Fortunate

“I cry every day,” said the woman. “It’s actually comical.”

She paused and swirled her drink with one hand.

“I can’t always decide where it’s going to happen. In bathrooms, in bars, in the office, in meetings, hiding behind the…” she held up her hands to demonstrate. “The folders we keep documents and schedules….”

She looked at the bar table.

"My voice is always a little tinted, after a good cry, they say…that’s the best time to sing, I’m always ready to get on a stage and…. My cheeks, are always dry.”

She motioned to her face and picked her glass back up. “Something about the salt, it’s not good for your face I think. Like those….eggs in vinegar experiments you do in elementary school. Or the one where you put a tooth in coca cola, to scare the kids, make em think they’re teeth will melt if they ....”

She shook her head.

“Where was I?”

She looked at the bartender and asked sincerely. He could not give her what she was looking for. Her eyes were blue and watery, and he wished could answer the question in the spirit it was asked. He wiped the bar.

“Crying.” She said bluntly.

“I was crying.”

She finished the drink and put it back down on the table.

Vanessa unlocked the door to her studio apartment and kicked off her shoes before she turned on the lights. There were boxes lined up against the far wall because Vanessa had not wanted to unpack them. A one bedroom apartment was the wrong amount of space for her. A one bedroom apartment contained enough space to suffocate her.

Vanessa was traditionally wealthy. She went past the kitchen cupboard which was empty, and picked up the only dish on the counter. A wine glass. Vanessa had lots of money squirreled up in bad stocks and hoarded in banks that would eventually crash, and after that happened, she supposed that they would send her large envelopes full of generously returned paper money at a time when no one could get any, and her stocks which had miraculously sold themselves at just the right times would be added to the sum.

Vanessa tripped over her boxes and spilled half a glass of red wine on her hand. It looked like blood in the moonlight. She smushed her nose and most of her forehead into the cold glass, and watched the headlights and taillights of cars blur into watercolor, moving between skyscrapers in the rain. Her sister was calling.

She spilled the other half of the glass getting the phone out of her pocket. The cardboard box with her old throw pillows in it was soggy and smelled like wine which was dripping onto her socks.

“Hi Ness.”

“Hey Nellie.” Her sister smacked gum, even on the phone.

“How’ve you been?”

Don’t ask how I’ve been. You never call, we never text. If you cared how I’ve been you would’ve called, but you haven’t so you didn’t.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called.”

Vanessa considered freeing up her tongue from the bottom of her mouth.

“There’s work, and the kids, and Phil’s got a new job….I want to know how you are Ness, I really do.”

There was a silence that Vanessa let hang there, like a hiring sign on a business which has recently filled all positions. Nellie cleared her throat

“So uh…Phil’s new job. I think you’re really gonna like this Ness…” She paused to take a breath, “Phil’s a landscape designer.”

Vanessa could hear her grin over the phone.

“Like, for rich clients and stuff. They pay him to…to design their backyards and gardens, put it, fountains, and koi ponds, little trees, that sort of stuff.”

“Why would I like that?”

There was a silence after Vanessa spoke, as if she’d stolen the warmth from her sister’s words. She bit her tongue. Nellie began a little unsteadily,

“Well, y’know, when we were kids you had that little flower garden Ness,” here Nellie paused to issue a breathless forced laugh, “with the, the petunias and marigolds and…chris, chrisanthums….”

chrysanthemums, Vannsessa thought. She did not come to her sister’s rescue. Her tongue was tied.

“Well, and, you used to take such good care of it. You looked after those flowers like they were little kittens, or they were going to make you a lot of money, an you never let any of us near….you, used to love your garden so much Ness. That’s all.”

That’s not all, Vanessa thought. And then she’d let the silence go on long enough for it to become uncomfortable.

“Well the kids are alright,” Nellie said quickly, “Thanks for…” she cleared her throat suddenly, as if she’d been about to say ‘thanks for asking.’

“Nice talking to you Nellie.” Vanessa cut into the silence.

“Yeah,” was her sister’s reply.

“So I’ll see you…?” There was a question at the end of her voice.

“Yeah sometime,” said Vanessa.

They were both silent for a moment. Vanessa enjoyed it, the silence. It was probably the most honest thing they’d shared in a long time.

And then her sister hung up the phone. Vanessa went to the window and picked up the wine bottle by the kitchen sink. She poured out the remainder of its contents onto the chrysanthemums in the window box.

“Can you make me happy?

It was a plea, not a question. Vanessa was sitting across from him. He was listening, it was his job. She drew a breath. She excised the shameful desperation from her voice. She was calm, clear, collected. She was self aware. She understood that these things take time.

