“Hernando, do you have last night’s winning lottery numbers?”
“Sure, they fax them to me so I can post them. Lemme see now.” He shuffled some papers on the counter. “Yeah. Here they are: 1, 2, 11, 13, 16, and 23. You the big winner?” he asked with a grin. “Fifty million big ones. Cut me in, will ya?”
“Hey, Hernando,” a voice called from the back room. “We just got another fax from the lottery administration. Seems the only winning ticket for last night’s jackpot was sold here.”
Hernando turned to stare at Ellen but she barely noticed. She was in shock. Those were her numbers. Really. Hers. She fumbled in her jacket pocket and found her wallet. Inside was her ticket. She had to check that she had really bought the right numbers. But she had. Right? Her breathing sped up and her pulse raced and she could hear nothing but a buzzing in her ears.
She clutched the wallet as she became aware that Hernando was standing, staring at her. From the back room, the voice yelled, “I wonder who won all those bucks. Do we get to know?”
“I think we just might,” Hernando yelled. “Are those really your numbers?” he asked Ellen. “I remember you told me once that you always play the same ones. Your family’s birthdays. Right?”
Ellen stood with her wallet in her trembling hand, unwilling to open it and pull out the ticket. Maybe she had made a mistake and played the wrong numbers, but she always played the same ones. She should just look. “I can’t,” she whispered.
“Want me to look at your ticket for you?” Hernando asked.
Ellen nodded numbly and held out her wallet. Slowly Hernando took it in his huge hands, reached inside the bill compartment and withdrew the ticket. “Right date,” he said as he studied the small slip of paper. He looked back and forth between the list and the ticket. “One, 2, 11, 13, 16, and 23. Holy shit. Those really are the numbers.” He raised his eyes and again just stared at Ellen. “Holy shit, Ellen. Fifty million. Take it in a lump and you get maybe thirty-five. Pay half to the president, and some to the governor and you get to keep maybe fifteen or twenty. Holy shit. Twenty million smackers clear. Wanna buy this place? I can let you have it for only five million.” His laugh was warm as he pounded Ellen on the back. “Wow!”
Unable to move, Ellen raked her numb fingers through her hair, reflexively tucking strands behind each ear, then scrubbed her eyes with her fists. She couldn’t seem to keep from shaking. “You okay?” Hernando asked. “You want some water? Only ten bucks a glass.” His booming voice filled the empty store.
She shook her head. She didn’t want any water and she was definitely not okay. What was she? “I don’t know,” she mumbled. She took the ticket and her wallet from Hernando’s hand. “What do I do now?”
“I can let lottery headquarters know but you might want to talk to a lawyer or an accountant first. What are you going to do with all that money?”
“I don’t know,” Ellen said, concentrating on putting the ticket back into her wallet. “I haven’t a clue what I’m going to do,” she muttered as she walked out of the store.
“I haven’t a clue,” Ellen said to her older sister on the phone a week later.
“Well, love,” Micki said, “you don’t need to make any decisions for a while.” Micki, full-time mother of three school-aged daughters, had been talking to Ellen almost daily since Ellen had called and told her about the winning ticket. “As you know, my only advice is to be good to yourself.”
“I know, but I don’t know what that means.” With advice from a local accountant she had claimed her prize the day after winning. She had enjoyed all the attention, the whirlwind ceremonies and TV appearances. She even had the picture of her with the giant check stuck in the corner of her bedroom mirror.
She had already put chunks of money in accounts for each of Micki’s children and a sizable sum in a money-market fund for her sister and brother-in-law, over their loud objections. The accountant had introduced her to a broker who invested the rest of her money in certificates of deposit and conservative mutual funds. She now had an income of more than half a million dollars a year, but she hadn’t any idea of what to do next. She was still getting tapes from the medical group she worked for doing data coding and typing up the required reports on her computer. She was still eating peanut butter sandwiches and Kraft macaroni and cheese and going out to the local Italian restaurant for spaghetti with meat sauce once or twice a week.
