Fateful Luck

“Alright you two, let’s get home.”

The young mother searches her red purse for a tissue to mop the nose of one of her charges on this cold January day. She has on each arm bags from children’s clothing and shoe stores. Her own attire is worn. Her grey wool coat is thinning. A small hole makes an appearance as she raises her arm to hitch her purse higher on her shoulder. The black of her boots is dappled with much lighter spots from years of scuffing.

As she searches, a paper flutters out of her purse while she rushes to keep up with her girls who have scampered ahead.

The paper is trampled into the snow and when she gets home later, and finally has a moment to herself, she will find that it is missing. She will search everywhere for this ticket that bears the same numbers she always plays. This ticket, the one little pleasure she allows herself with each paycheque, is gone. The ticket that she was too busy with the girls to sign, the one bit of hope and dreaming that enters her life, vanished.

5 11 12 23 32 41 55

Her girls birthdays, the age she was when her husband died, the age her mother died and the age her father died. The seven numbers they have just announced on the television as being the winners for this week.

Back in the shopping district, the ticket lays buried in the snow. A young woman dressed in far too few clothes for the season shuffles along. Her dirty auburn hair peeks out of the orange hat she found in a dumpster one day. She carries on her back a bag full of such discarded items. She is walking to where she will camp for the night. Her red booted foot scrapes the ground and a scrap of paper with the golden lottery logo, unmistakable despite the dim light, shines up at her. She picks it up. What if it was a winner. What if she could actually have money of her own?

She trudges along but, in her mind, she is transported to another world. There, she has a lovely apartment in the nicer part of town. The part where she is less likely to be hassled by every man she crosses. The part where the grocery stores sell healthy, perhaps even gourmet, foods and she can buy all this wonderfulness for herself. At last, she wouldn’t have to live off scraps from the restaurant she used to visit with her family or from strangers’ handouts. There she can go to school and make something of herself. There she can have the clothes that will make people look at her and want to hire her for a job. This fantasy world seems so attainable with this scrap of paper in her hands.

On a whim, she pops into the nearest convenience store.  

Too embarrassed by her looks to interact with anyone she goes straight to the validation machine. She inserts the ticket into the slot and is rewarded with a loud, electronic voice announcing to everyone, “Winner! Winner! Winner!”

Winner. The ticket has won!  

“Strictly speaking,” she thinks, “this is not my ticket. But there is no way I could possibly track down…”

By now, the attendant is at the machine, and her eyes grow wide. “Wow! You’ve won! You’ve won!”  

Her eyes downcast, the red booted girl mumbles, “How much have I won?”  

“All of it. You’ve won all of it. This week’s prize is twenty million dollars!”

For a moment, visions of herself in designer clothes and a fancy car dance in her head. But then, her face blanches. With that amount of money, her family would find her. Even worse, her abusive father will want all the money for himself. There is no way she could keep this a secret. If she redeems this ticket they will find her. She could maybe entreaty her mother away from her dad with that money, but that seems unlikely. If the beatings on both of them hadn’t been enough to drive her away it seems no amount of money would.

She runs out of the shop and gets clobbered by a young man in a business suit who is obviously late.

“Here, you can have this.” She mutters as she thrusts the ticket to the young man. “It’s a winner.”

Not having really understood her but being polite, he takes the scrap of paper and continues his run down the street.

This is his second week in the business offices of a top bank. He got in right after graduating from a great university. With his top marks, getting this post in the investment offices of the bank was easy enough, but still, he doesn’t want to be late.  His impeccably fitted suit, under his coat, is slightly damp from all his run down slushy streets, but he still looks the dashing young man. His black hair brushed back from his face, his dark slanted eyes glimmering, the red tie at his neck, a nice contrast to the black suit, all of it turns the eye of many as he composes himself in the lobby.

As he heads to the elevator, shifting his briefcase, he remembers the scrap of paper in his hand. He tries to flatten one-handed, rather unsuccessfully, but sees the logo of the Lotto. He is about to throw it away when the elevator doors open. He and at least ten other people vie for space in the tiny box. 

“Did you hear that the jackpot has been won. Someone owns the winning ticket but has yet to claim the prize.” One elevator passenger tells another.

He tries to recall the scene outside the convenience store, what did the girl say. Perhaps it was, ‘It’s a winner?’ 

He holds the ticket more securely in his hand. He envisions himself starting businesses or even better investing in his friend’s business idea. He pictures himself in a penthouse in the heart of the city. He thinks about retiring early and helping organizations invest their money wisely to fund their good causes.

The elevator dings, he has arrived.

As he enters, his boss walks towards him. “Jun-Ho, as soon as you can, come to my office. I have a special project for you.”

He puts his things away in his cubicle office. Straightens the ticket and lays it on the corner of the desk, ready to be checked when he returns.

He heads for the opening of his cubicle and is met by his assistant who has a stack of folders and messages for him. “Sorry, I can’t talk right now the boss wants me. Put it on the desk and I’ll let you know if I need help figuring it all out later.” And he rushes out of his office.

The assistant dutifully puts the stack on the corner of the desk and leaves, but not before inadvertently sweeping the ticket onto the ground and stepping on it with the shoes on which he spilled some very sweet coffee earlier this morning. With the ticket stuck to his shoe, he travels down to the lobby café where picks up coffee for some of the higher ups at the bank. 

