Every Day's A Lucky Day
I scratch the ticket with the edge of a coin I’ve had for a few hundred years but don’t win a thing.
“You’ll get one eventually,” the cashier says, a young guy that’s practically always working.
“I’ve been playing various lotteries and numbers games since Emperor Diocletian, but it hasn’t happened yet.” I toss the loser into the trash. “But I completely agree.”
I stand outside the 7-11 with one hand shoved in my pocket, watching traffic roll past. I bounce the old coin in my free palm. It’s town down and tarnished, the edge soft and rounded. The guy’s face stamped on the front side stares back at me. Emperor? King? He’s been worn smooth by time and lottery scratchers. I can’t even recall where I got him or when. Viking traders on the edge of Iceland? White-green fjords opening like the throat of God beneath our feet? Or maybe not that old, maybe it could’ve been French soldiers bartering for decent wine outside Austerlitz. Not that it matters anymore.
The heat’s oppressive and I don’t last long outside. Florida might be the worst swamp I’ve ever lived. I head back to my narrow apartment shoved in the back of a senior living community. I’m the oldest person here by a few hundred years and they all call me sonny. As in, please clean the pool, sonny, Mrs. Johnson spilled another beer in the deep end. It’s always another accident, but sometimes I think they’re doing it on purpose.
Cleaning’s easy at least. I push mops, drag vacuum, flick dust, and scrub toilets, all while wishing I’d followed my own advice two hundred years ago. A little nest egg in the stock market at any point would’ve earned me enough interest by now to live like a king. Instead, a series of failures made sure I never got far. Wars and mass migrations. That London fire, the stock market collapse, a dozen other personal tragedies nobody cares about but me. Living forever’s nice, but sometimes I wish I could go to college without having to forge a bunch of complicated documents. It was easier, back before computers.
That afternoon I grab a free meal in the dining hall. It’s a perk of the job, so long as I sit down and keep the guests company, which isn’t so bad. They’re as close to peers as I’ll ever get.
Mr. Frick’s got his tablet out, his finger jabbing at the screen and pushing around pictures of an enormous boat. He doesn’t acknowledge me when I sit down. “That big boy is yours?” I ask him, leaning forward.
Frick’s one of the new guys. He focuses on my face and his whole expression brightens. I know the look: he’s about to tell me everything about his precious little fishing vehicle and I’m supposed to nod along like it’s the most wonderful thing in the world.
Except I don’t have to fake it. I remember watching the heavy hulled ships laden with goods sail from Constantinople a thousand years ago. I remember the long ships gliding down ancient German rivers, quiet as death at midnight. I remember steam spouting from massive steel monstrosities bigger than any builder of my youth dared to dream. I remember fleets, the sails shining with bright stitches across the sea, lurking like the end times, more beautiful than sunlight.
“I always wanted a boat,” I tell him.
“Want to know a secret?” He leans in, eyes narrowed. “I keep it stocked and gassed. One of these days I’m going to leave this place and sail off, and that’ll be the end for me. I won’t ever come back.”
It’s a good dream. I think about it as I head back to work on my hands and knees digging human waste from between the mats in the gym. I think about it when I buy another losing scratcher, and again when I curl up on my stiff mattress and try to sleep.
“It’ll happen for you,” the cashier tells me the next morning when I toss the card into the trash. “I have a feeling about you.”
“I have lots of feelings too,” I tell him and sometimes I wonder if that’s true. I’ve been drifting for a hundred years stuck taking jobs that don’t ask too many questions and moving on to new cities before people start asking questions about why I always look like I’m in my mid-thirties. Eight years, give or take, before I get suspicious comments about my skin-care routine.
I had chances. There were opportunities I didn’t take. I try to remember them all but the time overwhelms me. When I’m alone in the darkness, I recall snatches of color and smells, the sounds of people speaking long-dead languages and singing forgotten songs. I remember stories nobody else cares about. I should’ve bought shares in Apple. I should’ve invested in Microsoft. But that was never who I am.
Lotteries make sense. Their odds, their payouts. It’s a law of big numbers thing, which didn’t really exist when I was young, except it did exist and I just didn’t know about it, nobody did back then, but it explains something I’ve always felt. If I have forever, then almost anything is possible. Then everything is going to happen. Unlikely events are only unlikely in small, banded moments, but stretched out over hundreds, thousands, millions of years, unlikely events became just another blip. Everything’s unlikely now, and for a mortal, that matters. But for someone like me, now is just a flow in an endless ocean. Everything’s going to happen eventually.
Which is why I’ve gone for the tickets. One of them will hit, and they’ll hit big, and I won’t have to worry about accumulating resources anymore. Even in the old days when life was harder and people struggled more, I took the easy path. Whatever was simplest, that’s what I did in a given day, and didn’t let myself think about tomorrow, or tomorrow, or the tomorrow after that. There are just too many of them and they’re coming no matter what. It’s always been right now. And what’s more right now than a lottery? I either win big, this instant, or I keep going on.
But I didn’t get my payout today, and Frick’s still talking about his boat.
“Called her the Hot Pretzel as a joke, but it stuck. Twenty-five feet long, hundred-gallon fuel capacity, hundred-and-fifty horses in the engine, plenty of space to survive on the ocean. The Pretzel’s it for me, I’m telling you right now.”
“Where do you keep it?”
“The Highide Marina. Not too far from here and costs as much as this place does. Which is why I’m not sticking around for too long.” He strokes the tablet in front of him and the screen goes all stretchy before snapping back into place.
