Dumb Luck

by Lesley Choyce

  Back on the street, an old guy with an empty coffee cup asked me for money, and I said I’d give him a big tip if he’d go into the liquor store and buy me a small bottle of Jack Daniels. I’d had a few drinks before, nothing serious. A few beers here and there, some booze that I sneaked from my dad’s liquor cabinet. I don’t know what inspired me now but I remembered how booze had made me feel and I liked it. I handed the guy a twenty and I followed him to the liquor store, where he went in and came back out with a small bottle in a brown bag for me. He went to hand me back the change and I told him to keep it. He smiled.

  “Thanks, buddy,” he said. “That’s the good stuff you got there.” As I turned to go, I handed him another twenty. I was feeling generous. I tucked the bottle in my book bag and started to walk away, the big wad of bills still in my pocket. After a couple of blocks, I flagged down a cab and took the easy way home. It was only when I was sitting in the back of the cab that I remembered I was now eighteen and could have walked into that liquor store and legally bought the bottle of booze in my backpack.

  chapterten

  My mom and dad were still arguing when I got home. They did that sometimes. My dad had a bad habit of being loud and my mother usually ended up crying. Often, I’d come home and my mom would have saved me some dinner, but tonight I decided to skip whatever was left of supper and head to my room to avoid the drama.

  I stashed my bottle of courage in my desk and decided that tonight was not the night for a taste of the demon alcohol. I copied Taylor’s phone number onto a piece of paper, still not quite believing she had given it to me. I was not ready to call her. I didn’t even know what I would say to her. I could see her pretty face clearly in my head and my brain teased me with images of me and Taylor at a party together or, better yet, alone in a car somewhere.

  Despite the fact that my father sold used cars and I was old enough to drive, he had often told me that I wasn’t ready yet for the responsibility of driving. He said that even if I got a driver’s license, I wouldn’t be allowed to drive the family Acura and he wasn’t willing to put up any money for the driving course I needed to take. That had really pissed me off, but I guess I never had the ambition to follow through anyway and get the license on my own.

  But, of course, now everything was different. Or was it? I checked my inbox and discovered I had a ton of e-mails. Mostly from people I didn’t know. How did that happen? Somehow people had found out my e-mail address. I opened a couple. One was from a man whose name was Ron, who said his son was dying of a rare form of cancer and that he needed to fly the boy to India for a treatment not available here. He said it was the only way to save his son. He included his phone number and begged for me to call him. A chill ran down my spine.

  Another one was from a young woman. She included a picture. She must have been in her early twenties. And she was quite sexy. She was asking me for money, too. This time for “cosmetic surgery,” but she didn’t say what kind. She also said that she would make it worth my while if I did this, and she would be most grateful.

  I swallowed and looked at her picture again, but then clicked back to my inbox.

  I didn’t recognize any of the names of people sending messages.

  The first few days after winning the lottery were a bit of a daze to me, but today was something different. Now I was seeing that I had suddenly come into focus for everyone around me. For so long, almost no one had really paid much attention to me. And now this. I wasn’t completely sure I was liking everything about my new life. Not the way people treated me. Not even the way I was beginning to see the world around me. I thought about the man with the sick kid. Why not just call him up and give him what he needed? But what about all the others who would come looking for me to help?

  Maybe I should just give all the money away, I thought for the first time.

  Oh, hell. I was tired of thinking about it. And I was hungry. I decided to take a chance and head down to the kitchen.

  My mom had gone to her room, but my dad was sitting there with the laptop and some papers spread out around him. He appeared a bit frazzled, but then my dad often looked frazzled. He looked up at me and smiled, but it was his car salesman smile, not the smile of the father who used to play catch with me when I was little.

  “How was school, Brandon?”

  “Different,” I said, keeping things purposely vague.

  “Welcome to the world of the rich and famous.” He looked back at his computer screen. “Wanna take a look at this?”

  I looked. It was an empty city lot, a field full of weeds. “What am I looking at?”

  “The future,” he said.

  I didn’t get it.

  “The future site of my business,” he explained.

  “Why there?”

  “Location, Brandon. It’s all about location. It’s on the highway, halfway between two of the biggest used car dealerships in the city. And because they are big and I’ll be small—at least I’ll start out small—then I’ll have much lower overhead. I can sell the same model cars they’re selling for at least ten percent less. Any smart consumer will end up buying from me.”

  Maybe I should have been excited for him because I could see he was excited in a good way. And I didn’t see him like that very often. He could do this, I began to realize, because I would be putting up the money. Sure. Why not? But then I began to wonder: was I loaning him the money or giving him the money? I decided that now was not the time to ask.

  “Any leftovers?” I asked.

  “There’s chicken in the fridge. Some potatoes and peas, too. Put some on a plate and pop it into the microwave.” He wasn’t about to get up and get me dinner, I could see.

  So I sliced off some chicken, scooped some mashed potatoes on a plate and threw it into the microwave, thinking the headline would read: Millionaire Son Forced to Reheat Leftover Chicken for Dinner. Maybe nothing had really changed at all. After a couple of minutes, I sat down to eat at the table with my dad. “What were you and mom fighting about?”