Nothing much had changed yet everything had changed. All the people in the neighborhood knew about her winnings. People she barely knew stopped her on the street with business propositions and she was constantly asked for contributions to aid the homeless, the needy, sick children, art museums, endangered species. Representatives of charities of all types wrote, called, and even rang her doorbell, anxious to help her spend her winnings. Several people named Harold had contacted her, sure they were long-lost relatives. “Micki, my sudden fame is driving me crazy. I got another dozen letters today from people and places I don’t know, all wanting money. Yesterday Mrs. Cumberland, that wonderful grandmotherly type next door came over with a plate of fudge.”
“That was nice of her.” Micki hesitated. “Wasn’t it?”
“I thought so, too, until she spent an hour telling me about her grandson who is the brightest mind since Einstein but can’t afford college. You remember Randy Cumberland.”
“Sure. He was a year after you in school. A bit dorky but sweet. College? He barely graduated from high school.”
“Right. He’s working at Ernie’s gas station rebuilding engines, and he’s perfectly content, right where he belongs, but his grandmother doesn’t see it that way. When I talked to her about it, she insisted that the only reason he’s not Phi Beta Kappa is money. My money.”
“Oh shit.”
“Everyone. Even Dr. Okamura went completely over the edge yesterday.”
“Over the edge?”
“I went in to pick up my tapes and he came out of the back, all smarmy. Oily. He was all over me, smiling a big sticky-sweet smile. ‘How’s my favorite girl today?’
“How’s my favorite girl? He’s never said three words to me before. So I told him I was just fine and he leaned over, trapped me against his receptionist’s desk and asked me out to dinner.”
“He didn’t,” the voice through the phone gasped. “He’s married, isn’t he?”
Ellen tucked several strands of hair behind her ear and shifted the phone to the other side. “He did, and he’s very married. Suddenly I’m the winner of the most-likely-to-make-a-man-cheat-on-his-wife contest. Yuck. I gently removed his arm from beside me and told him that I wasn’t available.”
“Do you think he knows about the money?”
“Why else? Come on, Micki. Be real. I’m not particularly attractive and he’s never paid the least bit of attention to me before. It’s all making me crazy. Everyone’s changed.”
“So get away. Move somewhere where no one knows you, and no one cares. You can go anywhere, you know.”
“Yeah right. Take a cruise around the world. Live a frivolous life clipping coupons.”
“Why not? You can certainly afford it.”
Ellen propped the receiver between her ear and shoulder and paced the length of her bedroom. “I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t just loll around. I’d have to do something.”
“Okay. Go to medical school.”
Ellen smiled. “Right.”
“Listen, you can do anything you want to do. Run for mayor, open a florist shop, launch a singing career. Anything.”
Ellen’s loud sigh filled the room. “I know, and maybe that’s the problem. I’ve got several million in the bank, earning more money than I can spend. It’s mind-boggling and really difficult to wrap my mind around, even after all the publicity. I know I can do anything and I can’t get my mind to settle on any one thing.”
“Move to New York City and become a stripper.”
Ellen’s laugh was genuine. “There isn’t enough silicone in th
e world to make this body worth looking at.”
Micki’s laugh joined Ellen’s. “Okay, okay. Stripping’s probably not for you but New York might be just the thing.” Micki was still laughing as she continued. “I think you need to get away from here. It’s too limiting for you.”
Ellen contemplated. “I suppose I could have Dr. Okamura’s office send me tapes once a week. The computer system doesn’t care about where I am when I log in.”
“You have all the creativity of a bowl of oatmeal. You’ve got all that money. Live! Quit your job. Let loose. I’ve been telling you for years but you just don’t listen. You’re too restricted here. It’s time to move on. Bust out. Live for a change.”
“I couldn’t just quit my job. I’m the only one who can understand Dr. Okamura’s accent, and I love doing it.”
