Mr. Lucky by James Swain Read Free Book Online

said.
    “Exactly.” Taking out his wallet, Ricky removed a stiff ten-dollar bill and snapped it before Roland’s world-weary eyes. “Guess what happened then?”
    “You…won?”
    “Yeah.”
    “How much?”
    “Fifty big ones.”
    A look that almost resembled happiness crossed Roland’s face. Ricky stuffed the money into his friend’s hand, then watched him slip out of the car and shuffle nonchalantly into the store. Roland had written the book on being cool, his one great talent.
    A car pulled into the spot beside Ricky’s Lexus, the blue-hair at the wheel flashing him a brutal stare. Miss Axe, his high school math teacher two years running, the woman who’d given him D’s and ruined his young life and was still ruining young lives, got out of her car. Seeing him, she came over and rapped on his window. Whatever she had to say wasn’t going to be pleasant, and he hit the volume control on his steering wheel, the car’s eight speakers blasting Stevie Ray’s apocalyptic rendition of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child (Slight Return).”
    “Mr. Lucky, my left foot,” she said through the glass.
    Ricky stuck his tongue out at her.
    Shaking her fist, she stalked away and entered the store, his recent good fortune obviously not to her liking. A few moments later, Roland came out and got into the car, the ten Quick Pick Six tickets fanned out in his hand.
    “Split the money,” he said by way of reassurance.
    “Absolutely,” Ricky said. He saw a slight hesitation in Roland’s eyes. “Want to shake hands on it?”
    “No. I just wanted to be sure.”
    Ricky smelled beer on his breath, and saw an open can peeking out of his denim jacket. He pointed, and Roland pulled out a Bud tall boy.
    “Have some,” Roland said.
    Ricky took a long pull and felt the ice-cold suds tickle his throat and expand in his empty belly. He hadn’t had any beer in a week, one of his first resolutions after coming home from Vegas. He took another pull. It was an easy one to break.
    “In your dream, which one of us had the winning ticket?”
    Ricky shrugged. “Does it matter?”
    “I’ve never won nothing in my life.”
    “You want me to pick it?”
    “It was your dream.”
    Ricky pulled one of the lottery tickets out of Roland’s fist. It had already stopped being a game for Roland, and Ricky found himself wishing he had written Roland a check and told him to go rent an apartment and have his baby and get out of the rut he was in. Roland pulled a quarter out of his pocket, and dropped it in Ricky’s hand.
    “You do the scratching,” he said.
    Every Quick Pick Six ticket had twelve covered boxes on it; the player scratched off the latex, and if six boxes matched, the player won that amount. Ricky took his time, and on his first five scratches, he hit $50,000 circles. He passed the card to Roland and got the tall boy in return. Ricky pointed at the box in the left corner of the ticket.
    “That one,” Ricky said.
    “You think so?”
    “Damn straight.”
    Ricky killed the tall boy, seeing Miss Axe come out of the convenience store and shoot him a dagger. He rolled down his window.
    “Miss Axe?”
    She was fitting her key into her door and turned. “What, Ricky?”
    “I love you. I really do, Miss Axe. I always loved you. It’s why I did so poorly in your class. It was you.”
    Scowling, she climbed into her car and drove away. Ricky slapped the wheel of his new car, the beer lifting his spirits to impossible heights. Roland frowned, no longer being cool, his anxiety paralyzing him. The coin was frozen in his hand.
    “What’s wrong?”
    “It’s just…I don’t know.”
    “You want me to do it?” Ricky asked him.
    “Yeah,” Roland whispered.
    Taking the ticket and the coin from him, Ricky scratched out the box in the corner. It was for $50,000. He showed it to Roland and watched his friend melt into his seat, and close his eyes.
    “That was intense,” Roland said.

7
    M abel Struck had seen some strange things