Spell Heaven, page 7
He is lucky. Not the kind of luck that lands you in a Tesla, in a fancy house, with a fancy wife, kids in private school, an Italian coffee maker on a six-burner stove. There’s big luck—being born with your choice of which silver spoon you want your nanny to use—and there’s small luck, the kind everyone gets a shot at. The buy-a-ticket kind. The place-a-bet kind of luck.
He has ticket luck, lottery luck. How many times has he told me he’s won twenty or one hundred or ten on Quick Picks? On Scratchers? “Chicken scratch,” he says. “Someday I’m gonna win the Mega Millions.”
Yesterday he was leaning over the pier ledge outside the Chat n’ Chew, having a smoke, wearing a 49ers sweatshirt that hung off his shoulders, jeans hanging off his hips. He’s getting thinner. Thinner than he looked last week. I never see him eat. “That’s why I’m so skinny,” he once said to me. “I’m on a liquid diet.”
When he saw me walk up he laughed. I knew what was coming.
“Okay,” I said. “How much this week?”
“Fifty bucks,” he said, confident, smiling. It’s a given he’d win. He knows how to pick them. Lucky dog.
“Where’d you buy it?” I ask, as if this will give me an edge. He just grins.
What I want to ask is the question the morning news anchors pose to anyone lucky enough to reach one hundred. Here you go, Bud. What’s your secret? a reporter always asks a new centenarian. As if what works for Ida in Illinois or Joseph in New York will work for you and me. “A shot of scotch at five every day,” a man in South Carolina says. “Letting go of petty worries,” offers a woman in Seattle. “Just lucky I guess,” from a man in Albuquerque.
“Bought it at the service station over on Dolphin Street,” Billy finally says. How many tickets did he buy to get that one lucky pick? Where does he get the cash? Pouring lead into the mold for the fishing weights at the bait shop. Mopping the floors at the Arctic, the local dive bar. Sweeping up outside the Chat n’ Chew. The owner lets him clean the windows of the café. Lets him sweep the path. For that, he gets coffee, a muffin, maybe enough to pay for a beer, for sixteen ounces, a can in a bag, kick the can. And enough for a few tickets.
Odd jobs. That’s what people would say, but what’s so odd about his kind of work? Isn’t it odder yet to screw people over ten ways to Sunday as a hedge fund manager? Billy hasn’t climbed that ladder. He hasn’t risen in this world. He hasn’t moved on up. He’s moved on over. Most days he’s there at the bench and has saved me a spot. “Come on and sit down. Here. Have a taste,” he says. “Here. Want a smoke?”
“What about letting me buy one of those Quick Picks from you?” I ask, eyeing a couple of tickets peeking out of his shirt pocket.
“Damn if I’m giving you one of those. You got to make your own luck.”
The sun dries him out as he liquors up. He worships at the Arctic when he gets a chance, where the crabbers congregate, where the beer sloshes out of the glasses, over the counter, onto the floor. Who’s buying the next round, someone yells, as coins spill out of a drunk’s pocket. Billy picks those up too.
“I find things,” he says. “All the time.”
Last week, a dog leash. This week, a rhinestone bracelet missing some stones. “Hey. Do you need a bracelet?”
He stares back down at his empty beer bottle, then looks at me, pleadingly. Can I help him out with what he’s found? Can he help me find what I have lost? Something not as tangible as a bracelet, a leash, a can of Bud. Something key. What D. H. Lawrence called the quick. If I were to give voice to this lostness, this is how it might come out:
I’ve lost the thread, the quick, the spark, the easy breath at midnight’s dark. I’ve lost the way, the path, the road. I’ve lost the field, and seed I sowed. I’ve lost a rudder straight and true. I lost myself and I lost you. I’ve lost why I was set down here; live wire, flat tire, strange one, queer. I’ve lost a thought to save the day. I lost my line, my swing, my sway. Where to look for what I’ve lost, in what cold corner, what hot pot? In which stray pocket of jumble mind, where’s a through line I can find? What voice or soul or breath or ease—where can I find what I now need?
A leash, a ticket, a bracelet, a rhyme. Every day, while Billy is coming across found objects I come across found people, those who others deem marginal on the margins of the sea. I want to be part of this gang, yet I know I’m an outsider. I have a white-collar job in an academic world where the clothes are clean but the politics are dirty. And I have one of those Italian coffee makers on the stove at home.