“Two years ago this last week, I picked up a penny on the way to buy furniture from an antique shop.” Her fingertips scratched on the woven beige surface of her seat cushion.

“I was only going there to buy a lamp,” she said a bit defensively.

“I thought I could probably bring it home on the bus. I needed a lamp. I had only just moved here, and my apartment was dark and small, and I needed a lamp.”

She cleared her throat. Her own purpose was getting away from her, as it often did.

“On the way I met a woman, not Romani, or I don’t think. She was sharing the street corner with a magician. And she was very beautiful, with long hair, in that way that, y’know? Makes you think they know something you don’t. Something ancient, or, or world altering, but all we really want is something relevant. Me me me, tell me about me, tell me something I know, something I don’t, some small stupid silly thing I can prove, to let me know you are real.”

Vanessa scoffed.

“Why don’t we just believe them? Say, what do you think? How did you become who you are? Get into fortune telling? Tell me about you….Why didn’t I?”

He tilted his head and smiled a little.

“The penny was in my pocket. I guess I didn’t think she knew that.”

She exhaled.

“She told it to me, and I was surprised, and I was impressed, and I believed her after that. I wouldn’t have believed her more if she’d been able to tell me that the earth orbits around the sun before Galileo Galilea proved it so. She told me…it would grant seven years of good luck. She said it with smile between her gold-braced teeth. Have you ever seen a really wise person with gold braces?”

Vanessa shook her head.

“Well and I thought, seven years, seven years is quite a lot. A lot can happen in seven years. Seven years is enough to make a fortune. What would you do if you had seven years to be lucky?”

He raised his eyebrows and smiled sagely. Vanessa interpreted this as a signal to commence.

“Go out and do things, risky things, bold things, have adventures, start massively successful small businesses….store up enough good luck, the consequences of it, memories, to last a lifetime?”

Vanessa shook her head.

“No, no cause who needs that. Who needs seven whole years to be lucky? Seven years of luck, is enough to last a lifetime if you’re smart about it. Portion it out….pull it out only in tense situations. Moments on the cusp of something. Job interviews, waiting for results, tasting raw cookie dough, that moment when you realize you maybe locked the keys in the car or forgot your wallet at home…. So I guess, I guess I’m lucky, about as often as I cry.”

He crossed one leg over the other.

”Have you cried at all today?”

Vanessa blinked. Her eyes were red and puffy. They were both aware of this fact.

“Yes,” she lied.

“Have you been doing the affirmation exercises we talked about?”

“No,” she lied.

He clicked his tongue and looked at her like he knew everything and one day she would too. That was why she was paying him.

Getting enough sleep? Eating regularly? Eating normally? Walking, moving, socializing. Going out in the winter sunlight, like a flower to get vitamin d?

Only she was not a flower. A flower needed sunlight to photosynthesize. To eat. To live. Vanessa could pull the shutters over the windows and lie on the couch in the darkness, with her knees crumpled up around halfway unpacked boxes for hours on end without consequence.

This was her consequence. The crying. She was assured, like blind children in ancient societies, a curse, the natural consequences of their parents assuredly despicable actions.

Vanessa inhaled flower pollen on the walk from the bus stop to his office. It was a sunny day and the seller thought they had better sell their flowers outside. At least that’s what could be gathered from the vacant flower stand.

They were sweet and rich and made Vanessa's throat tickle and choke, and her eyes water and her face puffed up and turned red. She walked to her appointment feeling like a helium balloon with a grin on her face.

Vanessa cried afterwards. She went out of the room and watched the next person in the waiting room get up and go in where she had come out, and listened to him greet her, warmly, as if they saw each other every week.

She walked around the floor twice looking for a bathroom, and then sobbed over the sink, and into the sink. She rubbed her thumbs over the bags under her eyes and they disappeared. She sniffed and looked at herself in the mirror.

There were lot’s of things that could age a person. Undue stress. Sunburns and saltwater, cutting up onions and crying, endlessly. There wasn’t a singular line on her face. She pushed her fingertips into the roots of her hair and watched the redness disappear into nothing. Not a mark, not a trace.

He’d asked. The bartender from the other night.

“It’s more of a hobby actually.”

“Crying?”

“Yeah, crying. My cheeks don’t sting afterwards, my eyes are never wet. Whatever I had to cry about has curled up into itself and disappeared before I’ve even started.”

Maybe he was curious. Maybe he didn’t believe her. Probably he just thought she was drunk.

