Lucky(16)

“Oh, yeah, I bet you can—”

“You have to promise you’ll let me go. And then I’ll give it to you.”

“What?”

“I’ll tell you about luck. About making money come to you. About changing your life so you don’t have to play small the way you do, holding women up with a cheap knife at the side of a highway.”

“What the hell would I—”

“You want to be more, don’t you? You want to be the guy they’re giving a suite at the Bellagio, you want to be the guy who’s getting all the respect. Right? Beautiful women falling all over you, wads of cash in your pockets, and in the bank…”

He didn’t say anything, but he let his hand fall to his side as she spoke. With the knife no longer pointed in her direction she felt even more in command of the situation. “Promise you’re going to let me go,” she said. “And I’ll tell you more of what I know.”

He cleared his throat. He squinted at her.

“You’re not going to come across someone like me again,” Lucky said. “I am one of a kind.”

“All right, I promise,” he said, his voice husky now.

She breathed in deep, but the air was hot and dry and caught in her lungs. “If you want to be a successful con artist like me, you’ve got to listen to your hunches. Follow those hunches as far as they’ll take you. You need to figure out what your instincts are, and listen to them. The second thing is, you have to believe, really believe, that you will get where you want to go. You have to speak, dress, become the person you want to be. Pretend you already are that person.” She dropped her hand to her side, until it was parallel with the knife that still dangled in his. “And when you walk up to a poker table?” He was nodding now, nodding along with her words, waiting for some crumb that would change his life. She grabbed the knife, and it cut into her palm as she wrested it away from him and held it up, an inch from his eye. “Never, ever underestimate anyone. Especially not me.”

She stepped back, still pointing the knife at him, still shaking. “Walk that way,” she said, indicating the road. She thought about demanding he return the money he had just stolen from her—she needed it, desperately. But she also needed him gone. If she made him angry, he might try to get the knife back from her. She wasn’t sure she could overpower him. This had to end, and fast. “Walk that way, and I won’t kill you.”

“Fucking bitch,” he said, but he didn’t move closer.

“I’m not a bitch. You’re lucky you met me, asshole. Now, go. I don’t ever want to see you again, got it?” She commanded, “Start walking. That way.” She followed him up to the road and pointed back toward the canyon, still holding the blade aloft. He snarled at her once, animal-like, but then he turned and started to walk. She could feel blood dripping from the palm of her hand into the dust at the side of the highway. Sweat dripped down her back and legs, too. When the man was a dot on the horizon, she turned and went down the embankment to retrieve her backpack and water bottle from the dirt. She dripped what was left of the water onto her tongue, and started to shake.

She raised her hand to her chain and cross pendant, and the shaking stopped. It was always in moments like this one, the bad, lonely moments, when she wished the hardest for the mother she had never managed to find.

Lucky leaned down and took the few bills she had left from her shoe. A flash of yellow paper in the brush nearby caught her eye. Lucky walked forward, bent, and scooped up her lottery ticket, caught on a tiny branch.

She crumpled the ticket in her hand. She didn’t want to think about her father right now, locked up in prison, unable to help her, either. It just made her feel even more alone. The piece of paper she held was worth nothing, and she knew it, but she still shoved it into her pocket and felt the effervescence of hope as she did, for just a second. It was enough to keep her moving forward.





March 1993

NOVI, MICHIGAN



“Happy birthday, kiddo,” her father said. “It’s a lucky year for you. You’re eleven years old. And eleven is a lucky number. This is going to be your best year yet.”

He handed her a small box, then sneezed. He’d been battling a cold that week. She opened the box to reveal a pair of dainty earrings, rose gold with glinting diamonds. “Those are real diamond chips,” her father said while Lucky gazed at them.

“They’re pretty,” Lucky said. “But… my ears aren’t pierced.”

“Oh. Right.” He blew his nose. “They were the only thing I was able to palm in the jewelry store.”

She could tell she’d hurt his feelings.

“Well, I guess I better go out there to earn a bit more for someone’s birthday cake and birthday dinner,” he said, standing and starting to get ready to leave for the day.

Lucky felt her stomach curdle. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean I didn’t like the earrings. Just maybe…” But she didn’t finish the sentence, because the material things she wanted—a Discman; a brand of shirt she’d seen other kids wearing when she went to the mall—she could acquire on her own easily enough. What she really desired, though, was to actually be one of those normal kids, a dream that felt more impossible by the day. She watched her father carefully in the morning light streaming through the curtainless window on the main floor of the house they were renting in Novi. Then she shut the lid of the earring box.