Beginner's Luck Read online

  The third race doesn't pan out. My horse, Little Dorrit, goes off the board with six-to-one odds, which I'm pleased with, but then she comes in third place. Shit. Who ever thought that Mary Is Contrary could run so fast on a firm course. And on the outside. That old glue pot usually only comes to life when galloping in mud up to her forelocks.

  So then I turn all chickenshit and bet only eighty bucks on Beelzebub's Boy in the fifth and of course he ends up winning. Just goes to show you, the les you bet the more you lose when you win. But at least I have my confidence back. Only now that it appears as if my luck is changing, who do I see but my unbeloved Brandt.

  "Hey, Hallie!" Brandt's lips and tongue are all tangerine-stained from an Orange slushee that he's clutching in his right hand, looking just like my little I not her Davy after he eats a Popsicle. In his other mitt is a half-inch-thick slack of racing tickets. What did he do, I wonder, go and bet on every horse?

  "Hi, Branch," I say.

  "Can I buy you a slushee?"

  "Uh, no thanks." Just looking at his puffy orange lips is enough to make me want a vodka straight up. "Since when did you become a track junkie?"

  "I've been working on a system based on mathematical fluctuations," he .mnounces proudly and holds up the fistful of tickets. "By entering all the past performances and workout records into my computer and then programming it to simulate a race as if they are running against one another, and presto!"

  It sounds to me that the sooner the whole Shaeffer family gets into Gamblers Anonymous the better. First I see his old lady out at the casino playing blackjack and now Branch has his own "system." I can't help but wonder what game of chance his sister Sheryl, and my competitor for Craig Larkin's affection, is into. Hopefully it's Russian roulette.

  Branch follows me down to Shed Row, the area behind the stables where the dockers, grooms, and trainers are walking and bathing some of the horses that have already run and the track employees are preparing the winner's circle for a big deal cup in the twelfth race that I don't give a shit about. I used to hang around the stalls trying to pick up tips but eventually decided it's a huge waste of time since everyone, even the teenagers who mix the fly spray, talk big, as if they know more than they do.

  It's then that I glance up at the tote board and practically keel over. Buffalo Gal has been scratched in the eleventh race. This is not my horse but in fact the only horse I was worried would beat my horse, Madame Horsefly. I can't believe my luck! The race is mine. I quickly calculate that I have about $360 left and if Madame Horsefly wins, and I know she will, I'll clear almost $2,000. But if I can only bet $500 dollars, I'll make enough for the car.

  "Hey, Branch," I yell. He's standing under the tote board and translating some last-minute statistics into reverse polar notation and punching them into his handheld Hewlett-Packard scientific calculator. He comes tripping over like a baby giraffe just getting the hang of its legs.

  "How's your system doing? Would you be able to float me a hundred and forty dollars for an hour? Better yet, I'll cut you in for five percent if Madame Horsefly wins, in addition to repaying the stake."

  Branch appears crushed, like most guys when they realize that cash can often go further than charm, especially in the dating game. "Gee, I'm sorry, Hallie. These are all two-dollar tickets." Woefully he looks down at the peach and white stack. "I spent all my money at a Star Trek convention in Cleveland last weekend."

  I truly wish he hadn't told me that last part. There is such a thing as too much information, even at the racetrack.

  Damn. Where can I get that kind of a loan in an hour? Eric! Last November he'd banked at least $500 from the grandparents on his birthday. It's a quarter after four. He'll be at football practice. I grab my bike from behind the ambulance that always waits near the edge of the turf track. The sky darkens slightly as clouds roll in, making it appear as if it might start to pour at any moment. From the west comes a rumble of thunder that sounds as if God is clearing his throat prior to making a big announcement.

  Just as I arrive at the high school practice field the cold raindrops begin to fall, like a swift intake of breath. Eric is a red and black smudge in a crowd of guys busy hurling themselves at big padded coatracks and simultaneously shouting "Unh!"

  We huddle on the twenty-yard line.

  "I need to borrow a hundred and forty dollars," I say. "It's an emergency."

  "Okay, but what's it for?"

