Lucky Bastard

by S. G. Browne

“No.” But with the way today is shaping up, I’m beginning to wonder if I should.

  “Can’t hurt, Holmes. You don’t want some dude walking up to you and fleecing your mojo.”

  Yeah, well, too late for that.

  “Thanks for the advice, Bow Wow,” I say, giving him another knuckle tap.

  He smiles and tells me to stay cool and flashes some kind of gangsta peace sign that looks more like he’s got a rash he’s trying not to scratch.

  “Don’t step on any cracks, Holmes.”

  I’m just about to turn away and find out what it’s like to have my personal space back when Doug leans in again.

  “Oh, one other thing. Word on the street is that this Tommy Wong has offered to pay half a million to any poacher who brings him something called Pure. You have any idea what that means?”

  “No,” I say, playing dumb. “I have no idea.”

  When I was little, my grandfather used to tell stories about famous poachers throughout history who stole luck from the likes of Napoleon, JFK, and the captain of the Titanic. Sometimes he’d make up stories just to entertain us and make us laugh. Other times he’d tell us cautionary tales about poachers who gave in to temptation and greed. Who took the wrong path and ended up addicted to good luck or infected with bad luck.

  Guess I should have paid more attention to that one.

  But the story I remember most was the one he told about something he liked to call the Holy Grail of poaching. The cleanest form of luck you could find. Untainted by the corruption of the soul. As white and soft as the clouds of heaven and more powerful than the highest-quality top-grade soft.

  Pure.

  He would speak of it with this look of absolute joy, as if just by talking about it he could imagine how it would feel to have that kind of luck flowing through him. When I asked him once if he’d ever poached Pure, the spark went out of his eyes and he looked at me with an expression that was a combination of longing and disgust.

  “No,” he’d said. “It’s just a fairy tale. It doesn’t exist.”

  Not until I was older did I find out the truth.

  I head up Powell Street, past the crowds lined up and waiting to ride the cable car to Ghirardelli Square, thinking about what Doug said, wanting to believe his information was wrong but knowing that Tommy Wong was offering half a million dollars for the poaching and delivery of 100 percent pure good luck.

  The longer you live with the luck you’re born with, the more that luck absorbs your life experiences and the impurities that go along with the condition of being human. With all of the neuroses and phobias and emotional baggage we collect, like jealousy and homophobia and abandonment issues. With all of the mistakes and bad decisions that encompass a lifetime.

  Like lying to your parents or cheating on your wife or taking steroids.

  Even the highest grade of good luck can become diluted. Infused with the emotions and experiences of those who carry it in their DNA. Kind of like an emotional thumbprint. So when you poach luck, you don’t always know what you’re getting with it.

  A perfect marriage mixed with codependence. An all-expenses-paid vacation blended with paranoia. A dream job cut with a drug addiction.

  People are walking sponges, absorbing praise and criticism, joy and pain, love and hate. All of these experiences make up who we are, what we think of ourselves, affecting us not just emotionally, but on a cellular level. And good luck is part of the cellular makeup for those who are born with it.

  It doesn’t matter if you’re a vegetarian or a carnivore. It doesn’t matter if you believe in God or Buddha. It doesn’t matter if you’re an atheist or a nihilist. Eventually, your luck is going to become polluted with the mileage you put on it. It’s like engine oil, collecting the dirt and deposits of living. Only problem is, you don’t get to change your luck every three thousand miles. It just keeps getting dirtier.

  The only way to maintain the purity of the luck is to live a life filled with honesty and integrity and selflessness. To live without judgment or fear or desire. Even the smallest of temptations can pollute your luck, especially in the United States, where judging your neighbors is a God-given right, fear is propagated by the media, and desire is plastered on twenty-five-foot-tall billboards and advertised on commercial breaks.

  Like any rule, there’s always the exception. I’m sure any luck Gandhi or Joan of Arc or the Dalai Lama might have had was cleaner than that of your average lucky person. But since they’re either dead, martyred, or living in exile, I’m guessing they’re not the target of Tommy Wong’s reward offer.