Even though Billy’s a loner he doesn’t seem unhappy. He barks at my dog in a friendly way. He speaks her language: Ruff! Ruff! Ruff! Other dogs haven’t always been so friendly.
She looks like Fergie, the singer from the Black-Eyed Peas, a woman I see on the promenade every morning. But no one has big fame like that in this town. Only local fame, small-time fame. Here she’s famous for her body. Once, on a warm summer day, I saw her in a bikini, walking along the shoreline. She was totally ripped. Beyond buff. Those arms wield some very big guns.
Fergie walks by. No, struts by. Even fully clothed you can tell she has a six-pack under that T-shirt. She’s walking her furry old dog with a tumor on its side the size of a tennis ball. The tumor grows bigger every day. Maybe that’s why the dog is so cranky. Once her dog snapped at our pup, just came running up and bit her on the muzzle. For weeks afterward I gave Fergie and her dog the stink eye and they gave us the stink eye right back.
Then something happens to change all that enmity.
One morning she crosses to the other side of the street when she sees us coming. Just crosses over of her own accord. From the other curb she looks over and smiles and waves and I smile and wave back. When her growly tumorous dog gives a big bark and a snarl I hear her say, in the sweetest voice, “Now, girlie, now sweetie. Those are your friends.”
What is it? How does the turn happen? What causes someone to decide to let it go, catch and release, so all the tension goes slack on the line, there’s nothing there left to pull? She let it go, whatever it was, or we let it go or the dogs let it go. That day the stink eyes went flying away over the sea. We just stood there and watched them fly.
This morning, I’m on my way back from my morning walk when I see Billy sitting on a bench outside the Chat n’ Chew, nursing what’s left of the can in the paper bag. And who drives up in her hot car, a muscle car with an open sunroof?
What did I expect? A hybrid? Of course, a muscle car. Big engine, dual pipes, sunroof open to the sky. Fergie stops her souped-up Camaro in the middle of the street, signals to Billy.
They know each other?
He gets up from his bench, hobbles over, still smarting from a broken foot, scaling some fence, he said. She hands him something—a piece of paper (a note? a message?)—then roars off. As she steps on the gas she sees me, sticks her hand through the open sunroof and waves, a big flying wave. My new best friend.
When I come up to him I see he’s holding two bright orange coupons.
“What have you got there?”
“Coupons for a free slice of pizza at 7-Eleven,” he says.
What brings about fellow feeling like that? Just last Saturday I saw the guy we call Surfer Dude sharing a smoke with the Crab King. Yesterday I saw Henry, the man with Alzheimer’s, talking to Kite Man. If you don’t look closely you’ll never see it, you’ll miss it in a blink. You’ll just see solitary ones: that guy over there on a concrete bench with his back to the wall or the woman walking by with her cranky dog or that crabber with the lone pole staring at the sea or the guy who sings karaoke most nights at the Arctic and sleeps in his car. Every one of them is a loner yet no one’s alone.
“I’m one too,” I whisper, to the sea, to no one. “I’m one too.”
Though Billy stays cemented to that bench, he’s not so firmly fixed. Nor is she. Nor are we. Memory is not so firmly fixed. A car, a leash, a can, a broom and suddenly you’re back in another world, tipping over on a barstool. A fisherman, belly up to the bar, on a bender, knows he can depend on someone to help him up from the floor, knows the bartender will spot him the next one, and maybe the next.
If Fergie gets any more buff she won’t be able to fit into those sexy outfits she wears. If Billy gets any thinner he’s going to blow away.
A month goes by. Two. He gets skinnier and skinnier. Though he’s always been thin, now he’s in danger of falling away. His pants hang lower, even with a belt pulled past all the notches, past the new holes he punched in. His shirt blooms out, nothing filling it but air. He’s a coatrack. Beanpole. Barber pole, fishing pole.
“What do you think is wrong?” I ask Stevie. “Last week when I asked if anything was up with his health he said it was the diabetes.”
“Something more than that,” she says.
His luck is running out, that’s what I overheard the owner of the Chat n’ Chew say. His luck has started dribbling away. A leak in that can, that cup, that life.
