Faye's Luck

When her thoughts gain too much speed, Faye walks Olive, her 120 pound Bull Mastiff, through the woods behind her house. The moon, shinny brightly, casts the kind of light that makes Faye feel equal parts calm and alert. With each step the tempest of anxiety begins to slow. Faye scans the landscape, catching a glimpse of her shadow.

The moon will be full on Friday.

The observation snaps her out of her circuitous thinking. Feeling lighter with each footfall, she begins to focus on the mud and slush squelching under her boots. When Faye becomes aware of her surroundings in this way, she’s prone to noticing litter and debris that have haphazardly made their way into nature. Approaching the creek, Faye spots something lying on the edge of the bank. Leaning down to pick it up, Faye is surprised to discover it’s a well-worn black notebook no bigger than a wallet. Thumbing through the water-stained pages, she doesn’t find a single word, just rows and rows of numbers.

Questions swirl in Faye’s mind. What is this? Is someone missing it? How did it get here? Why only numbers? As she searches the pages for meaning, something curious grabs her attention: her birthdate is among the seemingly random sets of numbers. What are the odds?

Eager to continue their ramble, Olive lets out a small whimper, breaking the hush that had fallen over Faye as she tried to make meaning of what she had just found. Pulled back into the present, Faye chuckles at Olive’s impatience and tucks the notebook into her coat pocket for safekeeping.

"Okay, you big beast, let’s go,” she teases Olive, and they resume their muddy trek through the woods. Faye an Olive make an odd pair: an oversized dog and an undersized woman. Olive’s size was a large part of why Faye chose her at the shelter. People thought she was crazy to get such a large dog, but Faye knew she’d be able to handle Olive. After all, the toughest-looking dogs are often the biggest babies.

Days later, Faye and Olive are back in the woods, this time in the light of day. Olive plods through the trails off-leash, with Faye not too far behind. Without warning, the stirring of a bush activates Olive’s prey drive and she takes off. Faye sprints after her, darting around downed trees and overgrown thorn bushes. When Faye finally catches up, she finds a panting mass of drool and tail wags, standing with their neighbor, Jim.

“I think this belongs to you!” Jim shouts with a chuckle.

“Sorry, Jim, she just got away from me!” Faye replies, trying to hide her embarrassment. There’s a certain sting to be felt when a dog that makes you look comically small also makes you appear incompetent. Upon seeing Faye, Olive’s excitement returns, and she barrels toward her owner. Faye’s embarrassment is compounded when Olive knocks her to the ground. Jim approaches without haste to help Faye to her feet. His gesture doesn’t do much to soothe her ego.

“You dropped something,” Jim comments, motioning to the ground.

Looking down, Faye sees the notebook she’d found in the woods. How could she have forgotten about it?!

“Oh my gosh, this is the strangest thing! I found this notebook on the bank of the creek just the other night when Olive and I were on a walk. I looked through it briefly, and it’s just filled with numbers. I can’t figure out what it means or how it could’ve gotten there.”

With her explanation, she holds out the notebook for Jim to inspect. He takes it, flashing a knowing smile. As soon as it’s in his hands, his suspicions are confirmed. He knows this notebook and the man it once belonged to.

“Well, isn’t this uncanny! This notebook belonged to my grandfather. He always played the lottery and had a funny superstition about recording the numbers he played or saw repeatedly. I haven’t seen this in years. I wonder how it made its way out to the creek.”

Faye offers to let Jim keep the notebook, but he insists that she hang onto it. “You found it for a reason,” he says, “maybe you’ve got the luck my grandfather never had.”

Faye thanks Jim for the notebook and for catching Olive before she caused anymore havoc. Explaining that she had to get back to work, Faye grabs hold of Olive’s collar and re-attaches her leash.

“No more roaming free for you, ma’am.”

As they walk back home, Faye can’t stop thinking about the serendipity of it all. Is this a sign? First I find this book in the middle of the night, and it has my birthday in it… now I run into Jim and learn the meaning of it because Olive caught scent of a critter? Faye had always been a little superstitious, and she certainly wasn’t the type to brush something like this off as a mere coincidence. Before she and Olive reach their property line, Faye had her mind made up: she would buy a lottery ticket on her way home from work that day.

Faye works as an Inventory Specialist at Roots Nursery. Her days include unloading and organizing all manner of plants, trees, and shrubs. Faye’s favorite aspect of her job is affixing SKUs to plants. A tedious task, it’s just the thing to keep Faye focused and present. Today, Faye finds herself unloading a shipment that includes five dozen Monarch Butterfly Bushes. With their sweet, honey-scented blooms, butterfly bushes are one of Faye’s favorite flowers to work with. Since the same products are assigned the same SKU, Faye is accustomed to seeing the same number sequences dozens of times in a day without batting an eye. With Jim’s grandfather’s notebook in her possession, she starts to look at things differently.

When Faye first notices the number 60 at the end of the butterfly bush SKU—the same number of butterfly bushes that were delivered that day—she doesn’t think much of it. The more plants she tags, the more fixated Faye becomes with the repetition of it all. The realization that Jim’s address includes the number 60 sends her over the edge. She opens the notebook to one of the remaining blank pages and scribbles 60 across the top.

Refusing to get carried away, Faye decides she won’t become attached to repeating numbers for the rest of the day. It’s one thing to stumble upon synchronicities, and an entirely different thing to go searching for them, she reminds herself. Nevertheless, Faye is filled with the anticipation of purchasing a lottery ticket after work. The possibility that it holds is alluring. What if I never have to print another SKU again? Truthfully, it’s the first time Faye has ever dared entertained such a thought, so she’s unsure of the answer, but at least she’s asking.

Pulling into the gas station parking lot, Faye is nearly buzzing with excitement. Never one to let herself get too carried away, Faye reminds herself of the frivolity of it all.

Just because you saw the same number a few times and you found your birthday in a notebook that belongs to your neighbor’s dead grandfather, that doesn’t mean you’re going to become a millionaire overnight playing a silly game. But it can’t hurt to try.

Faye chooses three numbers to play: 60, 3, and 9. Although any seasoned gambler will tell you not to play your birthday, Faye feels compelled to include the month and day of her birth since she’d found it in the notebook. Since the lottery is all about chance, she selects the rest of the numbers at random from the notebook. She buys two tickets: one for her, and one for Olive.

At home, Faye begins to allow herself to imagine all of the things she might do if she actually won the lottery. Maybe she would go back to school, or open her own flower shop. It’s hard to tell if it was the prospect of having money to play with, or the fact that she was actually letting herself daydream, but the world suddenly felt a little bit bigger.

Just as she begins to lose herself in the dream of what her life could become if she hit big, the alarm on Faye’s phone rings. She scrambles to turn on the TV to watch the Mega Millions drawing. As the numbers appear on the screen, Faye is stunned to see that she managed to hit four numbers and the Mega Ball on each of her ticket: a payout of $10,000 each. Her eyes dart between the tickets in her hands and the television. Is this real? Once it sinks in, she lets out a squeal that wakes Olive from her slumber.

The squeal becomes an exclamation, “We WON, Olive!!! We WON!!!”

Olive joins in Faye’s excitement, puppy bowing and barking in response. She doesn’t know what they’re excited about, but it must be good. This goes on for a few more minutes, the two of them bouncing around the living room, and then Faye remembers that she has someone to thank for this moment.

I guess I’ll be paying Jim a visit tomorrow.