Too Lucky to Live

by Annie Hogsett

  ***

  “This very disgusting man named Lester Grose.”

  Well, hey. He sounded very much like my unaccounted-for-disgusting-guy. Mr. You Bitch, You Stole My Money & Likely Plaid Man. Could I prove it? Nope. Did I believe it? Sure worked for me.

  Nan’s call was our first official alert. But people around and about had already been talking. First there was a whisper, then a nagging whine, and after that a rumble. A rolling rumor, gathering no moss. Somebody new was laying claim to the winning Mondo money.

  Imagine that.

  Lester Grose had been busy since he’d found an attorney and stopped assaulting me. Once I got a good look at all of him, in his multi-channel local TV interviews, my fuzzy mental pictures came into focus and fit like the last piece of a puzzle.

  I had my man. My tall, heavy-set, white man of indeterminate age. Long gray ponytail, bulbous, pocked up, red nose. A penchant for lumberjack-y shirts and broken-down contractor boots. Matching up this guy with the memory of his grubby hands on me and my hypothetical snapshot of him wedging himself through my living room window gave me chills.

  I’d guessed right on Lester’s address, too: High-Rise of Death. #1419. Same floor. Same time as Renata and Rune. Claimed he and Renata had been a couple. Claimed Runako had been like a son to him. Claimed he’d bought the ticket to please Renata, who liked to play the Mondo and was dead now. They’d won and been so happy. Then someone had beaten Renata up bad and she had later died. Lester dabbed at his eyes with a soiled hanky.

  But the boy had taken the ticket. Maybe only for a minute, to show someone. Maybe not knowing how valuable it was. And that someone had got ahold of it. It was someone who’d been—ah—close to the boy. And who could ever know what that relationship had been? That man had cashed in poor old Lester’s fortune. Rune’s, too, of course.

  Lester Grose. Not since Felix Reposado had I gotten such sour amusement from a name.

  The officials at MondoMegaJackpot were confident that Tom was all fine. The money had transferred, after all. And, of course, possession, as Bob Clark had told us the fateful first time we’d met, is everything. But the officials were considering allowing Lester to file a claim. Or at least add a statement to the file. So there’d be no confusion—or costly lawsuits—on down the road.

  The lottery folks suggested that, as a strategic move, we make an appearance on the occasion of Lester’s coming to visit them. In their scenario, Tom would show up as the rightful holder of the ticket and intimidate the daylights out of Lester.

  Skip was hacked off enough to want us to file a suit for defamation of character, in particular, the innuendos about the boy. We were worried that any minuscule suspicion of unseemly behavior on Tom’s part would mess up our chances to adopt Rune. The idea that Rune might be questioned by anyone anytime about the ticket or anything else, enraged Tom.

  And me. I was even madder.

  Turned out, I didn’t need to hear from Nan or consult my own ex-wifely intuition to find out that Lester had him a lawyer. It was on the news. According to Lester, speaking with wide-eyed sincerity into the camera, he’d got his lawyer pro bono. Lester pronounced the bono part like the name of the guy from U-2. Nobody we talked to had seen this lawyer, and Lester hadn’t identified him, but the situation had D.B. written all over it.

  The smoldering sensation in my chest was not all bullet wound. Pro bono, my Aunt Fanny.

  I figured D.B. understood there was no real hope for Lester’s claim. Except for the harm it could do Tom and me. The man was a snake. I thought it likely that the fury he was stoking about how rich and happy I was about to be and how thwarted he’d been all along the way—from the Zocalo Mexican Grill and Tequilería to the Blue Bar at the Wyndham—was making him a crazy snake.

  You should never turn your back on a crazy snake but I guessed that D.B. was banking on our doing that.

  “He thinks we’ll do what he would do,” I told Tom. “Go into hiding. Someplace secluded and expensive. With a lovely beach and a lovely bar. He’d ignore Lester. Let him thrash around, all wounded and betrayed, until he gets worn out and goes away.”

  “It’s tempting,” Tom agreed. “I could consider that.”

