The Lucky Numbers

Chris Coles

January 2006

"Very fine, working hard here."

"Yep, I can see that. Got everything you need?"

"Oh yes. I go into the office at five every morning and I get what I need. Sometimes I even steal what I need," he said with a wink.

"Five, whew, that's early. Steal away. Nobody cares except me and the clients, and we want you to steal. I'll pay your bail." They laughed.

"Oh, sure." They talked about the price of company stock in their retirement accounts, the lab, and why, oh why, the lab couldn't ever send out reports on time and to the right fax number (they always sent invoices to the report address and the reports to the billing address). They talked about Virgil's son, a bright young man working for Fedex at the Oakland sorting facility, but who Virgil earnestly desired would finish his bachelor's degree. Then they, too, talked about football and told construction stories for a while. Ralph told Virgil that he had bought a five-dollar Lotto ticket just for fun; Virgil said he never bought Lotto tickets but he went to Reno every two months or so and spent a hundred on the slot machines. "I go with my townmates of my hometown in the Philippines and other friends with my wife," he said, "Just to have fun.

The hotel is too inexpensive because it is a package tour and they have coupons for the meals. My wife loves it and you have free chips to gamble, even shows." Ralph said he would have to try that. Ralph took a picture of Virgil standing by his equipment, and then one with Virgil looking up smiling pretending to make a concrete cylinder. Virgil apologized because his hands were dirty when they shook hands, but Ralph said that's okay, I insist and they shook looking eye to eye, liking each other.

Ralph was done for the day, so he headed back. Before he got on the freeway he stopped at Starbucks for a paper cup of mint tea. The girl who took his order was blonde and pretty in a young sort of way he thought, slim, with a round face and small eyes that made her seem Russian. She smiled and her green eyes met his briefly, as did their fingers when she gave him his change. Waiting as she turned around to put his teabag in the cup and put a lid on it, he watched her move and followed the curves of her back and hips.

Her ponytail exposed her neck, which was smooth and soft with the fine hair that women have there. Ralph had always found this fine hair appealing and innocent, and it made him wonder what her neck would smell like. I could have a mistress, he thought. As he looked out the glass doors of the shop and sipped his tea, he thought of the women a man with 30 million might take as his mistress. He reviewed the women he had seen on the streets and malls, in coffee shops like this, in magazines, on television. He thought about the twenty-something temps who rotated through the office staff - were any of them looking for an easier life? Ralph lingered on memories of one very tall, very black girl with a tiny sinuous waist and a spectacular high firm middle-distance runner's bottom - what was her name? Tonyya? Tamyra?

She hadn't lasted long but she had been shy and sincere, and spoke in a high-pitched little girl's voice. And that rear end, wow. I could probably find her if I wanted to. I'll be her dependable easy-going older man and provide her some security, kind of a friendly, relaxed father figure to her kids - the temps all seemed to be single moms - and help her out with other things, make grilled cheese sandwiches and go to the kid's ball games. It would be an easy, relaxed relationship with a sort of severance agreement if she found someone else or things got too...you know, uneasy.

Thinking about women and wealth and the many settings where a rich man might have sex, he drove back into Oakland on 680 and then 24 through the slowdowns and the red taillights, through the long white-tiled tunnel, accelerating to 75 MPH down the wide concrete slope toward the Bay, missing the spectacular view that was right in front of him, past the houses and their adjunct trees carpeting the hills on either side beyond the earth-toned rough masonry soundwalls. At the office he had a few messages on his voicemail. Bake the Snake demanded to know why Tom Terry and Blanche had so many overhead hours last week, the same thing as the week before.

