I started running into Al in the neighborhood—on my way to Barnes & Noble or RiteAid. Our stoop talks extended into corner talks, and sometimes two or three blocks’ worth of shared paths during errand runs. Some days I’d run into him on the street and ask him how he was and he’d keep walking and say, “Don’t ask me today.” Other days he’d say “Don’t ask” before I even said hello. Then there were the days I’d catch him smiling, like when he got his new Grateful Dead tattoo on his right arm. He’d tell me about the new one he was planning for his forearm. Those days he seemed happy.
One morning I opened my door to another copy of the Daily News. The paper had a Scratch ‘n’ Match lotto and my copy had about ten extra Scratch ‘n’ Match sheets. “You’ve got just as good a chance as any of the rest of those suckers of winning that hundred grand, so why not,” Al said later. And so, just like that, I became the Scratch ‘n’ Match lady. Evidence of my money-winning fantasies suddenly appeared all over my apartment: little silver shavings in the kitchen, on the dining room table, on the floor. Piles of newspapers by my special “scratching quarter” (also covered in silver shavings). I was starting to look like those old ladies on the park benches with their copies of the Daily News and their silver quarters. I even went so far as to imagine what I would do with my winnings. Of course, half would go to Al, then depending on what was left, money market, travel, helping mom pay off the second mortgage. This continued for months. One Tuesday in mid April, I had let several papers stack up and did a week’s worth of scratching at the sink. There it was: $100,000 in the first row, $100,000 in the second row, $100,000 in the third row. All I needed was three. I double-checked the scratch-off numbers and they were all staring right back at me. My first worry was that I’d have to have my picture in the paper with all the welfare lady lotto winners, but that worry died when I realized I had matched Wednesday’s sheet with Tuesday’s numbers. In all, four months’ worth of silver shavings didn’t even net fifty bucks. So much for chance.
