Chapter 7 Hazel #2
Gretchen doesn’t miss a beat and continues to announce our winnings. She calls out the bodega and when we purchased the ticket. “How long have you been playing the lottery?” she asks, spinning the microphone back.
Logan takes this one, too. “Ever since I can remember.”
Gretchen laughs. “It’s finally paid off! Anything special about these numbers?”
I feel Logan straighten ever so slightly next to me, like he’s excited to share his rationale. “Well, actually—no,” he says. There’s a course correction in his tone.
“Oh, okay,” Gretchen says, her smile and eyes wide. “With the lump sum, you’ve got a lotta cash to spend—”
“We actually went with the annuity,” Logan corrects. “Because we have many beautiful years ahead of us.”
“Oh yeah, of course you do,” Gretchen rushes out. “I bet your children are thrilled for you, too!”
Yes. I’m sure our nonexistent children will enjoy inheriting our boatload of cash.
We continue giving Gretchen pathetic answers, yet she acts like they’re amazing. She’s really good at her job. I wonder what it feels like to be her, to be surrounded every day by people coming into new money. Is she envious? Genuinely excited? Or is she, at this point, totally indifferent?
“What are your plans for the money?” Gretchen tries.
“Investments,” Logan says, staying on track and keeping his answers more succinct than I think he’d prefer. If I weren’t here, no question he’d be making new friends with Gretchen and every reporter and photographer in here.
Gretchen presses us on this one. “Oh, come on! You gotta do something fun! You’re not going to buy a yacht? A car? Go on a dream vacation?” She pushes the microphone into my face.
I respond with the first thing that comes to mind.
“We’ll go on our second honeymoon,” I squeak out to satisfy her.
I have no idea where that idea came from, but I regret the words as soon as they leave my crinkled lips.
“I mean, we’ll go out to eat.” Apparently, the best fake voice I can put on is one much higher than my typically low, raspy voice. I sound like an unoiled hinge.
“That is so precious! Tell me more,” Gretchen says, lighting up. I’ve given her too much fake information.
“It’s a secret,” I say, not wanting to risk using my voice too much. I instinctively cross my arms and then straighten them down to my sides. How would eighty-year-old me stand? I fold my hands together in front of me, settling on that.
Gretchen deflates. I know she would’ve liked more from us, but that’s all we can give her. She wraps things up by asking if we’re ready for our photo opp. Gretchen’s assistant takes the oversize ticket from Logan.
While he adjusts his sleeves, I, out of habit, tuck my wig hair behind my silicone ear. We’re handed a giant cardboard check that’s just for show. We were told we’d get the money electronically in a few days, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
After dozens of photos and awkward silence, Gretchen instructs us to stand off to the side and to keep the check held up. All the cameras refocus on the third winner.
“Nice job,” Logan says once we’re out of the spotlight. “And your impression of your future self? Wow, that was…”
I laugh a little. “What I would sound like inhaling helium? What it sounds like running over a rubber duck? And who knew you become Australian when you’re put on the spot?”
“Learning new things every day,” he says with a chuckle. “Another thing I’ve learned? I look pretty good with all these wrinkles.” He shifts his hand positioning on the check. “If only it were easier to slip in and out of. It’s nice to not feel like myself for a second.”
With all the bad luck Logan’s been having, I can understand that. Ever since we met, my life has been like one long, unusual, and disorienting press conference, and I’ve had more of the good than the bad.
“The real me is racing against the clock, potentially unemployed soon, and can’t take air travel,” he recalls. “Good stuff.”
Hourglass. Ladder. Plane.
Gretchen taps her long, blue nails against the third winner’s oversize winning ticket, the clacking drawing my eyes to the numbers.
How unreal that this group of people is here because of a few tickets that had the exact combinations of numbers. What does these winners’ luck look like in their day-to-day? Did we win the lottery because Logan bought the ticket when he was lucky? Or did we win because it was in my possession?
No. It’s random. Pure chance.
Given everything, though…
“Maybe you were right. Somehow our fortunes—our luck—flipped.” I shiver. “Maybe we should try to get struck by lightning to switch them back,” I joke.
Logan half laughs. “Maybe step on a live wire?”
“What if it was the cat? Toffee literally flipped the fortunes the first time. Then you brushed the ticket against him for good luck.”
“Like the static electricity did something?” he asks. “That’s impossible. Right?”
“I don’t really know what’s possible anymore,” I say, taking in the scene in front of me. “This is impossible, and yet we’re holding this comically large check.”
Gretchen has moved on to the fourth and final winner, a woman named Tiff from Westchester wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses.
A wild thought flashes into my mind. What if… what if it was the kiss?
Heat floods my face, creating a mini steam room under my mask. I push the thought out of my head. Switching bodies, switching fortunes—that doesn’t happen in real life.
Still, something odd is happening.
“Whether or not I have good luck, what if I don’t want my bad luck back?” I pose. “Can I hang on to it for a little longer? Maybe until I secure a job?”
“I don’t want to take anything away from you,” Logan says. He turns to look at me, his piercing eyes meeting mine. He keeps them there for a few long seconds. The crinkles on his silicone exterior look just as lifelike as his real-life ones. The ones I look forward to seeing every time he smiles.
We’re in the present, looking like the future. It’s surreal, in a way, being here with Older Logan. We look as though we’ve spent decades together when I’ve only known this man for half a month. It’s like we’re role-playing a prediction, if that prediction were to say Logan and I ended up together.
For the length of Tiff from Westchester’s interview, I let myself live in that version of reality.
Logan ordering pizza and chocolate milkshakes, bandaging up my scrapes.