  I walk up to Union Square and stop to look around at all of the tourists enjoying their vacations, unaware of the bounty that’s been placed on their potential good fortune. Specifically, I’m noticing the families. The ones with young children eating ice cream and pointing at homeless people and throwing tantrums. Laughing and crying and staring in wonder. Reacting to a world that hasn’t yet beaten them down and crushed their spirits.

  The only way to get Pure is to poach it from those who aren’t yet adults. Ideally from those who haven’t reached puberty and had their innocence corrupted with hormones and sexual desire and the discovery of self-gratification. Who still believe in magic and heroes and the idea that anything is possible.

  I’ve never poached Pure. Never even considered it. And I don’t need the memory of the look of longing and disgust on my grandfather’s face to keep me in line. Taking luck from children is taboo among poachers. Although not as perverse as child pornography or pedophilia, it definitely has a pervasive stigma attached to it. Like kicking a dog or hitting your wife or masturbating in public.

  But five hundred thousand dollars is a lot of money.

  Enough to live on comfortably for at least five years. Enough to help buy a way to protect Mandy. Enough to challenge the beliefs of any poacher. Especially someone who might be able to get rid of the bad luck in his system by poaching pure, untainted good luck.

  I never was good with moral dilemmas.

  But finding a kid with Pure isn’t easy. Unless some ten-year-old boy or eight-year-old girl makes the news for cheating death or some other stroke of luck, it’s virtually impossible to find such a child. It’s not like poachers can hang around outside of schools or day-care centers without attracting unwanted attention from teachers and parents and the police. So to claim Tommy Wong’s reward, someone would have to find an innovative way of drawing children to him. Or to her.

  In Union Square, in front of the Dewey Monument in the center of the square, a woman is dressed like a clown. Not a circus clown or a killer clown from outer space but a friendly one, with bright clothes and blue hair and a big red Rudolph bulb of a nose.

  She’s making animal balloons and handing them out to the children gathered around her, their eyes watching her and their faces filled with expectant smiles. Chances are she’s just a normal person who enjoys kids. A teacher or an aspiring actress who likes to make animal balloons for a few extra bucks.

  Or she could be one of Tommy’s hired thieves, a luck poacher, looking for an underage mark.

  The same way I can tell that Doug was born with good luck, poachers can sense the energy of luck flowing through a person by making the slightest physical contact—the brush of a hand, the tap of knuckles, or an inadvertent touch. What you feel is a static buildup. A low-level charge. Nothing that would cause your hair to stand up or your hand to flinch back in surprise.

  But in the case of top-grade soft, being within touching distance is enough to get a reading. And the electric charge given off by someone carrying Pure would cause a definite physical reaction.

  Such as laughing. Or breaking out in a sweat. Or a full-body twitch. Maybe even an orgasm. Which is a lot easier to get away with if you’re a woman.

  Although the clown is being careful not to touch any of the children, she’s still coming close enough to determine if any of them are carrying Pure. I watch her for another few minutes, but as far as I can tell, s
he’s not laughing or twitching or sweating or showing any signs of experiencing a moment of sexual ecstasy.

  That doesn’t mean she’s not a poacher. That just means if she is, she hasn’t found what she’s looking for. But from what I can tell, she’s not acting like someone who’s trolling for prepubescent luck. Still, knowing that Tommy Wong has a half-million-dollar bounty out for a delivery of Pure makes me give second looks to the guys working the ice cream carts.

  I’ve always wondered about them anyway.

  I walk past a kid arguing with his mom, an eight- or nine-year-old boy talking back, arms folded, petulant and defiant, showing no respect at all. He pouts and shouts, screams and whines, and throws a tantrum that would put Russell Crowe and Christian Bale to shame. He’s a living advertisement for contraceptives.

  And I’m suddenly thinking about James Saltzman.

  Not James Sr., but little Jimmy Jr.

