I have three smokes and two matches.
At home, un-mailed Christmas cards are scattered across my desk, even though there was a parade yesterday honoring Martin Luther King. According to the checked off boxes on my calender, today is eight days ago.
I'm hunched over in my car, in the sub-basement of the Roosevelt building, and I'm dreaming about the lottery again. I think about it with the same frequency that men supposedly think about sex.
The idea of never having to work another day in my life is worth the habit that even makes some veteran smokers and alcoholics snicker. I know the odds, the comparisons to being struck by lightning. But the game that I play, Win for Life, is much more attractive than most of the others. Each scratch ticket costs two dollars, a buck more than most tickets. It's twice as big as the dollar tickets too, but it's bigger and more expensive for a reason. There are three games on each card, as well as a bonus chance, a blue and yellow keystone that may conceal a prize between four and forty dollars. Also, the top prize for most of the Pennsylvania Lottery games ranges from three to five thousand, and the pot for this one pays a thousand bucks a week for life.
That's all I need. I don't need to be rich; I just need to be able to sleep in on Mondays.
I could be a fast-food journeyman, and bounce around between low-paying jobs. I could assume the wrathful role of spokesman for the minimum wage worker, tell the soccer mom who pulls up to the drive-through every week and orders seventeen god-damned cheeseburgers, most of them needing something added or taken off, to come prepared with a list instead of queuing car after car around the building. I could tell the people who sneak in right before the restaurant closes expecting food what inconsiderate bastards they are. I could be an adolescent's hero.
At first, I only bought tickets from the same store, the Co-Go's down the street from my apartment. My initial strategy for buying at only one location was that it would secure me a better chance of winning the smaller hits, if not the career ender. If I dropped forty dollars on the same roll of tickets, the odds were in my favor that I'd win something, a low hit or at the very least a free ticket.
Anyway, that's how I became familiar with Ray, the afternoon clerk at Co-Go's. He is about fifteen years older then myself, and wears thick, silver framed glasses that always have dust on the lenses. They magnify his eyes, making them look enormous. His yellow work shirt is faded and shrunken so much that the bottom crescent of his gut shows. The shirt often has chili stains from the hot-dog station next to the microwave and Cup of Soup display. His high forehead is always moist with sweat, like bathroom walls after a shower. Hair from the left part canopies the bald spot at the top of his head.
Ray glares with repulsive delight at the women who come into the store. He touches their hands too much when he gives and receives change. Once when I was reading the month log of the daily number posted on the side of the newspaper racks, the bells on the door jingled, welcoming a twenty-something blond with a body too curved to be real. She was chatting on a cell phone and using exaggerated hand motions while she bounced up and down the isles. With feline lithe surprising for his size, Ray slinked out of the back office to the cash register. He waved, smiled, and never took his eyes off her as she strutted down the candy and potato-chip section in her summer jean shorts, and he arched over the counter when she bent slightly to pick up a bag of M&M's. When she turned the aisle to get a drink from the cooler, he wandered from the register to the donut case, tracing his finger along the top of the display glass.
And when the two of us would stand face to face, separated only by the counter, those pug-like eyes glaring back at me through a layer of dust, I felt like the desperate looking one. I was becoming Ray's daily confidence booster; it should be the other way around.
The disgust that I was beginning to feel in his presence was especially troubling, because I couldn't take comfort in believing that I possessed any moral superiority over him. I felt those revolting cravings too, and they stirred from their dormancy around Ray.
So now I only see him on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The other clerks aren't so bad. I've even become rather close with one, a defeated looking old woman named Jerry. She has a tattoo on her left arm that I saw the bottom of one day last summer when the store's air-conditioner broke down. Tattoos always look strange on a woman of Jerry's age, but I can think of no better indicator of the kind of woman she must have been when she was younger. I think about what the rest of the tattoo looks like sometimes, and about asking if I can see the whole thing one day.
Jerry is sympathetic to my cause. At the beginning and end of every workweek I enter her store, give her a knowing wink, and browse the aisles while she counts out my tickets. They are already in a plastic bag on the counter before I hand over the cash. This arrangement eliminates that dreaded waiting period in front of the lottery machine while ticket after ticket is pulled from the roll and folded, accordion style. Last month, the woman who lives across the street accosted me during just such a waiting period, and I told her that they were for a grab bag Christmas party at work. I've had that excuse prepared for the Holiday season since Thanksgiving, ready for just such an emergency. It's better than telling her the truth, that every night as I wait for sleep I pray that twenty-eight years of rotten luck will be scratched away with the same quarter I have used since I hit for two-hundred dollars, my biggest hit yet.
I'm still hunched over in my car, in the sub-basement, alternating glances between my face in the rear view mirror and the clock on the dashboard that is an hour fast, even though the daylight savings change was months ago. I'm not sure if I have enough money to cover the fee I will have to pay after the interview is over so that the long wooden arm will raise and let me out of the garage. I look at the ticket before tucking it above the sun visor; there is no charge for the first sixty minutes. I should be ok even if the meeting runs overtime because I purposefully let change accumulate on the floor of my car for just such occasions.
Cigarette butts are delicately piled up out of the round ashtray in the console, like a scoop of nicotine-flavored ice cream. I think about how I'm going to balance this one on top of the heap without having to empty the tray, and if there's a Catholic saint who hears prayers for employment. I strike one of the matches and raise it to the end of a Marlboro.
