Windfall

Topher’s mouth is the whir of a blender. Inside the blades, thick slabs of butter and sesame and crusty sourdough churn into an abominable, wet clump. Breadcrumbs pepper his cheeks and red hoodie like flakes of bronze, and in the dim wink of the restaurant, they shine against him. His hands are spiders- they devour, crack, splice another loaf into three bubbly pieces.

“Mom, tell Toph to slow down.”

She doesn’t hear me. Her gaze is elsewhere, swimming in the air, out of control. It lands on Daddy’s shoulders, the new shoulder pads in his three-piece giving him an extra inch, the cuts of his eyes emerald sweet. Everything tonight is new, and Mom can sense this better than anyone. She leans across and kisses him long, hard, as if cursing him. When she pulls away, she has his bottom lip in her teeth, and when it looks like she might rip it off, it snaps back to Daddy, shaking like the broken sole on Topher’s basketball shoe.

“Mom. Look at Toph,” I say, insistent.

Daddy speaks up. “Ah, let the boy eat, Dre. He’s got Brighton bones, and they’re good for growing.” Daddy picks his wine glass up at the stem, and it wobbles in his hand, begging to shatter. He puts it down without a sip, the crimson innards leaving stains on the clear. “What do you want to eat, boy?”

It’s a twinge, a pustule, a healing purple scab plucked from the edges when I hear that word, “boy.” My face grows hot in the chattering restaurant, and I imagine plunging into this white tablecloth like those foxes on Nat Geo that evaporate into the snow. Would Daddy ever find me, set out in those Nat Geo woods with a coat of bleached, shimmering fur? I dream, boy, I dream.

“We shouldn’t be here,” I whisper. The words swing from my lips and splat against the table, like an unwanted appetizer. No one wants to discuss it, so they don’t. Toph’s lips continue grinding the bread to dust, and Mom and Daddy talk games, their faces alight with a feeling I have yet to understand. It’s like excitement, but hungrier, and dangerous.

“Blackjack’s been our heater recently. We’ll have to go back and keep the streak alive,” Daddy says.

“We should put it all on red. We could have a down payment for a car,” Mom says.

Daddy scowls. “We already hit on red. No use playing it twice.”

“Yeah,” Mom says, “that’s what a loser would say.”

Daddy grins, and it almost makes a sound, like propane catching to a flame. “But we’re not losers tonight, are we, baby?”

They go to kiss again but are stopped mid-range by the waitress. She’s short and blond with two freckles on her upper lip. She wears a cropped blue sweater that looks right out of the box, and it holds tight against her breasts. Gooseflesh ripples up my exposed arms, and I pull at the sleeves of my dirty Raiders tee.

“Good evening. My name is Rachel, and I’ll be your waitress tonight here at Von Moritz’s. Our specials tonight include a seared scallop plate with a black truffle mousse, a porcini mushroom and Peking duck ravioli, and a beef wellington sourced from our sister restaurant in Osaka.”

My father nods, the purple shoulder pads nodding with him, as if he belongs here. “Thank you, Rachel. Give us a second to peruse?”

She smiles and moves to her next table ten feet to my left, a family of five in their crisp Sunday best. One of the boys has a bowtie on, and the bright red of it against his striped shirt makes him look proper, like Bill Nye’s apprentice. There are holes in my tennis shoes, and I wiggle my big toe in the air, stamping out the thought.

Mom and Daddy’s faces are hidden behind big, crème menus, and they are chattering about their orders. “I’ll be getting the T-Bone, definitely,” my father says.

“The beef wellington sounded amazing,” Mom replies, “I can’t decide between that and the ravioli.”

“We’ll get both.”

“Really?” I can’t see Mom’s face, but I know it. It’s the same neon look she gets at the slot machine- thin as orange dusk, and on some parts of her lips, hopeful.

“Of course. Tonight, we can get anything.”

Daddy is reaping his kisses tonight- I can hear him behind the wall of menus. Luckily, I can’t make them out. All I can see is their fingernails, four ashy sets pulled around the paper. Under each nail are black crescents, squirming over candlelight, and I imagine they are baby snakes, like the ones me and Toph caught in a Taco Bell parking lot last summer.

It was Daddy’s payday, so we took the bus to Bally’s, the four of us shoulder to shoulder in summer’s moldy exhale. “Meet back here at five,” Mom said, her mind already in the game hall, pulling levers, flipping chips. She took her coin purse out and emptied it in Toph’s hand, barely looking at where they were landing. A few fell on the ground, and a quarter rolled on the lip of a storm drain. By the time we’d picked the loot and walked the three miles to Taco Bell, Toph had counted it up- two dollars, sixty four cents.

