Lottery (25 page)

“Why do you want to read that crap?” He hands Cherry some of his books.
The Sea Wolf, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test,
and
The Illustrated Man.
She reads them all, then gives them to me. They are harder and I don’t understand some of them. Except
The Sea Wolf,
which was cool. Cherry is a fast reader and I am very slow.

“You know, Keith, you need to read one of our books before you can judge whether it’s crap or not,” she says. Next thing we know Keith is reading Cherry’s books too.

“Damn these are great!” He wriggles his eyebrows like a letch. I know this because that is what Cherry calls him.

“You’re such a letch!” She yells this after he smirks and pinches her bottom. A letch is someone who grabs a lady’s bottom. I would never grab a girl’s bottom, because I think it is not a very nice thing to do. Cherry just laughs at Keith and makes a face. Cherry’s faces are good because she has all those earrings like on her nose and tongue. She makes great faces.

Keith tells me he reads Cherry’s books each night before he goes to bed. He will take the book to work when he gets to an especially exciting part and read when it is his turn to do the register. Sometimes he makes customers wait, when he does not want to put his book down.

“Does wonders for me, Per! I didn’t know what I was missing!” Keith has to cover his book with brown paper so that Manny and Gary do not see what he reads.

I watch them from my window at night.

Keith lurches around the cockpit probably pretending he is a pirate coming to ravish Cherry. Ravish sounds like radish and has something to do with sex. Cherry tells me everything. She says she and Keith act out some of the stories. That is like playing games.

“It’s really fun, Perry! It’s good for the imagination and the sex is great!” My ears turn red when Cherry says that. Imagination is a good kind of lying. Sex is something you are not supposed to talk about.

Keith and Cherry fight sometimes when he watches basketball on my TV and then has a few beers like eight or twelve. I have to count the cans.

“You need to stop drinking this shit!” Cherry screams very loud. She is as feisty as Keith.

Keith yells back. “It’s none of your fucking business and I’ll fucking drink if I fucking want to!” Then Cherry cries and Keith hugs her and tells her she’s his
Diamond Girl.
He whispers in her ear and pets her hair, and they kiss and make up, which is cool.

Sometimes I get embarrassed when they argue in front of me.

“Perry, it’s no big deal. It just means we’re a family and families fight in front of each other. We’re all one family. Families fight, then kiss and make up.” Cherry rubs my hand.

Families are cool. I used to have a family with Gram and Gramp and now I have a family with Keith and Cherry. We are also a family with Gary and Sandy.

We have spaghetti nights together on Saturday, just like with Gram. People can be nice when they get to know you. I told Gary about our spaghetti nights when I thanked him for Christmas.

“I really miss those spaghetti nights. Keith, Gram, and I played cribbage, and I used to beat them both,” I said.

“Having spaghetti night sounds like a good plan,” Gary said. “Maybe you can beat Keith on a regular basis in cribbage, but I don’t think you can beat me in Scrabble, and for sure not Sandy,” he teased.

Sandy likes the idea of a family game night, now that Kelly is getting older. Gary tells me teenage girls are scary.

“It’s horrible! She’s going to drive me to an early grave. Kelly just turned thirteen and already she wants to date! And the makeup? She piles it on with a shovel!” Gary talks to anyone who will listen about having a teenager.

Keith calls Kelly a
tween,
which makes her crazy.

“Tween! Tween! Tween!” He sings this in a high and whispery voice. Only Kelly and I can hear, because we know all about teasing. Most people do not know about teasing. There are special voices and things you say. Keith is very clever at this. I am glad he is my friend and does not tease me. Cherry calls him a troublemaker and Kelly calls him a butt-head. She throws sofa pillows and popcorn at him.

Sandy and Gary yell at Kelly.

“Act your age!”

“Give it a rest!”

“You’re making a mountain out of a molehill.”

This is not fair and it makes Kelly even madder.