  "Never mind. I'll pay it back tomorrow."

  "Well, all right," he agrees. "I'll give it to you tonight."

  "It can’t wait until tonight," I plead.

  "Hallie, are you in some sort of trouble?" he asks seriously

  "No, of course not. I just have a tremendous opportunity. One that's going to evaporate in about"—I look down at my watch—"in about twenty minutes."

  "Listen, Hallie, whatever it is, it doesn't sound like a good idea. It sounds to me as if you're dealing drugs."

  "Christ, Eric. It's nothing illegal. It's a bet. It's Madame Horsefly in the tenth."

  "I don't care if you usually make money at the track, you shouldn't be gambling all the time. It's not ... it's not normal. Where's it going to get you?"

  Sometimes Eric can be really cool. But today, of all days, he has to decide to be the Reverend Billy Pigskin.

  "How many times do I have to explain it to you?" I'm begging him now. "It's not gambling. I handicap the horses—according to how they've run in previous races. It's a formula—"

  But Eric is already clomping back to his buddies, a big hulking lump of unformed clay with all that bulky padding stuffed underneath his practice clothes.

  Apparently Craig Larkin has been observing our little scene on the sidelines and now he's heading over. Only Eric intercepts him about fifteen feet away from me. It's impossible to hear what's being said, but by the way Eric shakes his head and raises and drops his arms I can pretty much guess. However, instead of walking back to practice with Eric he continues in my direction. The black and red mesh practice jersey stretches across his expansive shoulders to make the bulldog on the front appear slant-eyed. The rain continues to pelt the field and miles away lightning zigzags across the sky.

  "Anything I can help with?" His eyes point to somewhere above my head, as if he's expecting a through pass at any moment.

  Desperation overtakes embarrassment by three to one. "Not unless you have a hundred and forty dollars I can borrow," I say, half kidding.

  "I do," he says.

  "You'd really give me the money?" I say excitedly.

  "Sure." He actually looks me in the eyes. "I mean, I don't have it with me. It's at home. And I can't leave practice until quarter past five. Can you wait until then?"

  "No," I say. "But thanks all the same."

  He looks perplexed. "I have sixty dollars in my wallet. It's in the locker room."

  There always comes a defining moment when a gambler must weigh fear against greed, the fear of losing an opportunity against the greed of wanting to win big. Fortunately this only takes a second and the outcome is always the same. "Okay. I really appreciate it."

  His cleats chuck little tufts of grass back in my direction. And now the sky opens up and begins teeming. There's no way I'm going to make it back to the track on time.

  After Craig gives me the money against my promise to pay him back the next day, I ride to the local Off Track Betting hole, which is always a pain in the ass because you're supposed to be eighteen to place a bet. At the actual racetrack they don't give a damn. The sourpuss woman behind the window at OTB immediately demands ID and continues chipping away at her turquoise nail polish with a plastic pen cap.

  Resorting to Plan B, I search for some seedy old coot to place my bet. Blue Nails sees me working the room, but she doesn't give a shit. She just can't sell me the bet. She probably doesn't give a good goddamn if I offer to gang-bang all the guys in order to get someone to place my action. And they are all guys. A bunch of worn-out, ashen-faced men who look as if th
ey were thrown out of their jobs and their families ten years ago only hadn't yet noticed. And nobody has bothered to tell them, either.

  A guy about my grandpa's age leans against the far wall chewing a cigar stub and concentrates on one of the several large monitors suspended from the ceiling, looking very much as if he was recently embalmed but it's starting to wear off.

  "Listen, mister, do me a favor and bet four hundred and twenty dollars on Madame Horsefly to come in second for me, wouldja, please?"

  His gaze is firmly fixed on the screen overhead, where the horses are being led out of the paddock. The race is going to start in exactly four minutes and ten seconds. Betting at OTB will close in just two minutes. When Gramps eventually glances over at me, an amused look crosses his face. This happens to me a lot, even at the track. Oh, how cute, they think, a little girl betting on the ponies. As if I'm picking horses because I like what colors the jockeys are flying.