As he heads back to the elevator, he trips on his untied shoe lace. The coffees splatter across the lobby and the ticket is ejected near the edge of the brown steaming pool. He returns to the café discouraged because this round of coffee will have to be paid for out of his pocket.

Returning to the offices, he crosses a distracted lady dressed in a red coat leaving the building. She is looking at her phone and doesn’t register the huge coffee mess until she is just upon it. She jumps aside and the ticket hitches a ride on her boot until she hits the subway.  

As she sits, she sees the soggy, coffee-stained paper stuck to her boot. With the tips of her red gloved fingers, she pries the paper off. She looks at it and despite the creases and coffee stains, makes out the lotto logo and the numbers. Maybe this is just what she needs. She finds the plastic baggie, which usually contains coins to give to the homeless, and slips the ticket in. She returns the bag to her purse, mentally crossing her fingers.

When she finally returns to her suburban home, and later has settled her boys into their beds, she heads down to the living room to join her husband. 

She remembers the ticket, fetches it and deposits herself down next to her spouse who is already settled in front of the TV. She finds the lottery website on her smart phone. Her eyes grow wider with each second, her heart beats faster, her palms start to sweat. The ticket is a winner.

“Rob, I don’t know what to do. I found this lotto ticket stuck to my boot earlier today.”

“Yes, and…”

“It’s a winner!” 

A pause.

“How much, Sofia?”

“Twenty million dollars!”

Rob lets his whole body flop into the cushions and clutches his chest.  

“Wow, that’s a lot of money. What are we going to do with it?”

“I thought about what we could do if we won on my subway ride here. We don’t need that much money, right? We have a good life. Maybe we can pay the mortgage off, and replace the beater of a car you drive and of course set up a university fund for the boys but after that…Do we need much more? I could start my foundation with that money.”

Rob sits for a while and though visions of yachts and trips around the world are fading away, he nods.

A few weeks later she returns to the bank offices and meets with a dashing young man who sports a red tie. They sit in one of the bank’s conference rooms.

“My director told me that you had a special project you wanted our help with,” begins Jun-Ho.

“Yes, the difference from before is that now I have nearly twenty million dollars that I would like to invest. I’d like to start a foundation that will help homeless youth get on their feet but obviously I don’t want the well to run dry, so I need to invest it and keep making money. Part of the money could be used to help young companies along the way, that would be great. I am told that you have some experience with this.”

An assistant comes in with files for the young man.  

“Thanks Frida.”

“I’m sorry,” Frida interrupts, “I just overheard your conversation and I want to say how grateful I am that you are doing this. I have two young daughters at home who are the apple of my eye. If something were to happen to them, or to me, that would turn them out of our home I would want someone to have their backs. If ever you want some assistance, or you need some volunteers, I would love to help.” 

The woman with the red coat hands her a business card.

“Call me in a few weeks and maybe I’ll have something for you.”

Frida returns to her cubicle reads the name Sofia Lorenzo Lopez on the card and puts it in her red purse.

Weeks later, Frida, with her red purse, is on her way to pick up some dinner for the office. Every Wednesday night, the Vice-President requests dumplings and rice from a very specific restaurant. On this hump day, he and the young associates stay long into the evening discussing what the week has brought them and plan for the future. The food order is fairly substantial as there are also dishes to be shared with the young men and women.

Walking back to the office, packages precariously balanced before her, she sees something rush at her from the corner of her eye. She tries to evade the oncoming girl who runs into her looking backwards as if she is being pursued. The top package teeters, the auburn haired youth falls back into the snow. Frida rebalances the food onto one arm and offers a hand to the disheveled girl.

“Are you ok?” She asks gently.

“I’m so sorry I hit you. Some man was chasing me in the alleyway. That’s where I left all my things but I don’t think I can go back and get them now.”

The assistant thinks for a beat.

“Here’s the thing. I don’t have piles of money, but if you help me bring these back to the office where I work, I’ll come back with you and we can go get your things. Maybe we can find you a shelter or something. I’ll give you a little money so you can get a meal. Does that sound alright to you? What’s your name?”

The young woman acquiesces with a nod and mutters, “Lilly.”

As they walk back, the load shared between them, Frida thinks of the card in her purse. She wonders if things are operational yet.

In her office, as she readies herself to accompany the young Lilly back to hopefully claim her things, she picks up the phone.

“Hello, Ms. Lopez, This is Frida from the bank office. I hope you are well. I may have a candidate for your program if you are up and running.”

One spring day, two women and a young man approach an apartment building. They all wear red jackets with a logo emblazoned with El Corazon Outreach. They are buzzed in and are greeted at the door of a neat studio by a well-groomed Lilly.

They settle at the small kitchen table.

“Here, this is for you,” Jun-Ho hands Lilly a red jacket just like the ones they are wearing.

“How is school going?”

So begins their conversation about how Lilly’s life is coming along after the stress of living on the streets.  

“I am enjoying it so much Ms. Lopez and I can’t believe how lucky I am to be here now.”

Frida looks at the small group, proud to be part of the organization.

“Well, luck or fate, I am so glad we are here together.”