  “But Tom, here’s what that would do. It would turn people against us. Stir up all the natural resentment that the good, hardworking people of Cleveland could harbor toward somebody with a lot of unearned, and possibly stolen, good fortune. Five hundred-fifty million dollars is a lot of good fortune.

  “We want to live in this town. You want to teach here. We want to raise Rune here. Heck, I might even want to be a part-time librarian here. But D.B. would love to make sure we reap every scrap of misery from the appearance of having swiped the ticket from some big, ugly, poor old guy.”

  That was my reasoning for wanting us to show up at the lottery with Tom looking like the handsome, refined, educated, dignified, hot, blind guy that he was and put paid to Lester’s claim once and for all.

  “If we’re going to get stabbed, I want it to be in the front. Not in the back. By a crazy snake.”

  Tom suppressed a smile. “To mix a metaphor?”

  “Whatever.”

  We worked it out with Skip that he’d meet us there on Friday, a few minutes before lottery closing time, and we’d put it to Lester and Mr. Duane Pro Bono U-2 that Lester would be facing serious litigation for making slanderous statements. We thought the odds were good D.B. couldn’t show his snake face and his GG&B credentials in the light of day. And that Lester would cave.

  It was an excellent plan.

  Chapter Sixty

  Friday, September 4

  We drove up to the headquarters on Friday at a quarter to four. The press was all over the place, and Skip was nowhere. Plus, there was a crowd of fifty or sixty solid citizens, attracted by the excitement generated when the TV crew vans popped up their satellite dishes on those giant telescoping poles.

  The reporters had positioned themselves and their camerapersons between us and the door. Once out of the car, we were trapped like bugs. Tom was, of course, beleaguered by the questions coming at him from all directions. He looked distressed, a little scared. It was an expression some people—for example, suspicious, angry, jealous people—could have read as guilt.

  I collared one of the reporters and told him, in what I hoped was my most professional part-time librarian speak, “Dr. Bennington will talk to you all after the meeting with Mr. Grose. With his attorney present.”

  I gave Tom my non-surgical-side arm in as un-gold-digging-slut-like way as I could muster and he followed me back through the jostling crowd to the car. It was hot, though, and I didn’t want to run the engine for the AC and thereby appear anti-environmental on top of everything else, so the windows were rolled down.

  That meant that every five seconds, some woman or man in a nice outfit would stick a microphone in through the window. In case we’d changed our minds.

  I noticed, however, that the woman from Channel 16 had positioned herself well back from the car. Was she was trying to stay out of view? Not SOP for Channel 16 reporters. Piranhas don’t opt out of one of those fabulous cow-in-the-Amazon moments. She couldn’t hide entirely and when I got a good look I realized why she didn’t want me to see her.

  Me. She wasn’t hiding from Greater Metropolitan Cleveland News Land. She was hiding from me.

  “Stay here for one second,” I ordered Tom. “I gotta see somebody. I’ll be right back. Don’t talk to anyone but Skip.”

  I clambered out of the driver’s side, dodging two more microphones and a camera, and hot-footed it over to the blue, Channel 16! It’s News To YOU! van and the woman who was skulking in its shadow.

  She was pretty. Very blond, with flawless makeup you could have cracked an egg on. Dressed nice, too. A tailored bronze safari jacket and a spiffy black skirt that showed off her sleek shape and nice knees. I was
becoming the connoisseur of so-cool-you-could-get-brain-freeze shoes. She had a pair of those, too. Black, sling-back, open toes, thirty-inch heels.

  She had looked a lot less professional and a lot madder the last time I saw her. We were all alone now. Face to face. The other media mavens were circling the car with poor Tom holed up inside. I couldn’t take long for this conversation, but I wanted it. Bad.

  “You’re the woman from the Hummer, aren’t you? I knew you looked familiar and I’m not a regular 16 viewer. You’re the woman in a huge hurry. You honked at a blind man in a crosswalk. You’re her. Aren’t you? You’re her? And you remember both of us.”

  It was true. I could read it on her face. Like she would slink off the face of Cleveland if she could.