  "You know why I'm going to take your action, honey?" A cloud of rancid smoke hits me full in the face every time he pronounces the letter H.

  Under normal circumstances I'd inform him that all the men who have ever called me "honey" have died facedown in the gutter. And that's only after declaring personal bankruptcy. "Why, mister?" I say all sweet, like the little girl in Miracle on 34th Street.

  " 'Cause that's my horse and she's gonna win. I had to take a blood pressure pill with a chaser when they scratched Buffalo Gal."

  Thank God. He might stink like a week's worth of Ha van as soaked in Thunderbird, but at least this codger knows something about the ponies.

  "Great." I eagerly press my wet, wrinkled money into his hand.

  "Only why to come in second, girlie? She's going to hit pay dirt this race."

  The guy is obviously a speed handicapper and not a trip handicapper. "I was going to bet to win before the rain. But now the track is getting all gumbo. She's not a mudder and I've got to play it safe. I really need to get back some cash."

  From the permanent squint of his eyes it is obvious that he understands really need cash a lot more than got to play it safe. A glance up at the monitor shows one minute left to bet. The course is getting sloppier by the second.

  "You'd better go to the window," I say.

  Gramps points a tobacco-edged fingernail at the tote board. "There's no odds left on second place. You gotta bet her to win."

  He's actually right. Dammit, if only I was out there and could see it with my own eyes. But on the monitor it just looks like six furlongs of furrowed shit.

  The window whore makes her "last call" announcement.

  "Okay." I panic. "Bet it all to win."

  He comes back and hands me my tickets. The compressed air horn screeches, the announcer bellows, "They're off!" and then immediately starts narrating the race, one impassioned run-on sentence. But I don't need to listen. On the big color screen above us Madame Horsefly makes her way around the first bend and into the lead. The betting parlor comes alive and several of the corpses actually remove the cigarettes that were up until this time surgically attached to their liver lips. It's doubtful any of their wives would believe they could actually get this excited about something.

  The colors are a blur as the horses take the fence all smooth in a cluster. They glide into the homestretch and seconds later two horses gallop across the white line side by side. It's a photo finish. Madame Horsefly loses to Heaven's Gait by a nose. There is one gleeful shout, several muttered curses, and then the place becomes a morgue again, as if someone removed all of the stiffs' batteries.

  And clobbered by Heaven's Gait of all horses. Jesus, rumor had it that she'd been ticketed twice for loitering during her last workout. Why did I listen to this asshole? That's the second rule of gambling: Never follow anyone you're technically playing against—touts, tipsters, hucksters, suckers, and especially broken-down old geezers. The first rule is of course never to bet more than you can afford to lose. Not only am I now broke and into Craig for sixty bucks, but there's no trust fund or line of credit in sight.

  Chapter 6

  Tapped Out ♦

  The rain has stopped and the wind is dying down by the time I exit the den of inequality, but it's still a long slow ride to the Star-Mart. This last race was definitely a sign from God. Maybe the old man in the betting parlor was God. Imagine if the tobacco companies could get a picture of God smoking a stogie. Anyway, it's time to go straight. At least until I earn back some scratch.

  A school bus sprays my entire left side with brown rain as it noisily passes and leaves me wondering if Mr. Attendance Fuckhead has called the house today and turncoated me again. Actually, I feel sorry for the little weasel. I mean, that's his life—trying to rustle up kids who are cutting school. How the hell does he drag himself out of bed in the morning and look in the mirror? What does he say at parties—Yeah, I went to school for twenty years to learn how to scour the local video arcade for teenagers playing hooky. Just Call Me Dick reminds me of those moron businessmen I see playing poker down at the Indian casino who are constantly confusing brains with good luck and are so stuck on their own superiority that they'll break up a full house to try and draw four of a kind.

  When the violent orange-and-purple Star-Mart sign comes into view it causes me to take a sharp breath, my last as a free agent, or at least one without a brown smock. Upon entering I duck my head down as far as possible to avoid being recognized and speed-walk directly to the customer service desk to fill out the application for a checkout job. They want a h of previous work experience and also for-me to write down "any special knowledge" I possess. "Always split aces and eights when you're playing blackjack, but never tens," I print, using the eraserless pencil nub that they have so generously supplied.

