Lucky Bastard

by S. G. Browne

  I drain the rest of my large mocha, then I put the empty cup in my backpack, glance once more at the address on the business card, and rap three times on the door.

  When I knock, the sound echoes the way it does when an apartment is vacant, when there’s no furniture or personal belongings to absorb the noise, when it’s obvious that no one lives there, and I’m wondering if maybe I have the wrong place. I look at the card again and step back to double-check the address. Just as I’m about to knock again, the door opens and I’m looking up into the face of a tall albino man with dreadlocks and pale blue eyes.

  “You have business?” he says, his voice thick with some kind of Eastern European accent. Maybe Czech. Maybe Romanian. Maybe Russian. I can’t tell the difference.

  I never was good with geography.

  I hand him my card, which I hope answers his question, because I don’t know the secret password.

  He takes the card from me and gives it a glance, then flips it over and nods once before he steps back and stands to one side. “Come.”

  Obviously he’s a man of few words, and with his dreads and his accent and his vampire-like complexion, he’s a little intimidating, so I do what he says and I step through the door, which he closes and locks behind me.

  “Follow me,” he says, leading me toward the back of the apartment across scuffed hardwood floors and through empty rooms with bare walls, the paint cracked and peeling, the corners dark with shadows and mildew. The only decorations are window blinds, which are all dusty and drawn.

  I wonder if the Albino and Tommy Wong use the same interior decorator.

  I’ve never seen an albino before. Not in person. And definitely not in San Francisco. So presuming this guy doesn’t have a brother or an uncle or a celebrity impersonator, I’m guessing this is the alleged luck poacher Bow Wow said he saw down on Market Street. Though it still doesn’t make any sense why he would be poaching luck in the Tenderloin.

  We end up in the kitchen, which is just as warm and charming as the rest of the apartment. No spice racks. No fruit bowls. No knife sets. Which I’m oddly thankful for. No microwave. No toaster oven. No espresso machine. The only appliance other than the gas stove is a refrigerator that’s about half the size of your standard Frigidaire. I figure the only things stored inside are body parts or dead cats. Then the Albino opens the refrigerator door.

  Instead of condiments and juice and nonfat yogurt, the shelves of the refrigerator are empty except for several red, stainless steel drinking bottles on the top shelf, while the refrigerator door and the bottom shelf contain dozens of clear glass vials of varying sizes filled with a liquid as thick and as black as used motor oil.

  My mouth suddenly turns dry and my heart starts to pound so fast I could be a plump, juicy rabbit pinned to the ground beneath the open jaws of a predator.

  I’m staring at a refrigerator filled with bad luck.

  And I understand why the Albino has been trolling around the Tenderloin.

  I’ve never met a bad-luck poacher before. I’ve only heard stories about them from Grandpa. They’re like Bigfoot. Urban legends of the poaching community. You’re never really sure if you believe in them until you actually see one for yourself.

  Like now.

  I’m a little awestruck and, to be honest, a little freaked-out. After all, this is Bigfoot we’re talking about, standing right next to me, all pasty-skinned and dreadlocked and sounding like the Terminator. Plus I know what happened to me when I poached bad luck just the one time. How it felt. Cold and desolate. A pernicious infection. A malevolent sludge flowing through me that I had to get out of my system as fast as possible. Just five minutes was enough to give me the shakes and the sweats and make me vomit until I had the dry heaves. I can’t imagine what it’s like to feel that all the time.

  I watch as he removes one of the stainless steel bottles from the top shelf of the refrigerator.

  “You’re a Specter,” I say.

  “I poach bad luck, yes. But am not apparition.”

  I think he’s making a joke, but I can’t be sure since he sounds so serious.

  “I’ve never met a Specter.”

  “Would you like autograph?” he asks, closing the refrigerator and taking the bottle of bad luck over to the counter.

  “Maybe just a photo,” I say, playing along. At least I hope I’m playing along. The last thing I want to do is get on the wrong side of a guy who poaches bad luck for a living.