Logan being patient, keeping promises. Logan coming up with ridiculous-but-smart ideas like disguising ourselves on TV just so I’m comfortable.
Logan smiling every time I come into view, looking at me like he really sees me.
And these are just the memories from knowing him for two weeks. What would a lifetime look like?
I blink the vision away, but I’m left with a truth: I’m attracted to a man I hardly know.
“I don’t want you to have bad luck, either,” I say, realizing I’ve been quiet for several minutes. “I feel bad.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want your pity.”
“You sure? Because if I got the fortunes you did, I’d want your pity.”
He straightens, the check lifting higher on his side.
“Setbacks are an opportunity. The same goes for bad fortunes. This is a challenge I can overcome,” he says, and his upbeat tone almost makes me believe him, but I hear a bitter edge in his words.
“I’ve done it before. I can do it again.
This bad luck streak can’t possibly last forever. ”
The fourth winner poses excitedly with her large check. She’s the first person to actually look happy about her win. I would’ve thought the other winners would’ve been jumping up and down with millionaire joy.
Watching everyone claim their money, it seems like there might be something to what Logan was saying about how we’re bonded in this highly unusual way.
I feel weirdly emotional about these people I don’t know and will never see again.
We’ll always have in common this press conference, this one Powerball that changed our lives.
Once we step out of here, we’re back to being strangers.
Ones with “lottery winner” attached to our names and our stories, the ones we tell and the ones others tell about us.
Well, not me and Logan, since we’re not telling anyone. We’re the only ones who will know this tidbit about each other. We’ll forever share this secret.
“I can’t just take your luck and leave you to fend for yourself,” I say, knowing everything that’s at stake for him. I pat his shoulder. “When I was having a rough day, you helped me. Now you’re going through a rough time.”
It’s not guilt that’s driving this, though I do feel that. The man honored his word and split the winnings. He doesn’t deserve this.
At the same time, we look at my hand on Logan’s shoulder before our eyes find each other’s. A rush of heat up my neck is apparently my auto-response to touching Logan.
“I’m going to help you,” I blurt. I puff out my cheeks, my own words surprising me. I don’t take it back, though. While I’m job hunting and working at the candy shop, I need a distraction. A bigger purpose. This will give me exactly that, while being able to return Logan’s favor.
“And how exactly are you going to do that?” he asks.
Given that I just came up with the idea, I have no idea. “I’m good at fixing things. Have been for eighty years.”
It’s a joke, but sometimes it really does feel like it’s been that long.
My attempt to make him laugh works. His low rumble is deeper underneath all that silicone molded with loose jowls, forehead wrinkles, and ingrained laugh lines. It’s a sound at odds with his older exterior. A shock of pleasure cuts through the center of my core.
I can’t fix Logan’s sets or make his work go faster. And it’s not like we can really flip anything back, obviously. But just like Logan slipped the lottery ticket into my bag, I need to do the same for him. Theoretically speaking. He wanted me to have some of his luck. He insisted on it.
That’s it.
“You wanted your luck to rub off on me, but now I need to rub your luck back off on you,” I say. My words come out faster than my thoughts. I shake my head, and my mask jiggles side to side. “Wait, no. No one’s rubbing anything.”
Logan’s eyes sparkle with amusement.
I can practically feel the red filling in my face. “I’ve said rub too many times,” I mutter. “The point is: I owe you. I got millions, even though you picked most of the numbers. I’m the same way as you about debts, but I can’t pay you back one-to-one.”
“You owe me nothing. If I hadn’t met you, we wouldn’t be here right now. And besides, you’re all over this ticket,” Logan says.
“What do you mean?”
“10. 13. 30. 31. 23. 6.” He says it like a mantra. “Ten and thirteen are for your birthday, which you told the fortune teller. And if you were born in 1996, that makes you about to turn thirty in a couple of weeks. Thirty-one is how old I am. We met on the twenty-third.”
So there was something special about these numbers. Thankfully, he didn’t share his rationale on camera. The last thing we need is my birthday out there confirming that Older Hazel Yen is actually Young Hazel Yen.
“Why did you pick six?” he asks as he rubs his artificially sun-spotted forehead.
I turn away. “I don’t want to say.”
Logan laughs. “What? Why not? I just told you my reasoning.”
“Because.”
“Okay, well, now you have to tell me,” he says.
More heat. More red. I’m going to overbake in this mask. “You… You have three crinkles next to each eye when you smile.” I don’t have to look at him to confirm this. I do anyways. He’s wearing a goofy grin under his mask.
Logan doesn’t say anything. He just moves his hand closer to mine under the check until our pinkies are grazing.
From the very beginning, he had been paying attention. Seeing me.
And I had been seeing him.
I’ve witnessed enough with Dad to know how to help Logan.
Or at least to know where we can start. Whenever he goes to the casino, Dad does his rituals.
Brings his lucky charms. Wears his lucky colors.
Has his lucky numbers. He does what he thinks he has to in order to beat the odds and improve his chances.
More times than not, his efforts don’t work.
But… sometimes they do.
I don’t know where the luck will come from. We’ll just have to hope there’s enough of it to go around to get Logan to opening night.
This is going to be just like the fortunes, probably. Futile attempts in the name of control.
But we have to at least try.
We need to attract luck. Increase it, somehow. That’s what I’m going to help Logan with.
And I’m not going to let his hesitation deter me. Because of his choice to buy the ticket, I can help my brother. I might even be able to clear my own debts. It’s life-changing, this gift he’s given me.
“My dear, darling husband,” I say, linking my temporarily aged pinky with his. “You need to get lucky.”