, but he had to be at least twenty-five.

“I appreciate you coming. He almost did quite a number on himself.”

“Thank you for calling,” Dave said, rolling his folded newspaper into a baton.

As soon as they entered Jack’s room, the orderly nodded to Dave and left. Despite an open window, the room smelled like a combination of rank body odour and sweat that had dried into unwashed clothes for a number of days. Dave walked up to his dad, who lay in bed with his back raised by three pillows.

“What are you doing taking your mask off?”

Jack didn’t answer. Listening to him breathe was difficult. If Dave closed his eyes, it would have sounded like he was listening to a science fiction movie, where people in protective suits take filtered, pressurized breaths.

“Don’t pull that zoned-out crap today. I know you heard every word I said.”

They locked eyes for a moment before his dad spoke. “Did you bring today’s line?”

The liquid in his eyes was thick, his face drained of colour, yet he still savoured being a smartass.

“They told me you took your mask off. You’re playing with your life doing that.”

“I want to see the line.”

“I’ll give you the line when you listen to me. Why’d you take the mask off?”

Again, no answer, so Dave kept the newspaper gripped tightly in hand while they sat in a stalemate. He inspected his dad. The man couldn’t have been comfortable. His back arched in the wrong places, and his neck twisted so that it must have been kinked. A tug on the closest corner of his pillow grabbed his attention.

“Sit up. I’m going to give you a massage.”

“I don’t need you touching me.”

In his singlet, his body looked its age. Sun spots covered his arms, and the once-taut skin now hung loose on his biceps. Dave pressed his thumbs into the slouched shoulders.

“Jesus,” Jack shrugged, “I’m not cookie dough.”

Dave dropped the newspaper into his dad’s lap. “Here’s your line.”

“Who are the Raptors playing?”

“The Knicks.”

“Spread?”

“I don’t know.”

“Put me down for the Knicks if it’s less than five.”

It had been a year since his dad had started confusing him with his bookie. Dave had never met this Alex, but he guessed they didn’t look alike. He attributed the references to Alex to his dad’s yearning for gambling, but a part of him also believed it was a deliberate slight to reinforce a disappointment he had felt in his son for years.

“I met a woman,” he said while his thumbs worked both sides of the spine.

Jack was too focussed on the newspaper to hear anything. Number of games, multiplied by the total odds, multiplied by the total wager. The massage stopped.

“Her name’s Amy:”

Jack smacked the paper. “Bloody hell, you smudged the Chicago game with your sweaty palms.”

“Will you listen to me for a second, Pop?”

“What?”

“I said I met a woman named Amy.”

He held the newspaper close to his face to inspect the smudge before saying, “Get out while you can.”

“Out of what?”

“The relationship.”

“We’re not in a relationship.”

“Your line of work and love don’t go together.”

“I’m not your bookie, Pop.”

“My wife was the only thing I cared about more than gambling.”

“I know.” He started working on the shoulders again. He rolled soft circles with his index fingers until his dad began to relax. “When did you know Mom was the woman you’d still be talking about fifty years later?”

“Immediately. The first time we spoke, I knew I was experiencing something different, something I would remember for the rest of my life. In 1958, the city was as tight as a drum. Not one of my friends had a car, none of them had career jobs, and the chances of starting a relationship were limited to weekly dances or the bowling alley.

“I’d earned a reputation over the years as a sweet talker, so when I pointed at a beautiful brunette with a fresh bob and said ‘That’s going to be my new girlfriend, boys,’ no one flinched. I wanted to make it interesting, so I said, ‘I’ve got a ten that says I have her phone number in the next five minutes.’ I knew Charlie Waters since we were six, and I knew he couldn’t resist a bet, so he says to me, ‘You’re on, Jackie. You got five minutes starting ten seconds ago.’ Your mom was in a conversation with a redhead that looked five years older, but I didn’t wait for a lull. I said, ‘You know, I come here every Friday, and I have never seen anyone stand out the way you do. I just wanted to come over here and tell you that you look beautiful.’”

Dave laughed. “And what did she say?”

“She said, ‘Is that the best you can do?’ So I look at her, confused, and she says, ‘I got promoted today, and the best you can come up with is you’re beautiful?’ So I probed, and she told me she got promoted to mailroom supervisor. I invited her out to dinner the next night to celebrate, and I never looked at another woman with lust again. She gave me her number, and I folded it up and slipped it into my pocket. When I went back over to the boys, they started clapping, but I told them I didn’t get the number and paid Charlie his ten bucks. Your mom was too special to be playing games with.”

Jack raised his hand so that Dave had a good view of his wedding band. The look of sadness in his eyes made Dave feel bad for reminding him of his wife. Dave missed his mother too. He missed her strength, her unwavering care, and the peace she gave any situation simply by being there. But he didn’t miss her the way his dad did. He hadn’t started and ended each day beside her, he hadn’t created life with her, and he hadn’t felt like one half of the same soul.

Jack pointed to a photo of a cottage on an island he taped to the wall above his bed. “I want to be at the cottage.”

The photo drew Dave in for a closer look. It had been years since he’d seen a picture of the cottage, so flashes of catching garter snakes, diving off the floating dock, listening to his dad tell stories by the fire long after his mother had gone to sleep, driving the boat, the smell of boat fuel, and fishing hit him as he absorbed the details. He hadn’t fished since his last trip to the cottage.

Jack’s eyes dropped back to the bed. All the regret in the world couldn’t bring the cottage back. Jack had inherited the place from his mother, and over the years he’d used it as collateral for loans and lines of credit when gambling had left him short.

Dave tried to forget the day the bank had seized the property, but the details were too poignant to erase. He’d been sure his mother was going to divorce his dad, that the irresponsibility had proven to be a disease beyond her cure, but she hadn’t even yelled at him. Instead she lay in bed with him for the better part of two days. She didn’t touch him or talk with him, she just lay with him and shared the silence.

“I’d like to be there too, Dad.”

“Yeah.”

They didn’t say anything after that. Dave didn’t care why his dad took his mask off any more. He just wanted to rub the man’s shoulders until the knots came out.

Twenty-Three

“This is my first time in a restaurant in six months,” Amy said as she squirted a drop of sanitizer into her palm.

Dave knew what to expect. “Food poisoning?”

She nodded.

“Not this time.”

Dave had brought Amy to his favourite restaurant. Despite it being expensive, he loved the fusion menu, the low lighting and the lounge décor. Amy did her best not to think of vomit or diarrhea, but as she scanned the menu with feigned enthusiasm, her imagination turned chicken into choking and sweet sauce into sweating.

“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.