“Okay, okay. Keep the job if you must, but it’s really time to get out of this one-horse town and find out what the real world’s like.”
Ellen dropped back onto the edge of her bed. “I didn’t know you were so down on Fairmont. You and Milt seem to like it here and it’s really not such a bad place.”
“It’s not bad for those of us who’ve found our paths. I’ve got Milt and the kids, PTA, scouts, lots of thing I love to do. You, however, are stagnating here and you’ll never bloom. You don’t date, you never do anything that’s fun. You know just about every eligible man in town and you’ve rejected them all at one time or another. What kind of a future does that give you?”
Ellen paused, her sister’s words slowly weighing her down. As always, Micki was right. Ellen had gone to school with just about everyone her age in town. She’d had a yearlong relationship with Gerry Swinburn, but that had ended when he got hired by a national brokerage firm and decided to move to New York City. “I’ve got to get out,” he had said. “There’s nothing here for me.”
“What about me?” Ellen had said.
“I care for you,” Gerry had answered, “but that’s just not enough.” He had begged her to come to New York with him, but at that time it had been out of the question. Now?
“I’ve got to give it a little thought,” she said to her sister, “but maybe you’ve got a point.”
After hanging up, Ellen sat on the edge of the bed in her tiny house, deep in thought. What did she have to look forward to, money or no money? What kind of future was there here for her? She worked at her computer and did little else. She was such a good customer at the local video store that they kept giving her special deals. She knew all the clerks at the local library by their first names. She owned enough romance novels to fill a wide bookshelf, and her sister teased that if she were snowed in for three years, she couldn’t read them all.
What did she do all week? She saw her sister and family several times, she went out for dinner, alone, and she went to the movies once or twice a month. She had a few friends, acquaintances actually, and she went to their houses occasionally. Sometimes she had people over. It was all routine. Predictable. Boring.
She wandered around her small, comfortable house, deep in thought. It had been her parents’ house, the house she grew up in. It had two bedrooms and she still slept in the one she had shared with Micki all their growing-up years. Nothing had changed since the elder Harolds’ death in a car accident four years before. Her parents’ bedroom was neat and the bed made as it always had been. A rag rug covered their floor, like the one that covered hers. Ellen remembered her mother making them from scraps of faded fabric, many cut from clothes Ellen had outgrown. Hand-me-downs. She remembered the few times when she had gotten something new, something her sister hadn’t already worn and could even pick out a couple of swatches.
Yet she wasn’t sad about her simple upbringing. Sure her parents hadn’t been wealthy, but they had been happy. The house had always smelled of something baking and there was always laughter. Her father played piano for their weekly musical evenings and, although her singing voice was abominable, she would sing along with her sister’s lovely alto and her mother’s lilting soprano. To make up for her lack of musical talent, she had had her watercolors, which she had used to create beautifully painted covers for the sheet music her father was always acquiring.
Ellen wandered into the living room and lifted the seat of the old piano bench. There were several of her covers still inside and she picked up one and gazed at it, a simple scene of a country meadow surrounded by apple trees. That was such a long time ago, she thought. She ran her hand over the scratched upright piano, missing the old times.
In those years, the TV was seldom on, the family preferring books and conversation to the incessant babble of the tube. When she had friends home from school they were always amazed at not being able to watch soap operas and talk shows but soon learned to enjoy the activities and the companionship of the Harold family.
Now, as Ellen wandered through the living room, the house felt lonely, empty, devoid of the joy that had always been part of her life here. Until now she hadn’t even noticed how little remained, but still she was at home here, comfortable. Did she want to be just comfortable all her life? Her footsteps took her into the kitchen. Before she was born it had housed an icebox and an old kerosene stove. Now there was a ten-year-old refrigerator and a stove that was even older. But what did she cook? TV dinners, cans of ravioli, and her favorite, Kraft macaroni and cheese dinners.
