Sean McKlusky's Pick:
Bertrand Wins It Big
by Jens Rushing
Bertrand won the lottery, and I say good fucking riddance. He had the cubicle next to mine, see, and that's all he'd do all day — scratch off these little cards. With his thumbnail. And it makes a sound, a little rubrubrub, quite audible, if you have good ears, followed by Bertrand's inevitable sigh. Rubrubrub... sigh. Rubrubrub... sigh. All fucking day. Each one a little tiny drama of the whole American endeavor: impossible hope! Ambition! An indomitable spirit — or cluelessness? Played out over and over every two minutes. Rubrubrub... sigh.
He'd come in every day with a stack of tickets that he got from the corner store. Must've spent fifty dollars a day on it. His desk was covered with the little crumbs of wax or whatever they put on those things, and it built up under his thumbnails till they were black. They kept him busy from nine to three. He did just enough work to get by, or worked at just the right moments, when the boss came 'round to check up on us. Rest of the time — rubrubrub... sigh.
This wouldn't have been so obnoxious (well, I guess it would have) if Bertrand hadn't been my friend. He was an all right guy. You might imagine him as some crazy gambler type because of the lottery thing, but, no, he was really quite calm and sensible Boring even. One Saturday night all the boys in Accounts Receivable were heading to the park to hit golf balls over the fence and into a white middle-class housing development, and I asked Bertrand if he wanted to tag along. "Nah," he said, shaking his head, "that's crazy. You'll get arrested."
"Odds against getting arrested are a helluva lot better than the odds of you winning that scratch-off," I said. I grabbed his current card, interrupting him between rubs two and three. "See, you lost already. Loser." I crumpled it up and bounced it off his stupid face. He just smiled like he knew some great joke but couldn't tell me, and uncrumpled the card. Rub... sigh. Something to contemplate while I lofted a beautiful drive over Sandstone Boulevard and through the upstairs window of a house belonging to an electrical engineer or overseas assets manager or some shit.
And one day — no cards — no Bertrand. I was in shock, I tell you. Godfuckingdamn shock, just staring at the empty desk. And 'round lunch Bertrand strolled in, a big gold ring on literally every finger, diamond-rimmed shades, everything. "What up, fool!" he actually said.
"Bertrand?"
"B-nizzle."
"B... nizzle. You won?"
"I won, fool. Now I'm goin' to Disneyland!"
"Disneyland? Kind of clichéd, B-nizzle."
"It's clichéd for a reason, yo. Because it's the shit." I said nothing. Nothing to say! He thumped his fist on his chest. "Keep it tight. Real tight, yo. In the hood et cetera. My dawgs." He thumped again. "My dawgs." And then Bertrand walked out of my life.
Now we got some fucking new guy who's ticking like a time bomb, ready to display some awful annoying habit any second now. Just today, he said, he actually said, "Would you mind not staring at me while I work?" Jackass.
Jens Rushing writes fiction of every stripe, with over a dozen pieces sold. Visit his webpage at www.jensrushing.com for some stories, a journal, and a complete list of publications.