She picked up her empty glass and threw it, missing his head by an inch. It knocked out the support from one end of the display shelf, bounced off the wall without breaking and landed with a muffled thump on a wadded up towel. 62 glass bottles at varying levels of liquid, slid off the crooked shelf one by one, rolled off the counter and did neat little turns around the sink, thumping gently down a step ladder, one by one landing on their bases and sliding across the concrete to form a line across the far wall.

She thought he probably believed her then. She picked up the one that rolled under her feet and carried it home, anticipating her presence in that particular establishment would likely not be welcome in the future. She was right.

“Wineglass,”

She announced to herself suddenly, and splashed water on her dry face.

Jeremy Stutter, was prone to random and devious strikes of bad luck, which had the effect that his life had become rather unlucky in general.

When the weather app predicted blue skies, he could be assured it was going to rain, and when it predicted rain, he could be found carrying around an umbrella all day long, knocking into passerbys, folding it up clumsily as he prepared to go inside, getting caught in revolving doors and getting stuck running around and around in circles, chasing after his captured umbrella, stumbling over other people and causing a pile up so they had to shut down the door revolver machine, fish it out, and return it to him in pieces. And it was his favorite umbrella. It was alright though, because he needed a new one.

Jeremy went everywhere dressed for the weather. His friends told him to quit his job because it was a dead end career and he didn’t enjoy it, and they were right, except that after he quit, his coworkers who were his friends, got promoted and he was hired to another insurance firm in another dead end position doing exactly the same thing.

It was alright because they couldn’t have known, and he was probably bad at his job anyway. He granted everyone their claims because he didn’t know their lives and he liked to believe the best about people, which is not what insurance claims analysts are supposed to do.

He was probably in the wrong career, but if this was the wrong career, then what was the right one?

He had to go to the grocery store to buy bread and milk and apples, and some kind of cereal which came in a box that he could open carefully with a pair of scissors, and that is when he saw her.

The weather is fickle in late spring, so he wore a rain jacket over his t-shirt, and a pair of gloves, and extraordinarily large rubber boots over his shoes which he bought for this particular purpose. These were the only elements of his rain gear which he did not manage to lose getting off the bus.

And then the blue sky opened up and began to pour down and maybe there were clouds there the entire time. So Jeremy walked into the grocery store sheepishly with his yellow boots filled up with water, not wanting to abandon them at the bus stop.

She was putting apples into a bag, and then she crossed the aisle to the tomatoes, and what struck him, was the way an indoor draft seemed to summon a plastic bag for her at the precise moment at which she needed one, and she reached up and took it unquestioningly.

He was about to ask how she accomplished this, but then his boots tripped him and he fell over onto the apple stand, knocking half of them down in the process, and slipping in the rainwater dumping out of his boots.

He slipped and fell a great deal of times, as shelf stockers and checkout clerks rushed over to ask him if he was alright, and she, Vanessa, said,

“Oh my goodness,” and tried to help him up but he slipped and fell again, and so finally waved them all off and contented himself to sit for a moment, in a wet puddle of apples on the grocery store floor. She had one hand over her mouth.

“Are you going to be alright?”

“Yes, thank you,” he replied.

She nodded, and he realized she was waiting for him to get to his feet. He was however, unwilling to put his trust in either the apple stand or the slippery linoleum just yet, and so to prevent the situation from becoming awkward, he thought he’d better strike up a conversation.

“What’s your name?” He asked.

“Vanessa,” She answered after a little hesitation.

“What’s yours?”

“Jeremy.” He replied.

And so they conversed. And all the while, store employees flocked around, attempting to mop up the floor, and clear away the apples, and putting up a slippery when wet sign, and asking,

“Can I help you sir?” or,

“Is there anyone I can call?”

And all the while he shook his head and waved them off like a diner at a restaurant refusing a water refill.

“Do you, want me to help you up?” She said after a while.

Jeremy took stock of his situation.

“I think you’d better not.”

She laughed and he realized she thought he’d been joking.

She offered a hand, and he took it, reluctantly, imagining he’d pull her down too, and then the apple stand would fall down on top of them and kill them both, and then to his surprise he was standing on his feet.

“A wineglass,” she answered.

“You came here to get a wineglass?”

“Mine broke. I broke it,” She said.

“You only had the one?”

She laughed bluntly.

“I only have one dish. Had, now it’s broken.”

Jeremy considered this for a moment.

“In that case can I keep those tomatoes? The ones I get always rot before I get home.”

“These won’t,” she said, handing him the bag.

The glass Vannsessa picked out turned out to be only 99 cents on the particular day she bought it because, as the clerk informed her, they were having a special sale, and then he didn’t bother charging her because he couldn’t get his register open, and why bother charging such a small sum anyway?