She plopped herself down on a plastic-covered kitchen chair and rested her elbows on the Formica table. Where was she going in her life? She had enough money to do anything she wanted. She could redo the entire house, but it would still be a small house in a small town.
New York City. It formed the backdrop for many of the novels she enjoyed. Life pulsed there. People were busy, going from exciting place to exciting place. Fine restaurants, museums, giant bookstores, and galleries. There were so many things to do, places to see, and she certainly had the wherewithal to do it all. She didn’t have to actually move there, she could stay someplace for a while and see the sights. Why not? She could put her laptop computer under her arm and visit for a month or two, find a place to stay where no one knew about her or her money. Her work would only take a few hours a day and she could explore in her free time. At least then she’d know what was out there, and if she got lonely for Micki’s family, she could come back.
Over the next few days she vacillated. One minute she was hot for a trip to the big city, and the next she was terrified. How would she act? What would she do? Where would she go?
“Listen, Ellie,” her sister said about three weeks after her lottery windfall, “I looked into New York City. Remember Ashley Richardson from school? Actually it’s McAllister now. She was a year behind me, two ahead of you.”
“Wasn’t she the tall redhead with the braces? She used to come home with you at least once a week.” Ellen thought. “She had a great singing voice as I remember.”
“Right. Well she moved to New York City, met a guy, and got married a few years ago. We’ve kept in touch, so I called and asked her to do some discreet investigation. She found a small residence hotel in midtown. The east fifties, I think. It’s a converted brownstone with only six apartments, not luxurious, just clean and comfortable. The building’s totally secure and in a great neighborhood.”
“You went behind my back?”
“Not at all. I just asked so you’d have your options open.”
“Micki! How could you!” she snapped.
“Don’t bite my head off because you’re afraid to take the big step. If I left it up to you you’d be here until hell froze over. I’m just asking you to consider getting away, maybe for just a few weeks. We both know it would be so good for you.”
“But…”
“I’m your sister. I’ve always been more of a small-town girl than you have. You’ve always been more of a dreamer, an adventurer.”
“Me? An adventurer? Are you sure you haven’t forgotten me already?”
“Not at all. You’ve always sold yourself short, bu
t before, since there wasn’t anything you could do about it, I shut up. Anyway, it’s really none of my business. But…”
Ellen raked her fingers through her hair. Some things never change. “You always say it’s none of your business, then follow it up with a but.”
Ellen could hear her sister’s chuckle. “Right,” Micki said. “You know me so well. But I know you too, Ellie. You need this. You can do this. Get a pencil and let me give you the information Ash gave me.”
If only to shut Micki up, Ellen got a pencil and paper and took down the details about the hotel. “It’s something between a hotel and a condo. They cater mostly to high-end one- and two-month vacationers and they supply kitchen stuff, sheets, towels, and a maid once a week. They are pretty booked, but you can call and find out when they will have a room. Ash says that it’s really moderately priced for the city.” Micki mentioned a monthly rent that would have choked her before the lottery winnings. “When she called, the woman said she thought they would have something for you within a month or so.”
Ellen sighed, something she’d been doing a lot lately. “Maybe you’re right. I’ll think about it.”
Later that afternoon she opened her mailbox and could barely get her mail out. She stopped at her garbage can and flipped a huge handful of solicitations. Save the Whales, MADD, cancer, kidneys, muscular dystrophy. “They never stop,” she muttered.
“Hi, Ellen,” her next-door neighbor said. “Nice to see you this afternoon.”
Ellen looked up and saw Mrs. Cumberland bustling toward her. She had the feeling that the older woman had been watching for her. “I’m fine, Mrs. Cumberland. How are you this lovely day?”
“Really hot. This summer had been brutal so far, and my air conditioner is on the fritz again. I just hate to have it repaired, what with saving for my grandson’s college. It’s so expensive.”
Oh, Lord, here we go again. “I understand,” Ellen said, “but do you think college is really right for Randy? He seems happy at Ernie’s.”
Flesh For Fantasy Page 23