  She folded. “Okay. Yes. I admit it. I do. It wasn’t my finest hour. I was on my way to a story about possible pesticides at the farmer’s market up in Euclid. I’d borrowed that crappy old Hummer from one of the anchors. I needed to get it back. I’m hanging on by my fingernails at 16.

  “I apologize to you, Ms. Harper. To Dr. Bennington. To the Universe. That was really disgusting. I’m an idiot. I’m sorry. I really am. What are you guys going to do? Sue me? Make a fuss? Ruin my career?”

  I thought she was going to burst into tears right there, behind the It’s News to YOU! van in front of lottery headquarters.

  My heart thawed. I smiled as kindly as I knew how and patted her on the well-tailored shoulder of her shiny bronze jacket.

  “Heck no, HummerWoman. I’ve been blessing you every day for the last three weeks. I’m going to send you flowers. I think Tom will, too. You were having a bad day. I expect you weren’t yourself. Tom and I met and fell in love because of you. That was luckier than the Mondo. You and me? Girl, we are way beyond even-steven. You can call me Allie.”

  She looked surprised for a second and then she grinned back and blinked at me, dazed. It was a nice look for her. Freed up that flawless veneer. Then she snapped back into professional mode. The look in her eye went all scary.

  “Give me a second here, Allie.” She turned and motioned to her cameraman. “Let me ask this joker a question nobody else had the presence of mind to ask. Get your boyfriend out of the car and bring him over. I’ve got a good one for him, too.”

  I hustled to the car, extracted Tom, and led him up behind her as she stepped over to the spot on the sidewalk where Lester was holding court with a gaggle of other news folks. Sometimes you have to go with your gut, and just then mine was saying, We don’t want to miss out on this one, Alice Jane.

  “Sir,” she began, “May I have a moment? Lisa Cole,16 News.” She flashed him her dazzling reporter smile. The crowd hushed and the other stations’ camerapeople panned around to capture Lester’s response.

  Lester Grose was flattered to be talked to by a very pretty TV news lady and no doubt assumed she was into him because of his chance to get hisself some major cash.

  “Yes, Leesa.” He returned a broad grimace that revealed a dental situation Lester should always try to hide.

  “Sir, your number. The number you say you picked. And I understand from information provided by the Lottery, that the winning number was picked and not an auto-selected number. The number? I wonder if it was meaningful to you. Something you always play?”

  The smile faded. Ah, that was a relief. “My number,” he repeated after her.

  “Yes, sir. Your number. The one you picked.”

  “Ah. Er. Ha. That’s funny. I don’t even remember right off. It was just some numbers. I won and then, a’course, my ticket was stolen away from me….” His voice dribbled into awkward silence.

  Lisa whirled back to Tom. “And Dr. Bennington, the number you picked?”

  Tom donned his most trustworthy, professorial expression and recited,“7-9-16-34-57-8. It’s a combination of my birthday, my mother’s birthday, and the age a young friend of mine wishes he were.”

  The sound the crowd made was a satisfying combination of AhHaaa, Ohhhh, and Oooooh in the rush of fifty voices. It was the oooh-aaah of wind whooshing lonely in high branches. Or maybe a dying breeze abandoning the sails of Lester’s crummy little boat.

  Lester got the message. He deflated. He sank. He edged toward the curb, mumbling words like, “Never mind. I shoulda known. A regular guy can’t get a fair shake in this world. What with the media always on the side of rich people.” And so on.

  “Rich people with good teeth,” I could have added if I’d felt less charitable. But Lester was fading clean away. Disappearing from some major trouble he was about to be in. I wondered how his attorney was doing. I glanced around but the multitudes were dissipating and D.B. was still nowhere in view.

  And that’s exactly the way I like it.

  And that was it. Lester had thereby withdrawn not only his claim, but also his person. Lisa and I exchanged glances of gratitude, redemption, and triumph. She climbed back into the van and it vanished, followed in short order by the stragglers and the rest of the media. After about ten minutes of smiles and “no comment,” we were standing alone on an empty sidewalk, soaking up the silence and the relief.

  Everybody was now as accounted for as they would ever be. Almost.

  Two minutes after that, Skip screeched up in his SUV.