Ralph had explained it more than once, so, out of patience, he rolled his eyes and wrote another e-mail:

Dear Bake, It doesn't seem that you are paying much attention to what I tell you from week to week! I explained this to you last week and the situation is just the same. Tom Terry (who you keep calling Terry Thomas, which bothers him) is helping in the lab while he waits for his long-term assignment we have him lined up for with the Domingo County. Actually he was offered another job with Briscoe Eng. (b------s!) more locally and closer to his home but he chose to stay with KC out of loyalty and gratitude for how well we have been treating him. If we lose him we lose the Domingo Co. job, which will be lucrative I assure you. As for Blanche she is working on proposals for me, and of course if we don't do proposals we don't get new work, and if there is no new work I'm sure you will be the first in line to kick me in the ass, as you should be given your responsibilities to do so. I know Blanche is unpopular with certain other employees because she is overly blunt, but she does the job well. For one thing she deals well with clients who are PO'd because our invoices are screwed up every time - another problem we have to talk about. Blanche can be caustic about this, I admit, but well worth the pain in the u no what. So, hoping you can refer to this information next week as the situation is likely to be the same until EOM, I offer my apologies for the inconvenience and my frustration this is evidence of. RP

After this, Ralph went over the weekly reports and found that things were good in his branch financially. But why didn't it feel good? He felt in his pocket and pulled out the Lotto ticket. I could tell these people to shove it up their asses, and never look back. No, I would look back. I'd start my own engineering firm and steal all of the clients I've brought in on their faith in me and the lies I've had to tell, and kept in spite of the jerks and their policies and their loot-and-pillage attitude. I'd run them out of business and laugh at them. I'd spend the whole 30 million on it if I had to.

Or I could buy a lot of company stock. They'd love that at first, then I'd just sit on it. I'd demand a seat on the board and be a pain in the ass.

The People's Director, make them tell the truth about bonuses, who's getting them and how much.

He got home a little early to their small green ranch house in their windswept 40-year-old subdivision near the cold beach on the Bay. Jenny liked green. She said it made her feel calmer. That was fine with Ralph. Jenny was happy to see him and asked him why he had come home early. "Went out and visited some projects," he said, "See the clients and some of the guys." She said that sounded nice. She knew he liked to visit the projects. "Yep," he said, "I like it. It's nice to be home a little early too." He ruffled her short blonde hair, which she liked if she wasn't going out, and gave one lock a little gentle tug. He slid his hands down her waist to grab a little at the comfortable bulk of her hips. After dinner, Ralph sat in his brown recliner petting the big orange tabby on his lap while she clanked the dishes and pans in their little kitchen. He read Sunset magazine and thought about what they could do with their little ranch house with just a small piece of the Lotto money. We can put in a hot tub and really fix up the back yard. Xanadu. We could remodel and put in some French doors. Nice. Big kitchen with an island in the middle, a big butcher block table with a sink, and granite counters, and a tile floor.

The bathrooms, too, with a Jacuzzi and a walk-in shower. We'd have to build an extension and maybe go up another story. He'd get a couple of thick white heavy towels and go through a new double-paned thermal sliding door to the back yard, enjoy the feel of the smooth enameled handle in the blond wood frame, the smooth hydraulic feeling of the new door sliding with that new-sliding-door resistance. The back yard would have ferns, big ones that arched over you, very green. There would be rock steps, brown sandstone, going out to the tub, and little lanterns lighting the path. A Japanese garden, Ralph thought, private, just for us, but a little gem. People would talk about it as a marvel of small perfection. He would stroll as if entering a completely different world to the cedar tub and smell its clean rich steam rising as it danced and faded into the cool air, then he would take off his thick heavy robe and kick off his flip-flops, climb naked into the hot water and feel that tightening sting and then the oozing letting-go of his muscles as the heat soaked in deep. He would lay back to look at the clouds go by, nowhere he had to be and nothing he had to worry on. He thought about the air bubbles swirling and the vibration and the smooth liquid feeling that Jenny's skin has when it's hot and wet, how it could get them a little crazy again, maybe we're pushing fifty but hot and little drunk on champagne under the stars and a cold wind blowing but so hot under the waterline.

Jenny finished up the dishes and came over. She wrapped her arms around his neck from behind and smelled his hair. "That old familiar smell," she said.

"Do you still like it?"

"I've always liked it."

"You're always telling me to put on that gel goop on it. That stuff smells, aside from the fact that it would look like I'm trying to look younger."

"Do what you want, honey. But I like your smell."

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