  He didn’t look up from his computer where he was scrolling through images of cars for sale. “You know how she gets.”

  I knew she was overly emotional sometimes. Well, lots of times, but it still wasn’t an answer. “What got her going this time?”

  Now he looked up. “I quit my job.”

  I hadn’t seen that coming. “You what?”

  “Yeah. I quit. If I’m gonna do this thing right, I need to put everything into it.”

  “Oh, shit,” I said out loud. What was he thinking? I didn’t like the way that everything was changing so quickly. And that he was all ready to make such a big gamble with my money. “That was stupid,” I told him outright.

  I thought he was going to lose it then. I had never called him stupid before. He was about to say something, but he stopped himself and gave me a look that drilled right through me.

  “Well, I thought you’d take this one step at a time,” I added, backing off a bit.

  “I am. And the first step is to get the down payment on that land you looked at, get the sucker paved, and move a nicely appointed trailer onto there. Brandon, you’re the dude who is making this all possible.”

  Dude? My uptight father called me dude? “But it seems a bit quick.”

  “Hey, the money is in the bank. It’s just sitting there getting—what?—two percent interest.”

  I suddenly wanted to say, “But it’s my money.” But I didn’t. My father read the look on my face. “Brandon, I thought a lot about this. This is my big chance. And I thought about you. Sure, I’m your father, but you don’t owe me anything. I remember my own father always made me feel like I owed him because he raised me, put food on the table, and bought me clothes. Man, how I hated it when he went on like that.”

  “Is that why we hardly ever see him?”

  “Something like that. He and I just don’t see
the world the same way. But I want it to be totally different between you and me. This business—I know it’s your money that will get it started. So we’re gonna do it as a partnership. You will be co-owner. You don’t have to work there or anything. But you’ll own half of everything. It’s called being a silent partner.”

  I stopped chewing and stared into my mashed potatoes, thinking, now I’m a silent partner, half-owner of a weedy lot that’s about to become a used car business on the highway. What was I to say? “Wow.”

  I always knew my old man could be pushy but I didn’t think he’d do this. I hated that I was still being treated like a kid. I wanted to yell at him and tell him what I really felt. But something in me made me stay quiet. I was seething but I didn’t feel like I was ready to stand up to him. Not right now, anyway. And maybe, just maybe, this would be a good thing. Maybe he knew what he was doing and it would all turn out okay. Maybe I should just have faith in him.

  He looked directly at me now, quite serious. “You’re okay with this, right? A father-son thing?”

  I was about to say what I was feeling but I stopped. I took a deep breath. “Yeah,” I said halfheartedly. “I’m cool with it. What do I do, write you a check, or what?”

  “Yep. I’m meeting with the bank in the morning.”

  “Why the bank?”

  “Can’t really get this going with just your money. I’ll need a loan. Gotta do this right. Gotta spend money to make money.”

  “So you take my fifty and ...”

  “I’m gonna need a little more. Now that I’ve done the math. If I can put down sixty-five, I can negotiate a better rate from the bank. The bastards’ll try to squeeze every penny out of you.”

  “Sixty-five thousand.”

  “You’re okay with that, right?”

  “Sure,” I said. “I’m okay with that.” But I don’t know if I was really okay or not. Everything was so confusing. I swallowed hard. “Dad,” I said. “What was Mom really crying about tonight.”

  He just shook his head. “Well, like I said, I quit my job today.”

  “Oh,” I said, “and she didn’t think that was a good idea?”

  “Nope.”

  There was a long pause just then, and he shrugged. “Don’t worry. I know how to make her feel better. Ever since we’ve been married, she’s been wanting nicer things than we could afford. Now we can afford them. Now I can make her happy.” And he closed the lid on the laptop, walked into the living room, and switched on the TV to the nightly news.

  chaptereleven

  I didn’t want to argue with my father on this, but my gut instinct told me he should not have quit his job. That really pissed me off. Maybe this time my mother had a good reason to cry.

  I knocked on her bedroom door.

  “Go away,” she said. I was guessing she thought it was my dad.

  “It’s me,” I said.

  I heard her blow her nose. “What is it, Brandon?”

  “Can I come in?”

  “Sure.”

  I opened the door and walked in. The room was a bit of a mess and so was my mom. “He shouldn’t have quit his job like that,” I said. “Not right away.”

  She shook her head. “There’s no changing that now.” She didn’t look up at me.

  “I know,” I said. “I feel like this is all my fault.”

  Now the floodgates opened more and she started crying again. “No, Brandon.” The arms were out. I walked toward her. She stood up and hugged me. “No, it isn’t your fault. You didn’t tell him to quit his job.”

  “I kinda wish he had discussed all this with me before moving ahead.”

