The convenience store was always empty at two o’clock in the morning. This worked out just fine for Albert Konky, who held even less patience with waiting in lines than most other residents in the small town of Norwalk, Ohio. His fat belly bounced as he walked down the candy aisle, first eyeing the chocolates—Marathon, Powerhouse, Snickers—then hesitating with a queer look on his bearded face over the other, stranger sweets the kids were eating this year. The boxes, he noticed, were getting more colorful, more garish. But then the decade was new. Nineteen-eighty was finally here, and it seemed to have brought with it (among other things) a kind of happy whirlwind that drove anyone under the age of thirty to paint the world like a rainbow.
“Volcano Rocks,” Konky said to himself, eyeing one of the red boxes. “What the hell?”
“More like harder than hell,” the man behind the counter replied. “Don’t eat those things, Al, they’ll break your teeth.”
“What about these?” He held up a small, pink pouch so the man—whose name was Eddie something—could see it.
Eddie something’s eyes grew wide. “Pop Rocks? Jesus Christ, no! They jump all over your tongue like a buncha damn fleas and then if you drink a soda pop with ‘em they explode in your stomach!”
“Get out of here.”
“I’m serious, Al. It happened to this one kid’s cousin’s younger sister. The kid was an actor on TV, somethin’ like that.”
“You’re serious all right. Seriously deranged.” He tossed the pouch back onto the rack. “Anyway, I’ll just go with a Marathon bar. ‘Lasts a good, long time.’ Just like me in the sack.”
Eddie grinned. “Blow it out your ass. Coffee?”
“Of course,” Konky said, walking up to the counter with his chocolate. “And a lottery ticket. Ohio Lotto.”
The grin widened. “A lottery ticket? What, they’re not paying you enough over at Sheller Globe?”
“Hell no they’re not paying me enough. I’m a calibrator. I come here on my nights off in a Chevette, wearing blue jeans and a T-shirt. What’s the jackpot?”
“Six million.”
Konky whistled at this. “God damn. Somebody’s going to hit that.”
“More like five or ten guys are going to hit it at once,” Eddie replied as he poured coffee into a Styrofoam cup. “And then bitch and piss and moan about who gets how much and why. One guy’ll want twenty-five percent because he went around back to take a piss against the wall before he bought the ticket, which timed everything just perfectly.”
“Eddie—“
“The other guy’ll also want that much—at least that much—because it was his car they took to the store that day.”
“Eddie—“
“Next thing you know they’re all fighting in court over the goddamned thing, not that it’ll matter, because two years later the whole pot’s blown on pussy and beer.” Eddie leaned forward on the cash register, an older man with hair and mustache styled like Albert Einstein’s, looking thoughtful and a little sad for all the unlucky lottery winners in the world. “You see what I’m saying, Al?” he asked. “You understand?”
Konky didn’t. “Eddie have you ever won anything in your life?”
“Just a free hand-job for cutting the loudest fart at a strip club up in Cleveland.”
“Very romantic. And how did that turn out?”
The sadness disappeared from Eddie’s face. “Well I didn’t have to share it with anyone.”
He placed a plastic cap on the coffee cup. Konky opened his mouth to ask for extra cream before realizing, just in the nick of time, how inappropriate such a request would be considering the topic of their conversation. He asked again for the lottery ticket instead.
“Your money,” Eddie shrugged. He produced a long, rectangular card from underneath the counter. On it, from top to bottom, was a series of ovals and numbers. “Know how to play?”
“I just pick any six numbers I want, right?”
“That’s right. There’s a golf pencil in that cup right next to you.”
Konky took the pencil. His brain, however, did not seem able to choose even one number, let alone six. The tip of the pencil hovered over the card. Finally he looked at Eddie for help. “Which numbers should I pick?”
“What am I, Uri Geller? I don’t know, Al. Try your birthday. Or the date of your graduation. Or the last time you took a shit.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“If I picked it for you and it won I’d just demand half the haul. I just tried to explain that.”
Konky’s eyes went back to the card. His birthday was no good—June of 1947 occupied no special place in his heart. Indeed, these days he spent most of his birthdays alone on the couch with a bottle of beer in his hand. High school graduation didn’t work, either. He’d gotten by on all of his subjects with Cs and Ds.