Then, one morning, he’s not there at his usual perch. Then not the next. Or the next or the next. My dog looks up at the door of the Chat n’ Chew and it stays closed. I try to pull her along, c’mon sweetie, c’mon girl, but she won’t move. She just stares at that door willing it to open.
On Wednesday morning, I drop by the Chat n’ Chew to pick up a copy of the Seaview Review to read the morning news. The front page has a big spread on the effects of El Niño. Huge waves are pounding the coast, causing the beach cliffs to erode and crumble away. Already one apartment building on the edge of a sandy cliff has been demolished, deemed too unsafe for the occupants. Another right next to it is red tagged for removal. The coast is one big slice of crumble cake.
I turn the page and find the obituaries. The Review has its priorities straight, lets us know right up front who has slipped away. Some old-timers I’ve never seen. One young man’s photo, too young.
In his obituary photo he’s clean-shaven, no beard, clear-eyed. His hair is neat, combed back off his face. His cheeks aren’t hollow but filled out like he never missed a meal.
He was the youngest of five children. The baby of the family. Two brothers and both parents predeceased him. Other brothers are still alive somewhere. The obit ends with these lines: He lived his life with no regrets. Our thanks to all the people who looked out for Billy and befriended him.
I drive over to the gas station on Dolphin Street. At the counter inside the station I give the attendant a five and ask for five Scratchers. “Take your pick,” the guy says and waves his hand over a glass case full of tickets with catchy names: In the Money. Cash In. Set for Life. I pick one that says Lucky Numbers and has a Lucky $10 spot plus a chance to win up to twenty grand.
Inside the car I take a penny and scrape off the lucky number spot. Nothing. Then, the column of games, ten chances in all. Nothing. All the magic numbers. Nothing.
I don’t have ticket luck. I have better luck than that. I found Billy. Scratch that. Billy found me.
OUR LADY AT THE DERBY
THERE’S THE SOUND OF SOMEONE PUSHING A BROOM OUTSIDE my motel window. There’s a curtain I’ve pulled to keep out the night. If I leave the curtain open, wayward travelers, wanderers like myself, might look into my Motel 6 room, my home away from home, and see that I’ve brought along a few things from home: a blue linen tablecloth to place over the scratched Motel 6 table, a white china plate, a blue napkin, some silverware, and my favorite 2003 Kentucky Derby julep glass. On the wall, they’d see the Frankenthaler lithograph I’ve hung to brighten up the place, and on the bedside table, next to my laptop, my Our Lady of Guadalupe mouse pad, with the image of the Virgin Mary standing on a crescent moon.
Were my fellow travelers to zero in on my Derby glass, inscribed with the names of all the Derby winners since 1875—Vagrant and Behave Yourself and Shut Out—they might begin to wonder, as I have begun to wonder, what if Our Lady rode the long shot at the Derby? What if she rode a dark horse? What if she dressed in colorful silks in a pink polka-dot pattern, instead of her usual utilitarian blue garb? What if she came from behind to win? When the Derby officials walked her horse to the winner’s circle and placed the horseshoe of roses upon the horse’s neck—good luck, good luck—would that feel anything like the good luck I feel each time I drag the mouse over her image on the mouse pad, feeling with each swipe that I am temporarily lucky and blessed?
If she did win, would people who’d bet on her read a story about Our Lady on the racing form, the tale of how, in 1531, in the dead of winter, she appeared to a wanderer in the hills above Mexico City, who, when he saw her on the mountain path, saw too that roses bloomed in the snow? Would they be surprised to learn that later, when he returned to his village, her visage appeared on the inside of his cape and from that day forth her legend grew along with her message, that she would take all comers, the sick, the dying, the confused, the lost, and that she was heard to have said to the wanderer, Juan Diego, “Do not be afraid . . . Let not your heart be disturbed”? Did she not offer him comfort, the chance to rest awhile?