I think of great masts and oars that night as I leave the old people to do their old people things. It’s late and I can feel the wooden deck beneath my feet, the sway of hull along the waves, the smell of salt spray. Given an infinite amount of time, which I have to some degree assuming I’ll eventually expire before the heat death of the universe sets in, and an endless supply of timelines through which to navigate, which I suppose I don’t have and never will though a man can dream, I’ll have a boat eventually. But I’m aware that forever may not outlast the heat death of the entire universe, and eventually our sun will expand and swallow up the oceans making the concept of a boat fairly worthless, and I’ve only got right now after all—which is why I hop the Hightide Marina’s fence and land hard on the far side.
There are a lot of boats in this place. Docks jut out into the water in a jammed tight parking lot of vessels. The Salty Kisses, My Ex Wife, Seas the Day, dozens more in all shapes and sizes. Big and small, tall and fat, all of them tethered to the land via ropes. It takes a lot of wandering before I spot the Hot Pretzel bobbing on its mooring right in the middle of the marina.
It’s a good boat. White-ish with a red stripe along the side. A small cabin, lots of space for fishing rods and bait buckets or whatever fishermen need. I climb aboard and it rocks under my feet: the first motion of a future voyage. I’m smiling as I breathe deep the bracken stink of the dock world. Down in the body, there’s a little galley kitchen, a couple of bunks, a toilet and what looks like a torture device that’s probably a shower. The cupboards are empty, the refrigerator is warm. The fuel gauge suggests Frick is full of shit. But it’s got something in the tank, and I don’t even need to go far—just out to sea for a while like those deep hulled rowers and their glorious sails drifting out to conquer the world.
The ropes aren’t easy to untie. I’ve never done this before. The braids hurt my fingers and I’m yanking, trying to get the loop off, when I hear a shout and spot the bob of a flashlight. It points up right at me and the shout comes again.
“Hey you, what are you doing?”
Night watchman probably. The rope comes off, the Pretzel begins to drift. I run and make a jump, landing in a sprawl on the deck as the watchman yells again. I’m not listening. The engine roars to life and a bunch of screens blink too much information at me as I stand there looking at the controls. I’ve never driven a boat before. I barely know how it works. But I’ve seen movies, and there’s a wheel, and eventually I push the throttle the right way and we’re grinding through the waves.
The watchman’s not happy. He’s yelling from the pier. His light shakes wildly and he’s got a phone against his face. I’m busy steering the boat and it’s drifting fast, the engine growling against the waves, and I realize too late that there aren’t any brakes. Our side smashes into another boat’s back in a big crunch of plexiglass and metal, but I’m already chugging away, trying to get on track, when I clip another and get tangled in some ropes.
More people are on the dock. There’s lots of yelling and gesturing, but I’m too busy trying to get untangled. I try gunning the engine and pulling free, but that only leads to me smashing into another vessel, and that’s no good. I smell burning diesel and can taste the sharp exhaust fumes on the breeze. Somewhere, a siren blares, and there are lights on the water at the far side of the marina, at the narrow exit that leads to the sea. I try going, try ramming free, try making a break, but it’s not happening.
Trapped on a boat with no supplies and not enough fuel. The lights are closing in: some police vessel. A bunch of pissed looking guys in vests, all of which wold be happy to toss me in prison. But prison for a guy like me is the worst case scenario, and it’s time to give up on my dream. This is what I get when I put myself out there.
I stand on the edge of the boat. The men on the docks are screaming at me. I look up at the sky, blow all the air from my lungs, and jump into the water.
Silence swallows me. It’s so dark and the salt stings my eyes. I go as deep as I can then start swimming, and my lungs burn and my legs are weak, but I kick and kick until my vision begins to narrow and darken, and I’ve gotten underneath the cops and out past them before my strength finally gives up and I take a deep breath of the ocean water.
Hot wind and sun on my face. I cough and spew water. Every part hurts: head, back, lungs, legs, eyes. Dim shapes resolve into a marshy beach, lots of tangled branches and plants behind me, an old tire gathering effluent trash bobbing nearby, trapped against the bank. I’m on a sandy outcropping, still mostly wet. It takes a while before I drag myself to my feet and start walking through the woods.
Civilization isn’t far. There’s a road, and roads lead to towns, and right there in the middle of town is a 7-11, and it’s open early. The guy behind the register gives me a look, his nose and lip curling up. I must look and smell like a man that drowned last night. But I have a five that’s mostly intact, and even though it’s damp the machine still takes it and spits out a nice scratcher, and I’ve got my lucky coin still in my other pocket. The gray silt falls away and I look down at the card like it’s telling my future before I head over to cash it in.
“Lucky day,” the guy says.
“It’s just the start,” I tell him.
He takes a five from the drawer and hands it over.
I planned on writing something about magic systems down here, but look, I’m going to be honest with you, my oldest son started first grade yesterday and I’m currently getting used to a new schedule, and it just didn’t happen. But next week, I want to start talking about magic in fantasy, about magic systems and how or why they should or shouldn’t be systems at all, and I plan on looking at specific books spread out over a few newsletters to illustrate some points. I’m putting this here, in writing, to hold myself accountable. We’ll see how that goes.
As usual, thanks for reading this far. Every time I get a little heart, it makes me type another fifty words in celebration. Do you want me to keep typing? Do you want me to type until my children scream in terror? Should I type forever, until my fingers bleed? Smash that heart!