  While the gene for poaching luck can be hereditary, for those who are born lucky the gene isn’t always passed along from one generation to the next. Or if it is, it can mutate, turn into something less or more. Or it might not exist at all.

  So just because James Saltzman Sr. was apparently born with some degree of good luck, that doesn’t mean his son has the same quality of luck flowing through him. Just like red hair or green eyes or the ability to paint or write or play a musical instrument, the genetic blueprint doesn’t always follow form. You never know what can happen when two sets of DNA are thrown together.

  But in the case of Jimmy Saltzman, I can’t help but wonder if he might be carrying more than just an unpleasant disposition.

  I didn’t experience a full-body twitch or start laughing inexplicably or have an orgasm. Which would have been disturbing on so many levels. But I’m thinking about how I suddenly started to sweat in Jimmy’s presence, standing there on the front porch in the shade on an overcast August afternoon, wearing a T-shirt and jeans. At the time I thought it was just a reaction to a poaching gone wrong. To having to exert more energy working on my pitch, combined with my desperation for the score.

  But maybe it was a reaction to something that went beyond a palpable discomfort. Maybe there’s a genetic connection. Maybe Jimmy Jr. is a chip off his old man.

  The only way for me to find out for sure is to have another chat with little Jimmy Saltzman. I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, considering how things went the last time we met. But the half million dollars Tommy is offering, along with the knowledge that poaching Pure would eradicate all traces of the bad luck that’s been lingering in my system for the past three years, is one hell of a motivator.

  As a general rule, poachers tend to have some latitude when it comes to questions of morality and honor. It comes with the job description. But poaching Pure isn’t something I should even be considering. Not if I have any self-respect. Which at the moment is questionable.

  Let’s just say my resistance to temptation is running on fumes.

  I watch the clown make another animal balloon, then I make my way across Union Square, keeping an eye out for anyone else who looks like a poacher. But all I see are potential marks.

  With my headache still hanging around like an unwanted pregnancy, I head into Café Rulli for a caffeine fix.

  Walking into Rulli’s reminds me of Baldy and Tuesday Knight, which then reminds me that the ten-thousand-dollar retainer Tuesday gave me was in my backpack when Tommy Wong took it from me. Including the luck Barry Manilow confiscated, that’s a good twenty grand in income I’ve lost so far today in less than two hours.

  If I didn’t already have a headache, that would definitely do the trick.

  I pop another couple of Advil, then I dry-swallow them as I try to figure out what I should do next.

  I’m thinking I should try to track down the buyer of Gordon Knight’s luck and collect on the hundred grand Tuesday offered, use the money to buy myself some time. Or maybe even buy some more bad luck to deliver to Tommy, only this time in a way that makes things better instead of worse. I don’t know if I can find the buyer of Gordon Knight’s luck or how I’ll get it back from him, but since I don’t have a hundred thousand dollars lying around and I don’t have any other ideas at the moment, then that’s the plan I’m following.

  Better yet, if I could find someone with top-grade soft, I could solve my problems in one shot. Except other than little Jimmy Saltzman, I haven’t met any potential marks carrying high-grade good luck. But considering my lack of options, it couldn’t hurt to look.

  So while I’m standing in line, I focus on the customers in Rulli’s, looking for a possible mark among the men and the women sitting at tables and waiting in line in front of me.

  There’s the Ralph Lauren poster boy sitting at a table and talking on his cell phone while his Laura Ashley girlfriend sits across from him, ignored. Or the buttoned-down brunette at the front of the line who answers her cell while she’s placing her order. Or the Japanese tourist who accepts his cappuccino from the barista and walks away without saying Thank you.

  I watch them, the behaviorally challenged and the etiquette inept, the cellular criminals and the courtesy thugs, my headache waxing and my patience waning as I step up to the counter to place my order.

  Maybe it’s because I’m desperate for a fix or because I’m surrounded by people who live in social ignorance or because I’ve had a rough day and it’s not even time for my afternoon nap, but I decide to take my chances with a simple hit-and-run.