Keith sings under his breath. “Molehill! Molehill! She’s a little molehill!”

It is fun to watch.

“Moooooom!” she howls like Gigi. “Daaaaad.”

But they just tell her to grow up, which is, I think, what she wants to do most of all. I tell her growing up is not all it’s cracked up to be. Like Gram used to say when I would complain about being too young to do something.

“Perry, you grow up, then you grow old, and then you die! Don’t be in such a goddamned hurry! Growing up is not all it’s cracked up to be!” After she said this, she would rub her hip with Ben-Gay and smoke a cigarette.

Sandy’s tomato sauce is almost as good as Gram’s. When we do not play cribbage or Scrabble we play crazy eights, or Monopoly. Keith is good at Monopoly and beats us all. I am still best at cribbage, but I am getting pretty good at Scrabble too because of all my words. I did not know there was a game for words. I think I might end up liking Scrabble best. Cherry is not good at games and mostly just watches. She helps Sandy in the kitchen, and reads her book.

“
Echt.
” I get a triple word score and my H is on a double letter square.

“That’s not a word!” Kelly likes to complain about games and rules.

“Kelly is a whiner!” Keith sings.

“Yes it is. It means true or genuine,” I say.

“I don’t believe you. How do you know all those words?” She wrinkles her nose at me and looks like a pig. I would tell her this except it could make her even madder and not be nice. She pinches me when she is mad. I do not like to be pinched.

“I read the dictionary,” I say. This is true, or
echt.
“Gram always made me do words.” After I say this, I scoot away from her on the sofa so I am not near her pinching fingers.

“Put your money where your mouth is,” warns Keith. “Delay of game! You want to challenge?”

“Yeah, sure, I’ll challenge him!” Kelly runs into the den and comes out with the biggest dictionary I have ever seen. I would not be able to live long enough to do that one. I would have to do at least twenty pages or even fifty pages a day. I am impressed. It even has foreign words like from France, Germany, and Outer Space.

“Hey, Kelly, you’d have to do twenty pages a day to finish that one if Gram had been the boss of you.”

“Gross!” She pages through the E’s. I see her face fall. “It’s not fair! He tricked me!” Then, “Moooooom! Daaaaad!”

Keith cackles like Gram used to. “Hee! Hee! Hee!” He makes a big line under Kelly’s score. “You were the one who picked out the dictionary with foreign phrases! You should have grabbed
Webster ’s
. Don’t ever get in a tangle with Perry over words,” he says.

He doubles my points and Kelly loses her turn. She sinks deeper into the corner of the sofa. Her lower lip is practically on her chest.

“You could read pages from the dictionary every day,” I suggest. She turns her head to the wall, squeezes her mouth shut until it disappears, and rolls her eyes back so only the whites show.

“That would be soooo totally a waste of time,” she says. The next thing I know she has the big book on her lap and is thumbing through it.

“Ha ha ha ha ha!” she taunts. “Here’s one I bet you don’t know! Tyro!” She points to the page with a very dirty fingernail. Kelly is right. I have not gotten to the T’s yet so I do not feel bad. I am still on P’s.

I win that game. Keith is second. Gary is third. Meagan is fourth and Kelly is last.

“Dinner’s ready!” Sandy calls and Kelly sticks her tongue out at Meagan all the way to the table. Kelly carries the dictionary and sits with it open on her lap while she eats. Meagan kicks her through the chair rungs. I watch them the whole time. It is very entertaining.

“Kids are a joy. Right, Sandy?” Gary smiles kind of funny when he says this. I change my mind and decide maybe that this is why he is losing his hair.

42

Keith and I have a meeting with Gary and then we go to his lawyer’s office. Gary’s lawyer is Tom Tilton.

"Hey, Mr. Tilton, my cousin-brother’s a lawyer,” I say.

“Never mind that, Per,” Gary says.

“Call me Tom, Perry. Would you prefer to use him?” Tom asks.