  It's only as I'm slinking out of the store that I see Eric waving me over to his bagging station. He must have just arrived from practice. Here comes the big brother "I told you so." Better go and take my medicine, since I just listed him as a reference on my application.

  But instead of giving me a hard time he tells me there's a help wanted sign on the bulletin board that he thinks might interest me. The notice is easy to find among all the pictures of lost pets and ads for baby-sitting and word processing services. The letters are in big India ink calligraphy on cream-colored parchment paper. In fact, it looks more like my wealthy cousin Lillian's wedding invitation than a want ad.

  SCRUPULOUS YARD PERSON SOUGHT FOR STEADY EMPLOYMENT AT PRIVATE RESIDENCE WITH SURROUNDING GARDENS. $12.00 HOURLY. REFERENCES REQUIRED. INQUIRE IN PERSON AT 48 NUTHATCH LANE.

  Twelve bucks an hour! Wow. Working twenty hours a week would net me $1,920 in just two months. Only since it's private I could probably work more than that. Look out Harrah's, here I come!

  But what's scrupulous? I'd actually heard my mother say it just a week or so ago, but I'm pretty sure she placed an "un" before the word. Maybe it means strong or outdoorsy. I ask some blue-haired old lady leaving the store. Only I'm not entirely sure how to pronounce it. "Excuse me, ma'am, but do you know what scrupu-loose means?"

  "Well, scru-pu-lus," she emphasizes the pronunciation, "means trustworthy. It means reliable and dependable." She smiles and carefully sets down her grocery bag on a nearby bank of gumballi machines. "Scruple is a noun which means an uneasy feeling arising from conscience or principle that tends to hinder action. It's from the Latin scrupulus, which is a small unit of measurement."

  Oh shit, I think, she's a retired teacher.

  "It's lucky for you that I'm a retired teacher," she dutifully reports as if this fact is supposed to make me extremely happy.

  Instead it makes me realize that she probably gets a pension check. My eyes land on the pyramid of motor oil stacked inside the door. "What a coincidence!" I say. "I'm having a special today and changing the oil of retired teachers for just ten dollars."

  She goes for it and twenty minutes later I have a tenner in my pocket. Then it's back to "Yard Person." What kind of references are they looking for?
I can operate a lawn mower and pull weeds right up there with the best broke teenager. And I can run an eight-minute mile no problem. That's it! Maybe I can show them my varsity letter. Only I don't want to risk stopping by my house. Being grounded means I'm supposed to go home right after school, and it's already close to six o'clock.

  Chapter 7

  The Hard Way ♣

  I know approximately where the house in the ad is located. The locals refer to the neighborhood as Birdland because the streets are all named after birds— Warbler Road, Bobwhite Drive, Towhee Point, Swallow Court, Nuthatch Lane, and so forth. But of course they developed it so much that none of those birds are left, just the green-and-white street signs as memorial plaques.

  Nuthatch Lane turns out to be a small connector street with only six houses and plenty of land between them. Number forty-eight is set back at the end of a long circular grass driveway with two gravel strips down the middle, lined with tall birch trees planted close together. The silvery-white trunks shimmer in the slanted early-evening light and make a cross-hatching of shade upon the driveway. And though the grounds are entirely landscaped and appear to be well looked after, closer inspection reveals a house in need of a makeover. Peeling paint and rusting gutters conflict with the highly ornamental architecture.

  There are two cars parked to the side of the driveway and the front door is open. Tapping lightly on the screen door, it's possible to make out an older woman sitting in a rocker and reading a book. She carefully lays the volume on a side table and threads her way around a lot of fancy wooden chairs and end tables in order to answer the door. I can't recall seeing her around town, but if older people don't have kids or play poker then I usually don't know them. However, she smiles brightly and appears friendly, as if we might know each other from church.

  "Hello, dear. Are you here to pick up the chaise longue?" She opens the door and indicates that I should enter. The screen door wheezes loudly and then slams behind me.