  I’m not so much concerned with making a score and earning some money, but rather with getting a little good luck flowing through my system and turning around this debacle of a day. Something to help get rid of this headache and take my mind off the temptation of the five hundred grand Tommy is offering for Pure. And nothing is more distracting than having freshly poached luck pumping through your system. Okay, maybe the girl-on-girl shows at Mitchell Brothers are a little more distracting, but they wouldn’t help with my headache.

  I order a double cappuccino with a please, which gets me a smile from the cute cashier with dimples, then I do a quick scan of the customers before I decide. It’s a toss-up between the Ralph Lauren poster boy and the buttoned-down brunette, who is now talking so loud into her cell phone that the passengers on the cable car going up Powell can hear her. But I decide to go with Ralph.

  Number one, with his Polo shirt and Rolex watch and Hugo Boss shoes, he looks financially successful. Number two, he’s arrogant, which means he’s used to having things go his way. And number three, it’s generally easier to get a man to shake your hand before he has a chance to think about it. Even if he’s socially inept, a man will offer his hand almost as a reflex. Especially someone who looks like he shakes hands for a living. And Ralph Lauren looks like a professional flesh presser.

  The origin of the handshake goes back more than four thousand years, both as a gesture of peace between warriors and between enemies demonstrating that their hands held no weapons. Which, in the case of someone like me, is an obvious deceit.

  It makes you wonder if the first handshake was initiated by a luck poacher.

  Once my order is up, I say, “Thank you,” then I grab my cappuccino, take a couple of sips to calibrate my nerves, and walk up to the table where Ralph is still chatting away on his phone while his girlfriend sits bored and annoyed across from him.

  She’s prettier up close. Not in a pretentious kind of way but more natural, with just enough makeup to accent her eyes and lips. And she has a lot of patience. She’s obviously too good for someone who chooses a phone conversation over the company of a flesh-and-blood woman. Which is another reason to poach whatever luck Ralph has running through his system.

  He’s an idiot.

  “I just wanted to say that it’s a pleasure to meet you,” I say, reaching my hand out toward him.

  Before Ralph can figure out how to react or tell me that I must have him mistaken for someone else, which he probably wouldn’t do anyway because he’s an
arrogant bastard, I’m clasping his hand in mine, shaking it once, then walking out the front door with my double cappuccino.

  A simple hit-and-run.

  I step outside into the sunshine and I feel the warmth envelop me like a cocoon. I walk out of Union Square and I hear laughter and arguments, conversations from half a block away, buses and cable cars and all the noises of the city emanating from unseen speakers like a THX surround-sound system. I head up Stockton Street and I see faces and flowers, clouds and trees, everything crystal clear in high-definition, digital-quality reception.

  And that’s just three of my senses.

  I take a sip of my double cappuccino, and the flavor and the warmth course through me, filling my mouth and my stomach with Colombian coffee fields. A woman walks past, a blonde in a sundress, the scent of her shampoo lingering in my nostrils, and I can see her in the shower, her head wet and lathered, suds and water cascading down her bare shoulders and breasts.

  You can see why it’s easy to get addicted to the lifestyle.

  When poaching low-grade good luck, the experience isn’t nearly as intense, but it’s still better than sex. And top-grade soft has been compared to an out-of-body experience. Like taking mushrooms or LSD or mescaline.

  Ralph was apparently born with some good-quality medium-grade. Of course, I don’t know what he does for a living or if he has any emotional hang-ups or addictions, but I should be able to sell his luck for between ten and fifteen grand. Presuming I can get a buyer, which has been about as easy to find as an all-you-can-eat buffet in Ethiopia.

  At least my headache is gone.

  Plus with some good-quality luck pumping through me, all of those decisions I had to make don’t seem as daunting. I feel lighter. More relaxed. Able to handle whatever challenges come my way. Even the temptation of poaching Pure has lost its grip on me.

  Although good luck won’t always solve your problems, it gives you the confidence things will work out.

  Tourists and suits walk past, homeowners and homeless fill the sidewalks, mortal men and women surround me, and I stand on the corner, feeling invincible.