I'll worry about the last match later.
At home, un-mailed Christmas cards are scattered across my desk, even though there was a parade yesterday honoring Martin Luther King. According to the checked off boxes on my calender, today is eight days ago.
I'm hunched over in my car, in the sub-basement of the Roosevelt building, and I'm dreaming about the lottery again. I think about it with the same frequency that men supposedly think about sex.
The idea of never having to work another day in my life is worth the habit that even makes some veteran smokers and alcoholics snicker. I know the odds, the comparisons to being struck by lightning. But the game that I play, Win for Life, is much more attractive than most of the others. Each scratch ticket costs two dollars, a buck more than most tickets. It's twice as big as the dollar tickets too, but it's bigger and more expensive for a reason. There are three games on each card, as well as a bonus chance, a blue and yellow keystone that may conceal a prize between four and forty dollars. Also, the top prize for most of the Pennsylvania Lottery games ranges from three to five thousand, and the pot for this one pays a thousand bucks a week for life.
That's all I need. I don't need to be rich; I just need to be able to sleep in on Mondays.
I could be a fast-food journeyman, and bounce around between low-paying jobs. I could assume the wrathful role of spokesman for the minimum wage worker, tell the soccer mom who pulls up to the drive-through every week and orders seventeen god-damned cheeseburgers, most of them needing something added or taken off, to come prepared with a list instead of queuing car after car around the building. I could tell the people who sneak in right before the restaurant closes expecting food what inconsiderate bastards they are. I could be an adolescent's hero.
At first, I only bought tickets from the same store, the Co-Go's down the street from my apartment. My initial strategy for buying at only one location was that it would secure me a better chance of winning the smaller hits, if not the career ender. If I dropped forty dollars on the same roll of tickets, the odds were in my favor that I'd win something, a low hit or at the very least a free ticket.
Anyway, that's how I became familiar with Ray, the afternoon clerk at Co-Go's. He is about fifteen years older then myself, and wears thick, silver framed glasses that always have dust on the lenses. They magnify his eyes, making them look enormous. His yellow work shirt is faded and shrunken so much that the bottom crescent of his gut shows. The shirt often has chili stains from the hot-dog station next to the microwave and Cup of Soup display. His high forehead is always moist with sweat, like bathroom walls after a shower. Hair from the left part canopies the bald spot at the top of his head.
Ray glares with repulsive delight at the women who come into the store. He touches their hands too much when he gives and receives change. Once when I was reading the month log of the daily number posted on the side of the newspaper racks, the bells on the door jingled, welcoming a twenty-something blond with a body too curved to be real. She was chatting on a cell phone and using exaggerated hand motions while she bounced up and down the isles. With feline lithe surprising for his size, Ray slinked out of the back office to the cash register. He waved, smiled, and never took his eyes off her as she strutted down the candy and potato-chip section in her summer jean shorts, and he arched over the counter when she bent slightly to pick up a bag of M&M's. When she turned the aisle to get a drink from the cooler, he wandered from the register to the donut case, tracing his finger along the top of the display glass.
And when the two of us would stand face to face, separated only by the counter, those pug-like eyes glaring back at me through a layer of dust, I felt like the desperate looking one. I was becoming Ray's daily confidence booster; it should be the other way around.
The disgust that I was beginning to feel in his presence was especially troubling, because I couldn't take comfort in believing that I possessed any moral superiority over him. I felt those revolting cravings too, and they stirred from their dormancy around Ray.
So now I only see him on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The other clerks aren't so bad. I've even become rather close with one, a defeated looking old woman named Jerry. She has a tattoo on her left arm that I saw the bottom of one day last summer when the store's air-conditioner broke down. Tattoos always look strange on a woman of Jerry's age, but I can think of no better indicator of the kind of woman she must have been when she was younger. I think about what the rest of the tattoo looks like sometimes, and about asking if I can see the whole thing one day.
Jerry is sympathetic to my cause. At the beginning and end of every workweek I enter her store, give her a knowing wink, and browse the aisles while she counts out my tickets. They are already in a plastic bag on the counter before I hand over the cash. This arrangement eliminates that dreaded waiting period in front of the lottery machine while ticket after ticket is pulled from the roll and folded, accordion style. Last month, the woman who lives across the street accosted me during just such a waiting period, and I told her that they were for a grab bag Christmas party at work. I've had that excuse prepared for the Holiday season since Thanksgiving, ready for just such an emergency. It's better than telling her the truth, that every night as I wait for sleep I pray that twenty-eight years of rotten luck will be scratched away with the same quarter I have used since I hit for two-hundred dollars, my biggest hit yet.
I'm still hunched over in my car, in the sub-basement, alternating glances between my face in the rear view mirror and the clock on the dashboard that is an hour fast, even though the daylight savings change was months ago. I'm not sure if I have enough money to cover the fee I will have to pay after the interview is over so that the long wooden arm will raise and let me out of the garage. I look at the ticket before tucking it above the sun visor; there is no charge for the first sixty minutes. I should be ok even if the meeting runs overtime because I purposefully let change accumulate on the floor of my car for just such occasions.
Cigarette butts are delicately piled up out of the round ashtray in the console, like a scoop of nicotine-flavored ice cream. I think about how I'm going to balance this one on top of the heap without having to empty the tray, and if there's a Catholic saint who hears prayers for employment. I strike one of the matches and raise it to the end of a Marlboro.
I'll worry about the last match later.
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