  He was fuming of course.

  Someone at GG&B had gotten into his admin’s computer and changed the address of the lottery. When Skip had entered the address into his navigation system, as was his routine, it’d directed him straight to the Nature Center in the Rocky River Reservation of the Cleveland Metro Parks. By the time he’d wakened up from his customary fog of driving and thinking about the law and realized where he was headed, he was way late. And burning mad. And, for some odd reason, blaming D.B.

  After I gave him the story of Lisa-from-16 and her assault on Lester The Gross and how it all had worked out aces for us, even without him, he calmed down. He wanted to go after D.B., of course, and see that he was besmirched at GG&B by the suggestion of indiscretion, but I encouraged him to let it ride.

  I was bound to be sorry one day, but the idea of D.B. jobless and at loose ends was scarier to me than it was entertaining. I’d gotten more practical with my desires for revenge. Besides, none of us had ever seen him around Lester at all.

  Tom agreed, “All’s well that ends—” The memory of our first stormy breakfast at the Marriott seized us both, and we blurted, in unison, “with only one dead guy!” Laughing like idiots.

  Chapter Sixty-one

  Monday, September 7

  We showed up at Elaine Robbins’s house on Monday morning at nine a.m. on the dot, all full of confidence, to tell Rune he was coming to live with us forever as soon as we could arrange it. We understood that there would be a barrel of red tape to work through, but we were up to the challenge and we could be patient. We knew that the system didn’t favor mixing up kids of one race with parents of another, but there was a lot of precedent for overriding that when circumstances called for it.

  We knew Rune. He loved Tom. Tom loved him. I loved them both. Tom and I would get married and we’d be a legal, traditional family unit the way the system likes things tidied up. We had the means to raise him and we’d give him the education—and the love—he deserved. That moment at the Rock Hall before everything went south kept coming back to me. The Family Us. Supper around the table. A room with Michael posters and a nice fuzzy bear for a kid who was no doubt way too grown up for it. I needed that damn bear and his boy. They would heal my heart of a raft of tired old sorrows.

  It might take some time to finalize it all and make it official, but we expected to walk out of the foster home with our boy in tow. At least for today and after that for always. Tom had a baseball mitt and a ball, although we agreed that if anyone was having a catch with the kid, it would have to be me. It turns out there’s, no kidding, a National Beep Baseball Association and I
thought Tom was destined to be a natural. But we didn’t have the beeping ball today. We were laughing about that. Happy.

  There was a Ford Explorer with Pennsylvania plates in the drive. When we came into the living room, Rune was sitting on the couch with a boy who could have been his twin. Their close-cropped dark heads were bent over a comic book they were sharing as if they’d been reading side by side on couches for years. There was a woman there, too. Renata Davis’s sister, Iona. Family. Out of touch for years. But authentic. And alerted to the knowledge of Renata’s death and Rune’s situation by news coverage of the Lester nonsense.

  Rune didn’t need us to be his family. He had one already. Iona and Damon, the one of her four sons who was Rune’s age, had come to take him home.

  She was nice enough. Kind to us. And very, very grateful for all we’d done for Rune, but firm. A steady, uncompromising woman who knew what she had the rights to and what she was going to do about it. She saw the mitt and the crushing disappointment we couldn’t hide, and she was as sorry as she could be, and gentle about her insistence, but she knew her mind and in her mind her responsibility was clear.

  What Tom couldn’t see he could feel in my grip on his hand and hear in the introductions. Iona, calm and straightforward. Rune excited to introduce his cousin Damon to his friend Tom, who was way rich and who owed him a hundred bucks.

  It was all pleasant, fast, and final. Like being run over by a Good Humor truck. We delivered the mitt and ball. We promised to come to Pittsburgh to visit Rune and meet his Uncle Clarence and his three other cousins.

  We said we’d bring his money, and his Aunt Iona could put it in the bank for him. That last part wasn’t great news, but Rune was so distracted and jazzed up about going home to stay with Damon, that it didn’t register much. Another five minutes for exchanging phone numbers and e-mail addresses and we were out the door with our composures intact. Almost.