  He gives me a hint of a smile, so I figure I’m okay for the time being.

  I watch him set the bottle on the counter, then he grabs a drinking glass from the cabinet.

  “Are all Specters like you?” I ask.

  “Like me how? Charming?”

  “Well, no. Not that you aren’t. Charming, I mean. I was thinking more along the lines of your appearance.”

  “Tall?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Good-looking?”

  “Albino,” I say, spitting it out. “I was just wondering because . . .”

  “Because I look like ghost?”

  “Yeah. Now that you mention it.”

  “I don’t know any other Specters, as you call me,” he says, filling the drinking glass with tap water. “So I do not know what others look like. I only know me.”

  He places the glass of water on the counter next to the stainless steel bottle.

  “How long have you been poaching?” I ask.

  “As long as I can remember.”

  I always wondered if Specters begat other Specters or if they were anomalies, born with some kind of a genetic poaching defect.

  “Was one of your parents a Specter?” I ask. “Or were they just luck poachers?”

  “I do not talk about my parents.”

  And that’s the end of that conversation.

  I watch him remove an empty two-ounce glass vial from one of the kitchen cabinets, then unscrew the lid and set it on the counter next to the glass of water. From one of the kitchen drawers, he pulls out a glass syringe, opens the stainless steel container, inserts the syringe, and draws the bad luck into the chamber.

  “Is that low-grade hard?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  I take a step back and look around for something to hide behind.

  “What about the vials in the refrigerator?” I say. “Can’t you just give me one of those?”

  “Those are all ordinary bad luck. I keep low-grade hard in bottles like this.”

  “Why? Is it more stable? Is it cooler? Is it safer?”

  “No,” he says. “Just happier.”

  I can only nod. There are some things I’d rather not try to understand.

  Once the syringe is filled with low-grade hard, he inserts it into the two-ounce vial and depresses the plunger.

  “Aren’t you afraid you might spill some?” I ask, taking another step back and wishing I had something to put between us for protection. Like bulletproof glass. Or the Atlantic Ocean.

  “I never spill,” he says.

  “Never?”

  “No. But usually I do not have nosy poacher pestering me while I am working.”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  I shut up and watch him empty the syringe, filling the two-ounce vial, then he takes his finger, wipes the tip of the syringe, and puts his finger into his mouth.

  While I cringe and nearly gag, there’s no reaction from the Albino. No sense of pleasure or disgust or indication that he experienced any sensory input whatsoever. Then he takes the syringe, puts it in the glass of water, draws the water in, expels it back into the glass, and drinks the water down in four long swallows.

  “What does it taste like?” I ask.

  He wipes a single finger across his lips. “Tastes like me.”

  I’m not sure if that’s enigmatic or disgusting, so I decide to let it go.

  He places the syringe in the empty water glass, then caps the vial and holds it out to me in his open hand.

  “What?”

&n
bsp; “This is what you come for,” he says. “This is what is on card.”

  “I know. But don’t you have it in something a little less breakable? Like stainless steel or plastic or titanium?”

  “It eats through plastic. So must be stored in metal or glass.”

  “Okay. I’ll take metal.”

  “I don’t have metal,” he says, continuing to hold the two-ounce vial out to me in the palm of his hand. “I only have glass.”

  “But you said it’s happier in stainless steel. I don’t want it to be angry. I want it to be happy.”

  “Is happy enough,” he says. “You take.”

  “But the bad luck Barry Manilow gave me earlier today was in a stainless steel vial. In a metal container. Encased in foam.”

  “I do not have foam or metal and am not Barry Manilow,” he says, his face suddenly brightening with a smile. “But I am big fan. Do you think you could get me autograph?”

  “It’s just a joke. He isn’t really Barry Manilow. He just looks like him.”

  “Oh.” His hopeful expression falls from his face.

  “Sorry. Look, do you have a small box and some Styrofoam peanuts or something? Maybe a—”

  “I saw him once in concert. New York City. Madison Square Garden. I love the song ‘Copacabana.’ ‘Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl . . .’”