When they went out the sliding glass doors, she dropped it on the pavement. It bounced once, spun in a circle and rolled to her feet, while the doors closed on Jeremy’s hand, which he didn’t think was something that they could do.

“You learn something new about these mechanical doors every day!” He said, holding on to his hand with a crooked smile when she inquired about the injury.

They missed the bus. Both of them ran to catch up, as the doors slid shut, but the bus huffed and pulled away from the curb as they arrived, breathless at the empty bus stop.

“That never happens to me.” Vanessa said curiously.

“It’s my fault,” said Jeremy.

“I think maybe it’s mine.” Vanessa said with a little bewilderment.

They made the decision without really speaking, to walk to the next stop together, instead of waiting where they were for another bus. On the way she disclosed the good luck curse.

“I met the woman on a street corner two years ago, selling people their futures, excuse me I mean telling. Anyway, she told me I would meet my soulmate apple picking.”

Jeremy thought about this for a moment.

“Was it….him doing the picking, or you?”

She shrugged.

“I’m not sure. I guess I assumed we both were.”

“Well you have to be careful with fortune tellers, gene types, what they sell you on is an idea, but you ignore one little word and the meaning changes entirely.”

She thought about this.

“I guess you’re right.”

“King, becomes measuring stick,” he offered.

“Ruler. Famous baseball player becomes good pancake dough,” she replied.

“Batter,” said Jeremy.

They went back and forth like this for a while.

“Why don’t you garden anymore then?” The bus was late, and so they’d crossed the street to a plant shop with the door propped open by a stack of books.

While crossing, a low flying pigeon had leveled itself in the direction of Jeremy’s head, and he’d held a hand over his face and mumbled,

“oh bother,” predicting the outcome, but at that moment, Vanessa stooped to pick up a penny from the road in front of him, and so the pigeon had swerved to avoid her.

She flicked him the penny.

“Here, it’s good luck.”

He grinned and put it in his pocket.

“I’ve got some chrysanthemums.”

“Why don’t you have more?” He asked.

“You could have a whole garden on your balcony.”

“Yes but,” she sighed.

The vacant lot beside her old house invaded her memory. She planted some rose bushes and daffodils in the backyard, and maybe a few other things as well. Within the span of a month, the entire place was a sweeping fairytale garden, complete with a brook, redirected from the drainage ditch to trickle through a previously dry creekbed. It earned a column in the local newspaper.

“Things aren’t as appealing anymore when you don’t have to wrangle the pieces into place.”

Jeremy shrugged.

“I dunno, I like to enjoy things as they come up.”

And then the leaf of the plant he was fumbling got attached to his sleeve, and he pulled the shelf down with him backing up.

After a careful explanation by Vanessa, it turned out the shop owner had been looking to get rid of that particular shelf anyway, and so Jeremy became the new caretaker of five displaced pothos vines, scooped into a wagon with some dirt.

“Is this good luck or bad luck d’you think?” The bus still had not arrived.

Vanessa took a sip of her coffee.

“Hard to say.” She twisted the cardboard sleeve.

“That’s the first time I’ve paid for coffee in a long time.” She admitted, “usually the machine just miraculously breaks or something.”

Jeremy considered this.

“I thought you said it was a choice, the luck I mean.”

“It’s not a choice to tie your shoes is it?” Vanessa sighed a little dejectedly.

“Here,” said Jeremy, taking the coffee out of her hand and swapping it with his own. He grinned at her,

“They’ll have messed up my order, they always do.”

She took a cautious sip,

“This is what I ordered.”

“Well what do you know, this one’s made right too!” Jeremy exclaimed.

Vanessa smiled sheepishly.

They got off the bus at different stops. Vanessa arrived home, took off both shoes at the front door, and put her newly acquired wineglass behind the kitchen sink and dropped her coffee cup into the trash. Outside the window, her chrysanthemums flourished, and enjoyed the late spring.

Upon later inspection of his shirt pocket, Jeremy discovered his penny had slipped out through a small hole in the fabric.

“That’s alright,” he smiled wryly to himself.

“They’ll be worth nothing soon anyway.”

He parked his wagon filled with creeping vines underneath the east window, and then promptly tripped over it.

It wasn’t until sometime later, while slicing up an apple with her pocket knife that Vanessa realized it.

She stabbed the apple viciously and let the juice run down and get her hand sticky. Finally she drew a short breath.

“Well, I never thought it would be good luck meeting one’s soulmate picking apples in the grocery store.”

Jeremy whistled jovially. In a shabby studio apartment somewhere halfway across the city, there was a coffee cup in the garbage can with his number scrawled across the side.

At least two of the digits were wrong, but these things have a way of working themselves out.