A Kiss for Luck

I had twenty cents in my pocket. That was it. I felt naked without the bank account; but at the same time a little bit free.

Funny, the way you play with things in your head.

And I walked into that hall, pretty nervous, wondering what they must be all saying about me. Gossip, gossip, everywhere, and not a drop to drink – since the lemonade stand in the corner was selling at fifty cents a cup, and that was out of my present price bracket.

“Watty!” Someone had noticed me then.

Pull my hat down over my eyes, pretend not to notice?

Who was it though? Ah, Brent. Could be worse. I swallowed a new wave of nerves and met his eyes, gave a quick wave, felt my insides sink down into my feet, congeal there, as he came walking over.

“You look all right, all things considering.” He wasn’t one to snub the elephant in a room.

“I still have my health,” I joked.

“Ah, you’ll be back on your feet.”

Thing is, that’s true. Always is. I feel sort of guilty about it, but there it is. Once you know how to make something from nothing, the knowledge stays with you, and you see the chances, the opportunities. The back of my mind was already scanning this parochial little school fair, weighing up the various little stalls and business ventures. Which ones were going to make the money, what were the outgoings, how would this extrapolate to the real world, on a real scale?

“So, bankrupt?” Brent said.

“Not quite. All but. I walked away with the creditors paid off, the house gone, but the shirt still on my back, and the car still running, albeit parked in Gail’s driveway for now.” My sister. Kindly making room for me in her home, amongst her family; ignoring or coldly staring down anybody who had a rough word to say about how my failed business ventures might be impacting the whole community.

Well, somebody has to take these chances.

“Maybe I should buy you a lemonade.” The stall belonged to his granddaughter.

“Perhaps you’d better, I don’t have the wherewithal right now.”

“Oh, you’re a good one, aren’t you? Don’t let any of them get you down. There’s humps and troughs and what-not, that’s the way it works.”

“So it is.”

“And you’ve always been a lucky bugger.”

#

Luck’s got everything to do with it. Why deny that?

I’ve always had a way of falling on my feet.

I made a fine, three-point landing, from an incredible height, the day I met Elsa. That gorgeous thing who just came walking up to me on swaying, willow-thin legs, her feet clasped in soft, black stilettos, her dark hair swishing around her shoulders. A smile full of even, white teeth; a face full of angles. She’d already walked on over and introduced herself, holding out her hand, before I’d managed to pick my jaw up off the floor.

“Elsa Gamrock. Nice to meet you.”

She always knew what she wanted, Elsa. She was seductive and confident and willing to take on the world to get the things she wanted. And God only knows what she must have seen in me that night, but thank that same God that she did see it.

“Walter Todd,” I stammered a reply.

“Shall we?” She was gesturing towards the roulette table.

Now Elsa met me at a particular point in my life. I was still clinging to the vestiges of my youth, determined to make the party last a bit longer. And Elsa, she was all party. Walking along beside her, that night at the casino, I was determined to impress her, making plans around taking her home, or perhaps to a nice hotel room since home was looking a bit dodgy at the time. Or maybe we’d just get in my car and we’d drive until that fancy was ironed out of us, and then we’d stop in the middle of nowhere and make love on long grass under stars, keeping going until the sunrise blushed the eastern sky and…

Dreams were free.

I liked the rush. I suppose we can use the term addiction. Because the fact that she met me at the casino wasn’t some stroke of serendipity brought to you by your friendly neighbourhood cosmos; I was there just about every night, already having lost half the money I’d made with my first business, still believing that it didn’t matter, that my business savvy was going to keep up with my lifestyle just since I willed it to and…

That was me. Wild and meteoric and immature and on a trajectory for some massive crash or other.

At the time, who cared? I downed a whiskey; I bought some chips.

“Big spender?” she said.

“Only if I lose.”  I put down my chips, selecting numbers at random – it’s a game of chance, right? Right? – and smiled at her, full of whiskey-fuelled boldness. “A kiss for luck, eh? It won’t do any harm.”

And the balls rolled.

And that night I won.

And later that night I really won, Elsa in my arms, in a rented bed, on soft pillows, with a body like satin, smooth contours, soft flesh.

“I’ll deliver the world to you on a silver platter. You just see if I don’t.”

#

She’s been gone a near decade now.

Well, that first brush with bankruptcy took its toll.

I pulled my mind back to the present with me, back to my little cup of sharp, traditional lemonade. I thanked young Amy for it, and raised it to Brent. “Happier times, eh?”

He shared my toast. “They’ll come again.”

Somewhere, out in the world, I feel sure Elsa picked up her pieces, dusted herself off, found another niche quick enough, another man, another life. She said to me, “I’m sorry. I’m not leaving you because you’re broke. But all the pressure, they way they’re all hammering down on us. The things people say. I don’t have the patience and I know I don’t.”

She was clear-sighted and self-aware.

I could go on all day, really, extolling her virtues. And her vices: superficial and selfish, afraid of the really hard emotional toil. In it for the good times, but fuck me, those were some good times…

“Watty…”

“Huh?”

“I was asking you to dinner on Sunday.”

“Sorry, I was thinking about Elsa.”

“From that photo you showed me, I’ll bet you were. So, dinner?”

“Are you sure you want to take the risk of association?”

“Shit, Watty, you didn’t strangle a litter of puppies or steal Christmas from a bunch of orphans or something. Businesses fail. It happens. This town might not be big enough for a convention centre, but its big enough for something, and you’ll figure out what it is. You’ll keep trying until you do.”

Well, it’s just another kind of gambling, isn’t it? The odds aren’t as long, and the payoff’s a buttload lower and slower; but deep down I know I get the same kind of thrill from it: taking my eggs, loading them up in that basket, sinking that basket all the way in. It’s what I do.

And what I’ll do again.

“Dinner would be great,” I said, looking around the hall, measuring up the profit in lemonade, or drawings of kittens. Events like these always have bouncy castles and candy floss.  As I walked through the hall, I wondered what the profit margins would be like on something like that.

 

Picture credit/discredit:  author's own work