  He starts to move his head back and forth to the rhythm of the song, the vial still resting in his open palm, rolling back and forth from pinkie to thumb. He may not be concerned about spillage or breakage, but I don’t exactly want to get splattered with thermonuclear bad luck.

  “How about some Orville Redenbacher’s gourmet popcorn?” I ask. “Or even some Jiffy Pop? Or a Ziploc bag and some uncooked rice? Anything? Anything at all?”

  “Sorry. All I have is bag of coffee in freezer from Starbucks.”

  “Ground or whole bean?”

  “Ground.”

  “Perfect,” I say. “I’ll take it.”

  While the Albino removes the one-pound bag of Starbucks from the freezer and packs the vial of bad luck inside, I decide to do some poacher bonding by telling him how much we have in common.

  “I poached bad luck once,” I say.

  “Is that so?”

  I nod, even though he’s not looking at me. Which I appreciate. I’d rather he keep his attention focused on packing the bad luck.

  “Three years ago in Tucson. I accepted a contract job for some low-grade hard. Half a million dollars. I’d never seen that kind of money. And you couldn’t get that for ten orders of top-grade soft back then, so I couldn’t turn it down.”

  I’ve never told this to anyone. Not even Mandy. She would have told me I was an idiot. Which I was.

  “It made me sick,” I say. “I had cramps and chills and couldn’t stop throwing up for three days. I was paranoid that people were watching me, and I’d wake up from a dream thinking there were bugs crawling across me. It lasted more than a week. When I finally started feeling better, I went to grab some of the cash I’d stashed in the fireproof safe I kept in my apartment so I could buy some groceries and some new underwear, but the money wasn’t there. I don’t know what happened to it. It was just gone.

  “I spent all day going through my place, from room to room, tearing everything apart, looking in clothes and furniture and artwork, anywhere I might have stashed the money. I even tore into the walls and the floors, thinking that maybe in my state of sick, paranoid delirium I might have tried to hide the money there, but all I managed to accomplish was to get myself evicted from my apartment.

  “That’s why I moved here,” I say. “Eventually I managed to get back on my feet, but I still haven’t managed to shake the effects. Worst decision I ever made.”

  The Albino doesn’t respond, just continues to pack the coffee grounds around the vial of low-grade hard. I figure I’ve offended him with my story, with my attempt to show him how we have so much in common.

  I’m about to apologize when he says, “Could be worse.”

  He doesn’t elaborate or share the details of his existence. But I don’t need him to tell me that this is his life, moving from city to city and from town to town, living in unfurnished apartments with mildew and peeling paint and empty cupboards, trolling the streets for the hopeless and the forlorn, the alienated and the alone.

  No laughter or intimacy or joy. No family or lovers or friends.

  No Jill. No spoon. No king’s men.

  And I realize he’s not that much different from me.

  “How do you poach bad luck?” I ask.

  “Easy. I just touch.”

  “I know. What I mean is, how do you do it without it making you feel bad? Without it making you sick?”

  He turns and looks at me with a blank expression and shrugs. “I just do.”

  I suppose he doesn’t understand how or why he’s able to do what he does any more than I understand how I do what I do. It’s just the way we are. And it makes me wonder if we exist to balance each other out. The good luck and the bad luck. The yin and the yang. The light and the dark. Except I’m beginning to question which one I am.

  The Albino relieves people of their bad fortune, frees them of their burdens, and makes their bad luck his, while I create hardships and improve my good fortune at the expense of others. I’m not exactly helping people find a better way of living.

  I’m no Jesus or Mother Teresa.

  I’m more like the kid who always gets his way and grows up to be the adult who believes he’s earned the right to do whatever he wants.

  The Albino finishes packing the bad luck and hands me the bag of coffee grounds, the Starbucks House Blend. I would have preferred French Roast, but at least it’s not decaf.

  “Thanks for the packing job,” I say, putting the bag of coffee into the backpack next to the empty Peet’s cup.