Toph was inside ordering when I found them. Ten little snakes bundled together, tighter than shoelaces around telephone wire, swimming in the hungry afternoon sun. It kind of looked like cursive to me, scribbles that fell off the paper and somehow survived, alone and without background. There was no mother around, so I picked one up, the same way one might grab an earthworm. It curled around my pointer finger, once, then twice, and constricted as tough as it could. I knew it was trying to hurt me, but it wasn’t strong enough, and there was something sad in that.

Rachel comes back, her smile still stained to her face. “Have you all decided what you’d like to order tonight?”

“Rachel?” Daddy has that grin, that fucking face he gets when he’s riding what Mom calls pocket rockets. Rachel nods and lets him speak.

“Do you know what $36,000 dollars feels like?”

She coughs, those two freckles dancing like a marked ellipsis. “No, I don’t.”

“Let me tell you, Rachel. $36,000-”

“Thirty six thousand, four hundred and sixty.” Mom interrupts, saying each word just like that- stretched and janky like a paper clip.

“Of course, love. $36,460 is what we call A New Beginning.” Daddy looks across the table, at us two boys. Into Toph’s feral eyes, and my own flaming ones. “So tonight,” he raises his glass again, the wobble more significant, almost spilling, “let’s eat like winners.”

Mom cheers, almost a bark, but that’s it. The rest of the table- the entire world, maybe- is silent. Rachel blinks twice and smiles respectfully. Her eyes move like driftwood across the table and into my lap. She speaks. “Ok then. We’ll start over here. What can I get you?”

It’s unexpected, her direction toward me, over Daddy’s shoulder, and for a moment I’m running down Fremont Street and playing tag with Toph, dodging tourists, my crusty hair full of wind and Vegas dusk, free. I scan the menu in front of me without touching it, quickly, searching for prices. There is a chicken basket- fifteen dollars too expensive, but still cheaper than all the other alternatives. My order bubbles to my lips.

“He’ll get the lobster,” Daddy says, then looks over at me. “You like lobster, right, boy?”

I say nothing.

“He’ll get the lobster,” Daddy repeats, leaning towards her as if she’s hard of hearing. She nods, but holds eye contact with me, just long enough for me to understand what she’s thinking- what she knows. Maybe she grew up outside this town, understands what it’s like to have these parents.

It doesn’t matter- there is no time to discuss the moment, because she is onto my mother in an instance, asking for her order. She gives it with that saucy slur- all the fixings, the extras, a confirmation on the plate fees- and with each addition to the list, Rachel’s shoulders drop a smidge, a tire with an impossible leak. Her eyes glance to me, once, swiftly, and for a second I think I’m about to cry. But she’s too pretty, and the tables are too white, so I hold it.

Toph is last, and Rachel looks down at him, with the same introspection she dedicated to me. Only Toph doesn’t return it. He is gobbling, still gobbling, his hands greasy with loose butter, his cheeks bound tight as balloon knots. She stares, as if not noticing it before, and I look to Daddy for once, to step in and do what he does best.

But he doesn’t. He is smiling, ear to ear, red and black streamers, so wide I can catch the silver caps on his bottom molars. They glisten, two little sparks. He begins laughing. “That’s my boy! Taking his fill!”

Toph doesn’t notice any of this. There is a one more piece, a small, cracked sliver of rye, and Toph is reaching for it. His hand, curled at the knuckles, sinks into the sticky bread, and like magic it’s in his mouth, sticking halfway from his lips. Daddy is laughing, tears forming in the wrinkled corners of his sockets. “Us Brighton Boys, never knowing when to stop!” The boy in the bowtie glances over, his eyes baby blue, so opposite my own.

My brother is the fox. It is clear to me now, watching him as he plows through the snow, his teeth serrated, unstoppable. There is a second where I think I hate him for it, but it is brushed away, quick as the summer showers that scatter the gamblers into their dens, that leave me and Toph alone on dirty Nevada runway. We all deal with it differently- him the predator, me the prey, the two of us up against a cackling full house. There is comfort in knowing we never stood a chance.

My father is still laughing, his chest underneath his red-speckled dress shirt expanding, collapsing. I look past him, and there is Rachel, finishing the notes on her pad. She is focused on the writing, but there is a tremble on her ellipses, deep as tectonic movement. Rachel bites the top of her lip for a minute, and then lets go.

Father is done now, his hands spread on the table, my mother’s underneath it. “Well, that about does it, miss. Got everything you need?”

Rachel nods once more and begins walking away. She is halfway in the dark before she meets my eyes again, her brown pupils turned black against the white, wriggling like those Taco Bell snakes. And in the connection, there is a handshake, from one lost child to another. It’s as simple as the spin of triple sevens, the clatter of a roulette pill. The handshake goes like this:

New beginnings are a myth, and nothing ever changes.