Feeling Lucky

Emmett wants to buy cigarettes, so we stop at 7-11, right across the street. This 7-11 is the stuff of dreams, maybe because I’ve been going there since I was around twelve, when my dad first started letting me roam free around town; this place, to me, exists in a different time, where it’s the 1960’s, and everything’s perfect: Slurpee’s, innocence, the corner store, baseball cards and ice cream; when the steady buzz of street lights, crickets, and A/C units droned through muggy nights. In my mind, it exists as an old faded Polaroid photograph, rife with nostalgia.

Until I walk inside. It smells like old doughnuts, and the artificial fluorescent lights are blinding. I go over to the Slurpee’s, and the Slurpee machine has spilled the sticky, sugary drink all over machine and floor. Used straws and cups litter the little metal countertop; in a huge plastic box, hot dogs and sausages are slathered with grease—who knows how many days they’ve been heated there, rotating under a hot metal lamp slowly but surely. I’m not thirsty anymore, so I go to the front. Hassan looks like he’s about drop dead. His skin is dry, his eyes glazed.

“Hi there.” He sounds like Apu.

“Long shift?” I smile.

“Oh yes—here since midnight.”

“Almost there buddy. Can I have two lottery tickets?—the two dollar ones, the ones that you have the best feeling about.” He rips off two, hands them to me, and I give him my check card.

“Cash only, sorry.”

I stuff my hand into my pocket and take out a crumpled five dollar bill. “Here.”

Hassan takes it and rings it up. “Thanks, bye now sir.”

A burst of cold air greets me outside. Emmett’s pacing back and forth in the parking lot, taking long rips from his cigarette. His left hand is jammed into the pocket of his black, puffy overcoat.

“Let’s go dude.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Hey, come on, I got us some lotto tickets.”

“Oh shit, true. Sorry.” He stands still for a second. “Yo do you think Kelly will fuck me?”

I laugh. “I don’t know.” We start walking over to his car. “Invite her over tonight or something.”

“Yeah, because at the bar the other night I was treating her like shit, and she was just loving it. Like, she’s cool. You can make fun of her and shit.”

“She wants you dude,” I say. I’m an optimist.

“True.” He throws his cigarette down, and belches out a burst of smoke and hot breath. We arrive at his 1998 Camry. He gets in the driver side, and leans over, manually unlocking the passenger door. I open the door, and duck inside, pulling my hood over my ears. Emmett starts the engine, and I grab a sticky penny and a nickel in the cup holder. He lights another cigarette, rolls down the window, and exhales out.

I look over at him. “So I’ve been reading this book—The Secret—and it’s all about how positive thoughts lead to good things, like if you think about things you want, then they come true.”

“You believe that shit?”

“Well not at first, but it makes a pretty good argument. And they tell stories of people who use it, and how their desires came true. One lady wanted needed money to pay off her mortgage, and all of a sudden checks started showing up in her mailbox. Another guy was supposedly paralyzed, you know, for life—and he used it, and slowly he was able to walk again.”

“Okay what’s your point.”

“Well we should make it a part of our lives.” I turn up the heat, and zip up my coat. “It can’t hurt, right?”

“What’s it?” He blows a straight line of smoke out the window and ashes the cigarette in the cup holder.

“Visualization, using your imagination and seeing yourself succeeding. Here, this will be our first try.” I hand him a lottery ticket. “We have to visualize ourselves winning a lot of money.”

He holds the ticket in his hand, examining it. It says “Scary Rich” and has a picture of a ghost on it. “Do you want money for this?”

“How about if you win more than a grand, you give me half of it.”

He looks at me like I’m crazy and laughs. “Alright.”

I hand him the nickel. “Okay, so close your eyes.” I close mine. “See yourself bathing in money—you have so much money you don’t know what to do with it.”

He laughs.

“I’m serious, just shut up and do what I say.” I take a deep breath. “Okay. You’re set for life. You never have to work again if you don’t want to—well you’re going to want to, or else life would be boring, so you can do whatever you want to do. You could open up a baseball card shop, start a restaurant, hell, work at a gas station for all I care. But you’re set and you never have to worry about money. You can take care of your family, too, so your dad can retire early. And they can buy that house on the Cape that they want so badly. See yourself at that house.”

I stop talking and imagine myself on Martha’s Vineyard, when I was nine, and for ten days my dad was able to get us a little cottage by the beach. I’m on my boogie board, on the top of a wave, squinting, eyes stinging from the spray of sea salt, and I can see the entire beach—families playing wiffle ball, kids building sand castles, the massive, multi-colored clay cliffs looming in the distance, and the miniature figure of my dad, holding a beer and standing, observing me from the shore. The lighthouse on the cliffs flashes, a singular pulsating blip: red.

“Yo so can I open my eyes?” Emmett laughs. It snaps me out of my trance.

“Uh, yeah, sure. Let’s see if it works. You go first.”

He flicks his cigarette out the window, squeezes the nickel in between his index finger and thumb, and scratches away at the ticket. He blows off the silver shavings, studies it, and looks up at me, smiling. “Nothing.”

I take a deep breath, and scratch the prizes first. There’s the chance to win $100,000. Then I scratch the two winning numbers: 11 and 5. Eleven is my lucky number, so this must be destiny, I think. I scratch away at the others, one by one, leaving the $100,000 for last. I lose those, but that doesn’t matter—if I lose the smaller prizes, there’s an even better chance that I’ll win the $100,000. Finally I get to it. I close my eyes, scratch, and open them. 17. I stare at it for a second.

“You win?”

I drop the ticket to the car floor. “No.”

Emmett puts the car into reverse and pulls out of the 7-11 lot. I don’t talk the rest of the way home, until he drops me off at my house. “I’ll call you after work,” he says.