  “Is no trouble. You go now.”

  And that’s it. My cue to leave. Exit, stage left. The voice in The Amityville Horror telling the new homeowners to get out.

  I look around at the empty kitchen, with no food and no charm, with nothing to give the place any sense of warmth, and I can’t help but feel like I should do something to add some humanity to the Albino’s existence before I go.

  “Hey, you want to grab a drink?” I say. Not like I have the time, and he doesn’t exactly seem like fun company, but I feel sorry for him.

  “No. No drink.”

  “How about dinner? My treat.”

  He shakes his head. “I do not do well in public places.”

  Which crosses bowling and the Kabuki Springs & Spa off the list. But there must be something I can do.

  “At least let me pay you for the bag of coffee.”

  “Is no charge.”

  “What was it?” I say, reaching for my wallet. “Ten bucks?”

  “Please, is not necessary.”

  “No, I insist. It’s the least I can do.”

  He stares at me with his pale blue eyes and I wonder if he’s thinking about killing me. It’s not like he’d be the first one to have that thought cross his mind today.

  “Okay. Yes. Ten dollars is fine. Then you go.”

  I reach into my wallet and realize I don’t have any small bills. “You got change for a hundred?”

  When I step outside the door, my cab is gone.

  You’d think with Donna’s and Doug’s good luck I wouldn’t have these kinds of problems, but when you factor in the two ounces of low-grade hard I’m carrying in my backpack, nothing’s guaranteed.

  I wait a few minutes for another cab, but the only ones that pass are taken, so I glance up O’Farrell and see the sign for the Nite Cap bar at the corner of Hyde. Not that I’m expecting to find a ride there, but the two pints of Guinness I had at O’Reilly’s and the mocha from Peet’s are kicking around in my bladder like a second-trimester fetus, so I head that direction to make use of the facilities before my good luck starts running down my leg.

  I could just walk do
wn an alley and pull out my Peet’s cup and relieve myself that way. After all, I am in the Tenderloin; no one would pay me much attention. But with my luck, I’d get busted for public urination and end up in a holding cell.

  Plus, at least at the Nite Cap, I can mix my urine with some Coke and ice rather than drinking it straight.

  Outside the Nite Cap a couple of drunks are hanging on each other and sharing a smoke. They could be homeless or patrons of the bar. Or both. One of them, who’s wearing a beat-up red-and-white-striped stovepipe hat that looks like it was stolen from the Cat in the Hat, looks at me in my suit and says, “Hey, it’s James fucking Bond,” while the other one snorts out laughter as I walk past them into the bar.

  I hate the Tenderloin.

  Inside, the place is done up in contemporary seedy, with dark lighting and brown paneling and duct tape holding the carpet together. Two televisions at either end of the bar play silent sports highlights, while a Lucky Strike clock above the bathrooms keeps track of everyone’s wasted time.

  Hipsters and barflies hang out at the tables in the back or on stools at the bar. Two fraternity types are playing a game of eight-ball on the pool table, which is cramped against one wall beneath a hanging stained-glass Budweiser lamp, while an attractive Asian woman in stilettos and a micro-miniskirt is feeding money into the digital jukebox currently blasting something by Slayer.

  She bends over to make her selection, and her spaghetti-strap top rides up, revealing a tattoo of a dragon across her lower back. I don’t have time to stare, or to get caught staring, but I do it anyway because I can’t help myself. Plus I love miniskirts.

  When I look up from her ass, she’s glancing at me over her shoulder with a smile, then she walks away from the jukebox and into the women’s bathroom.

  I walk up to the bar, slide in between a barfly and a hipster, and order a Coke.

  “Just a Coke, dude?” says the hipster. “Why not add some Jack?”

  “I’m on the wagon.”

  When you’re packing two ounces of low-grade hard, it’s prudent to avoid saying anything clever or sarcastic that might lead to a confrontation. Bad luck has a way of making people around it overreact. Like taking a comment personally. Or punching me in the face.