  She released me and blew her nose. “You know your father.” I looked at my mom as she sat back down on the bed and tried to pull herself together. She didn’t look too good tonight but I knew that usually she was a really good-looking woman. There was a picture on the dresser of her and my dad when they were, like, twenty-one. They both looked so young, so happy, and she was a knockout. My father had always been ambitious, had talked about making it big. For him, that had always meant money. He worked hard at what he did but, like me, he’d always said he didn’t have any luck. We’d both been unlucky bastards. Up until now.

  But why all the unhappiness then?

  I knew I couldn’t own up to the true way I was feeling about my father’s stupid decision and the way he was treating me. So I decided to suck it up and try to put a good face on it. “Mom,” I said, “this is going to work out. I promise.”

  “You know your father’s tried his hand at owning his own business before.”

  “Yeah, I remember.” My father had once saved $10,000 and bought a truck and equipment for steam cleaning carpets in people’s houses. He couldn’t make a go of it. And the second time he started a business, it was landscaping. That one went even worse.

  “Well,” I said, “at least this time he’s doing something he understands. Selling cars. Apparently, I own half the business.” I tried to make it sound like I thought this was a good thing. But it didn’t come out that way.

  My mom looked me in the eye. “I’m sorry, Brandon. You won the lottery. It’s your money, not ours. Not his.”

  “I’m good with it. I’ve got lots in the bank. Don’t worry about me.” I didn’t really think I had much of a choice. Besides, it was already done. It was too late. Let my dad do his thing and maybe this time he would have his dream come true.

  “He used to buy lottery tickets every week,” my mom said.

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “He spent fifty dollars each week. And we didn’t have it to spare. He kept saying it increased his chances of winning.”

  “But he never won?”

  “He won a few free tickets. Ten dollars here. Twenty there. That’s all.”

  “I guess that’s true of most people, right? What are the odds of winning?”

  “Ridiculously low.”

  “But he quit?”

  “He gave up the lottery, but then, one night, after we’d had an argument—about money, of course—he emptied our bank account. We only had two thousand dollars but he took it out and went to the casino. He lost it all within two hours.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I nearly left him.”

  “I wouldn’t blame you.”

  “But I was pregnant with you.”

  “Oh.”

  “So you saved the marriage, Brandon.”

  “No. Sounds like you saved the marriage.”

  “Well, I stayed with him. He didn’t gamble again.”

  We could both hear my dad’s voice now. He was on the phone to someone. All I could tell was that he sounded rather business-like. He was probably working on his “deal”—his new business. It was now becoming a bit clearer that my partner, my dad, was a gambler on a lot of fronts. He had gambled his savings; he had gambled on the possibility of losing my mom. He had cleaned up his act, though, and made his living, paycheck to paycheck. But now he was banking on me and banking on the fact he could make a profit from owning his own car lot. And I was along for the ride. Or I was the ride.

  “So, I’m going to have to help him make this new business thing work,” I said.

  “I’m not sure I like that,” she said. “You need your own life. You need to figure out what you want to do.”

  But I had no clue about what I wanted to do. My current plan was to finish school. Or not finish school, if I didn’t want to. I mean, why bother? I could live off of what I’d won. If I was smart, and not crazy, I would never have to work a day in my life. I didn’t mention any of this to my mom.

  I gave my mom a kiss on the forehead. “I think everything is going to be okay,” I told her, and then she stood up and gave me a hug. But I knew that so much was about to change. So much had already changed.

  I was t
hinking about going back downstairs and trying to learn more about the business I was about to get into (or at least bankroll), but my dad was still on the phone and deeply involved in something involving “inventory” and “markup,” and I decided to let sleeping dogs lie.

  Back on the computer, it was like stepping into my own little fantasy world. My inbox was even more crowded. Old friends had resurfaced to renew their friendship. Even kids I hadn’t seen since grade one. I had new friends near and far. I had adults begging me for money to save someone who was sick in their family. Fathers losing their home to the bank, mothers trying to get their sons into rehab and needing cash.

  And girls. There were girls from school sending me short little notes asking to get together. And girls near and far who wanted to be my “friend.” Some of them sent pictures. Pretty girls with very sexy looks.

  I knew I was probably being foolish but I rather liked my own little lotto fantasyland, and it seemed so much more interesting than video games or reality TV shows. This was my life. And I had some seriously hot chicks wanting to be my friends.

  So I wrote back to a few of them. What could it hurt?

  “Thanks for writing,” I’d begin. “You sound like a very interesting person. Tell me a bit more about yourself.”

  I wasn’t much of a writer. But I was curious.

  I had to remind myself that they were writing to me not because they wanted to get to know me. (Hey, I’d been me all my life and there had been no girls queuing up in my inbox.) They were interested in the guy who had won the three mill. They were all that shallow.

  But it was a game, right? And I’d have some fun playing the game.

  In fact, after I’d answered the twelfth e-mail from a beautiful girl who I had never met (I was only answering the ones who’d sent photos), I was thinking that this was more fun than I’d had most of my life. For number thirteen, I just cut and pasted my little now-standardized reply to number twelve into the message and fired that one off.