Chance

I confess, I’m a little shit-faced, I’ve had a few, I could stand a cold shower or something, some hot coffee. And I’ve been crying, that’s true, I do that when I’m drinking—it’s no biggie.

The thing is, I gave some money to a guy I know, and what’s wrong with that? This guy, his name is Elton, and he’s not the dream guy you see on CMT or anything, but he’s a guy, a real guy, with talent. Oh yeah, I bought myself a used car, just a junker, paid a thousand for it, but it runs and it’ll get me from the house to the store where I work—I’m a fucking check-out girl, I stand there all day on my varicose veins and punch the fucking keys on this fucking cash register, goddamn job, I hate it, but if it weren’t for the job, I never would have won the money. Or Mother wouldn’t have won it, which is a whole nother part of the story, and I’ll come back to that.

This guy, Elton, he’s a gifted, and I do mean gifted, guitar player, and he needed a guitar so he could make some demos and start working club dates and stuff and get his name out so me and him could go to Nashville or New York even, or the Big Apple is what I meant to say—Elton won’t let me say New York. It’s The Big Apple, or Big Fuckin’ Apple. He really has ambition.

So it was like five thousand dollars I won in this raffle thing, and I got the guitar and some other stuff I didn’t know what it was, but Elton did, it was amps and mixer boards and shit like that, he knew what he needed and I just like let him buy it. Within reason, of course. I mean I only had so much money—it was like thirty-five-hundred, after the car dealer got through with me and I bought insurance and stuff on the car. You believe I’ve been riding a bicycle to work every day?—and I’m a big girl. I’m five-eight and weigh two-twelve and looked like a goddamn albino gorilla or something, pumping that bicycle down the street to Grocery City—it was horrible. So now I have this 94 Escort, sky-blue and a sort of station wagon thing going on, but Elton calls it a hatch-back. Anyway, he finally has like the nicest guitar—I think it’s a Startocrasher, or something like that, and he started to buy a Fender, but this Startocrasher caught his eye and I let him go ahead and buy that. Oh!—he could of bought whatever he wanted, I mean I wasn’t “letting” him do anything. Oh, I didn’t mean to sound bossy.

Anyways, so I have a car now and I don’t have to ride the bicycle to work no more, and Elton has one of the best guitars made... so he’s set up and we can hit the Big Fuckin’ Apple or somewhere like that when he gets his chops together. Right now he’s out of practice... Of course he hasn’t had a guitar to play for like two years, so you’d be out of practice too! I know I would be. He showed me how hard it was, and I couldn’t even play a C chord. No way I could play that C chord.

I’m real drunk.

And Mother, she’d of spent it all on burgers and chicken and pizza, I know her—she’d of spent it all on foolishness until nothin’ was left of it and nobody’d have a car or a guitar or anything practical, and all the money’d be gone. That’s how she is, I know her, I’ve lived with her for twenty-two years. Mother is three bricks shy of a load, is what Elton says.

Goddamn, I’m drunk, but I’m not as drunk as I was. I’m coming out of it, and doesn’t everybody deserve a good bender when they’ve come into money? A lot of money, too—five thousand dollars, which Mother would have wasted, even if it was her money according to the raffle there at the super market. Elton is the one that told me, “Don’t take it to her, just tell Mrs. Hornbach—she’s the manager—he said, “Don’t tell Mrs. Hornbach that you’ve got any plans for the money, just act like you couldn’t care less.”

So that’s what I done. When they started to call Mother on the phone, I stepped up like Elton said, and I said, “Don’t call her, she’s just had ear surgery, and she can’t answer the phone.”

Now wasn’t that brilliant, what he came up with—fucking ear surgery. Anyway, that’s what I done, and me and him ended up acting like we was taking the money on home to Mother. Of course we tore ass as soon as we got outta the parking lot, me and Elton went to the car dealers and then to the Music Emporium, down on Shale and Vine, and that’s what happened, and Mother don’t know anything about winning any raffle, only that she bought a ticket off some snot-nosed little boy a week or so back.

She’s none the wiser and I am all set up.