The Winnings
MATTHEW SWAYZE
Benny sat on his bed, sucked in his lower lip, closed his eyes and opened them again. His dark bachelor apartment smelled faintly of ketchup, and when he moved his foot on the floor he heard a hamburger wrapper rustle. Vomit seemed to rise in his throat and he closed his eyes and burped; the taste of pickles filled his mouth. He looked down at the lottery tickets spread out on the night-table beside his bed. Even though he had placed them in such a way so that all their numbers were perfectly visible, some lay upside down, overlapping and covering the numbers of others, and some lay on the floor. He had awakened in a sweat; he knew that he had shuffled the tickets in his sleep. “They’re no good,” he thought, knowing that none of them would win and at the same time thinking of Jen. He remembered the way her pigtails had moved against the back of her neck as she held another scratch-and-win ticket down on a table in the food court, closed her eyes and scratched out another winner. Benny picked up the phone and dialed her number.
“Benny, you’re lucky I answer the phone. I got call display just for you.”
Benny could tell that she had just finished laughing.
“What’s the winner. You know the winner. I’m a piece of shit.”
“No, Benny. You know, I was just sitting here, staring at your picture when you called — ”
“Shut up. What’s the winner.”
“Let’s see. It was on the tip of my —”
“Why do you do this to me!”
“Let’s see, six, 17 — ”
Benny picked through the lottery tickets, throwing them aside, looking for a pen. Jen started laughing again.
“Hold on,” Benny said. “I’m getting a pen.”
“Twenty-four, 16, 18 — and then I’m drawin’ a blank.”
“That’s fine. You can do it, baby.”
Jen laughed a short loud laugh.
“Baby? Darling . . . ”
“COME ON!”
“Ten. The last number is 10.”
“I LOVE YOU!” Benny screamed into the phone, though he hung up before he said “love” and couldn’t remember who he had been talking to when he ran out of his apartment, across the street and into the convenience store to buy the lottery ticket.
That night Benny paced his apartment, staring down at the ticket, utterly convinced that the numbers were the winning numbers. He remembered the last three words he had spoken to Jen that morning, laughed, and slapped the lottery ticket against his empty hand. “Incredible,” he said, and imagined a dollar sign in an empty white space on the ticket. Aligning the numbers Jen had given him to the right of the dollar sign, he came up with a ridiculous amount. He sat down on the edge of the bed. The faint smell of ketchup reached his nose again and he remembered the night before, when she bought him the Big Mac meal and the DVDs with her Pro-Line winnings. The sound of her laughter, muffled by the hamburger still in her mouth, made him smile and he reached for the place on his back where she had slapped when he asked her, for the fourth time that night, for the winning 6/49 numbers. He laughed uncontrollably when he thought of the ridiculous amount he actually believed he would win it. That night he dreamt about Jen’s pigtails bouncing up and down in the midst of billions of dollars of falling money.
Benny watched a $100 bill fall from the sky, land on top of the pile which had reached Jen’s knees, and then watched a $1,000 bill fall with a tap and then another with a knock. Jen and the money disappeared and were replaced by a long hallway, at the end of which stood a door. He woke up to the sound of Jen’s voice.
“Benny, darling, it’s 10 o’clock, you never sleep this late.”
“Ten o’clock!” he said to himself and looked down to find his pants, only to find that he had slept in his clothes.
“The money!”
He opened the door.
“The mon — !”
Jen’s lips closed tightly together and she looked up at him, two dimples visible on her cheeks. Her hair looked exactly as it had in his dream. The lottery ticket, still clenched tightly in his sweaty fist, fell to the ground as his fingers opened. Jen’s lips relaxed, her dimples disappeared and her eyes widened slightly. Benny gasped and felt the muscles in his stomach and arms, which had been tense a moment before, loosen.
“You lost,” Jen said.
He reached towards her with both arms and took her soft cheeks in the palms of his hands.
“Oh!” she said.
He glanced down, saw her brilliant white arms, and under her baby-blue shirt the roll of fat around her midsection. He inhaled deeply, knowing he would smell oranges, which was always the scent of her shampoo. He felt an overwhelming urge to kiss her soft belly, to feel the way it depressed under his lips.
“Sixty-one billion dollars!” he said, without knowing why. Jen squinted her eyes and moved her lips at a strange angle, and then smiled.
“Darling!” she said, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him.