“No!” Both Gary and Keith say this at the same time and so loud I have to put my hands over my ears.

They do business talk, but I listen carefully. I am an auditor.

I listen closely. Even though I am an auditor, it is hard to understand, but I try.

I write Holsted’s Marine Supply a very big check with many zeros. Keith has to help me fit them in. I am now an investor. I have lots of papers to take home and keep. It makes me a businessman. I spent a lot of the money in my checking account. Over half. But it is still more money than I ever had before. I still have my savings account. I do not touch that. It is for my future.

“Save half and spend half.” That is what Gram used to say.

“He’s protected, right?” Keith looks over my shoulder. “Let me read that, Per, before you sign.” Keith is my friend. So is Gary. He says I get a bigger salary now that I am an investor. That is so cool.

I have lots of protection now.

I have Keith.

I have Gary.

And I have Mike Dinelli.

John comes with Mike sometimes. I hear them talk.

He sounds hungry when he talks like that.

Doing business must make people hungry, I decide. Even Gary, Keith, and I are hungry after we do our business. We decide to go to Gary’s house and order pizza and eat ice cream.

It is like a party except we do not have balloons or cake.

Kelly sticks her tongue out at me across the table and says she is up to the C’s. Gary and Sandy smirk at each other and then at me.

“I wish I had known how easy it was to make her study vocabulary words before this.” Sandy leans over and whispers in my ear, “You’re a good influence on her.” And she rubs my shoulder and smiles. It feels good to be touched like that. Like we are friends.

Before the lottery, people did not like to touch me. Gram used to say they were afraid, but I could never figure it out. The mailman would not shake my hand and the cashier lady at QFC grocery would always give Gram my change even though I handed her the money.

“Hey!” Gram would say. “Look at him! He won’t bite!”

Now when I go with Keith or Cherry to get groceries the clerks call me by my first name and wave me over to their checkout stands. When any of them goes on a trip to Vegas, I have to touch their lucky coin or pet their rabbit’s foot. That is sad. I mean, why cut off a poor rabbit’s foot for luck? It is not that lucky for the rabbit, I think, losing a foot and all.

Gary holds a glass of wine in his hand and leans against his sofa. “So, Per, I’m curious, what else do you think we need to do at the store?”

I make myself think hard. I am an official businessman now.

Sandy and Cherry are in the kitchen fixing ice cream. They yell at us asking whether we want more chocolate or strawberry in our bowls. It distracts me.

Sandy shouts from the kitchen for Kelly to come help with the dishes.

“Mooooommmm! Nooooooo.” Kelly can fit more vowels in a word than anybody I have ever heard. It is fun just to listen to her whine and it distracts me again.

“Well?” Gary asks.

“I am still thinking,” I say.

I think better when it is quiet, but this is good practice for me. Businessmen need to be able to think even when they are distracted.

Keith is drinking a beer and watching basketball on ESPN. Every so often he snorts or pounds his feet on the floor and howls, “Shit, why’d they do such a fucking stupid thing!”

When he moans, “Awww, sweet Jesus! No!” I have to start all over with my thinking.

“Keith, your language. Okay?” Gary has to remind him to not say bad words.

I do not tell him both Kelly and Meagan say much worse things when he and Sandy are not in the room. I think about what Gary has asked me, while I shuffle the cribbage cards. When I do something with my hands, it helps me think.

“Sailing books and cards, a place that you can learn to do boat stuff,” I say. “Fishing stuff. Magazines. Things with boats on them and people who know a lot about sailing.”

Gary nods his head up and down just like the fake dog in the back window of Manny’s Dodge. He was always nice to me before, but now he listens. I am not faster, but it is like people think I am. Money has made the slow part of me not so important.

Keith treats me the same. He still yells at me, slaps me on the back, and farts. He still looks worried and gets cranky, like when I bug him about calling April and Jason. He is the same person and so am I.