The broom continues sweeping. The curtain stays closed. I know that someone is pushing that broom, someone who has a job to do, who might not have the wherewithal to take a day off to check into a Motel 6 and get away from duties, from cares, from all that clamors to get into our lives. (What is the pay this hotel worker receives? My guess? Not enough, not enough.) I hear the rhythmic brush, brush, brush, then the tap, tap, tap as the broom hits the walkway to shake loose the pieces of debris that collect in the bristles: a gum wrapper; a safety pin; a scratched, discarded Lotto stub, unlucky, unlucky. I hear the dustpan being placed on the ground—the sharp, scraping sound of metal on concrete. Is there a noticeable crick in the back of the worker bending over, a sharp twinge, a reminder of having lifted something heavy one too many times and the back never the same again? What was it that caused the injury? An overloaded garbage can, a heavy box, a sleeping child?
There’s a knock on the motel door. A hard, repetitive rap: one, two, three. Before I draw back the curtain to see who is there, I remember another knock, another door, last New Year’s Eve. Stevie and I were on vacation at an upscale hotel; classier, more expensive, with thicker carpeting, thicker drapes. We’d lucked out, I’d gone online, got a good deal. That evening we went out to dinner to celebrate, to raise a glass to the New Year, then returned to the hotel room to an early bed. Let the night owls watch the Times Square ball drop, I thought as I pulled the covers up tight. By midnight we were long gone, deep in our dreams. When the clock struck twelve I believe I faintly heard a soft hooray, some fireworks crackling, a young girl banging on a trash can, singing out, Happy New Year, Happy New Year, but those noises were not enough to wake me.
At three in the morning there was a bigger noise, a louder noise, not of pots banging together, or fireworks, but a deeper, thudding sound, the sound of a boot kicking a motel room door, our door, kicking it again and again. Someone was screaming, “Let me in you motherfuckers. Let me in!” Stevie ran to the desk phone to call security and I ran to the door. I looked out through the peephole. There he was, a skinny young guy, hopped up on something. I could see the top of his blond shaved head as he bent over and looked down at the motel card key in his hand, stared at it as if the card were unlucky or cursed, tried again and again to jam the card into the lock. The door would not open, it held tight, so he screamed and kicked, and when I heard the first splinter of wood, the small giving way, I yelled, “Stop! We’ve called the police.”
When he heard that he fled. Minutes later, there was a soft, apologetic knock. I checked through the peephole and saw it wasn’t the young man so I opened the door. A tall, sleepy security guard asked what had happened and after I told him he said, “Don’t worry, ladies, he won’t return.” I looked past his shoulder, down the long, carpeted hallway. All the other doors on this floor were shut tight. I thanked the security guard, closed the door, then pulled the desk chair over and placed the lip of the chair back under the doorknob like I’d seen in crime-stopper stories on TV. We tried to go back to sleep, back to those dreams, though my mind raced and raced and could not get untracked. What if he had gotten in and why did he want in and what did this event, coming as it did on the first day of the year, portend for our future, Happy New Year, Happy New Year?
Fifteen minutes later—or was it twenty?—the young guy returned and kicked again and after we yelled that the police were on their way he fled again and the door held tight, our hearts held tight, our hearts did not give way. The security guard came back and apologized and said this had never happened before and that he was sorry, so sorry. He was sure the guy was harmless, was just trying to bring in the year with a bang. And when we didn’t laugh he turned serious and said that he’d make a report. Somewhere in the night I heard a Piccolo Pete go off, then another, then another, as if someone had put the whistle’s high, sharp scream on reverb.
Only later, days later, when we returned home, as I was unpacking our bags and taking out the Derby glasses I’d brought along on that trip, did I begin to wonder what Our Lady would have done. Would she have asked us to be not troubled or afraid? Would she have skipped the call to security and simply opened the door? Would she have seen the young man as just another wanderer down on his luck who wanted entrance, who needed shelter, who needed to sleep it off and have a cover brought softly over his shoulders by someone who would promise that everything would be alright, that tomorrow would bring a rosy dawn?
I never could figure out that evening’s significance, though for months I’ve tried. I’ve gone round and round, asking myself, why was he trying to kick into our room? What peace or rest or comfort did he think he’d find there? And tonight, in this generic Motel 6 room, is it possible that something or someone is trying to kick into my life that I can’t keep out, that a drawn curtain will not keep out, that I need to welcome in, for haven’t I come away for a quick getaway to a quiet motel room to find something I’ve been missing—some respite, some relief from daily cares? A quiet motel but for the sweeping of the broom, the sweeping and the knocking, he is not kicking, he is knocking, he is knocking, one, two, one, two, three.