“Fuck,” he muttered. Then, more loudly: “Well, when did I last take a shit?”
Someone behind him gasped. “Goodness!”
He whirled around to find a little old lady with her mouth hanging open, a loaf of bread in her hand.
“Sorry, ma’am.”
Eddie looked at him and winked. “Pitch that loaf right up here on the counter, Stella. That’ll be ninety-nine cents.”
__________
The winning numbers were announced two nights later on television. By then Konky had forgotten all about buying the ticket. On the night before the announcement—Friday night—his foreman yelled at him for falling behind on his piecework. In and of itself this was nothing remarkable. Konky had never been the fastest man on the line and knew for a fact that he never would be; he simply didn’t enjoy his job enough to accomplish more than the very minimum requirements to hold it all down. But tonight, if not on any other night, there was somebody else to blame: Anderson Jenkins, his line partner.
“Big date tomorrow?” Jenkins asked, raising his voice over the radio that was always blaring in the work area.
Konky fumbled with the truck part while more were coming down the line. “What?”
“Aren’t you taking Marnie out somewhere romantic this weekend?”
Nobody at Sheller Globe liked working next to the lanky, chinless Jenkins, whose mouth moved much faster than his hands. But now Konky gave him an incredulous look.
“Oh yeah,” he blinked. “Jesus, I forgot.”
“Ha!” Jenkins laughed. “That’s just like you, Al! Wait’ll I tell Marnie that one!”
“Don’t even think about telling her that.” Konky took a step forward, bumping Jenkins with his protruding belly. “You just keep your mouth shut. I’ve been busy. I’ve got things going on. It just slipped my mind that’s all.”
“A date with a girl slipped your mind. Of course it did. You’re a regular Rudolph Valentino, Al.”
“KONKY!”
The foreman was big, but not the way Konky was big. A mountain of muscle had crept up behind him during his altercation with Jenkins—a man whose biceps bulged at the seams of his white dress shirt, and whose skull flamed red under the bristles of his flat-top haircut.
“How many times do I gotta stick my foot up that fat ass of yours? Huh? This is a factory not a goddamned tea party!”
Nobody ever had trouble hearing the foreman talk, no matter how loud the radio.
Konky turned back to the line. “Yes sir.”
“You do your fucking off at home, understand?”
“Yes sir.”
“That’s another demerit! And if I catch you talking on the line again I’ll have you suspended! Are we clear?”
“Yes sir.”
The foreman’s face twisted in disgust. “Twinkies and Ho-Hos, Al, that’s all I see when I look at you. You’re like the poster boy for the bowling league over at Kenilee Lanes.”
The entire line paused to laugh at this witticism, but no further reprimands were doled out. Of course not. Without another word to anyone the foreman stormed back to his office and slammed the door shut.
“Well fuck a duck in an old pick-up truck,” Jenkins said.
“Fuck you too while we’re at it,” Konky muttered back.
“I know why that date with Marnie really slipped your mind.”
“Yeah? Why?”
“Because you’re quitting here soon. Or you want to anyway.”
Konky’s hands shook as he calibrated the truck piece. He was not normally a man to be embarrassed, but encounters with superiors always seemed to do the trick. “Doesn’t everybody?”
“Yeah but didn’t you apply at Dickonson’s? For that motorcycle repair job?”
“Sure. They ain’t called me yet, though.”
“Don’t wait by the phone. Places like that only hire certified mechanics.”
“I’ve been fixin’ bikes all my life,” Konky rejoined, though Jenkins’ words made his heart sink.
“They won’t give a shit,” the other man pushed further. “All they’ll care about is the piece of paper that you don’t have. Tough luck, big guy.”
Konky didn’t know what to say to this. His hands kept working as fast as he could make them go, but the line kept falling further behind. Likely, it would take the rest of the night for it to catch up, and they would miss their quota. Another demerit for that. Maybe the foreman would wind up suspending him after all. Suspension without pay…with the rent coming due and the refrigerator empty. Konky told himself to work faster, trying not to think about unpleasant things.
“I wish somebody’d turn down that fuckin’ radio,” Jenkins moaned. “Christ how I hate the Eagles.”
__________
“Yo!”
“Yo.”
“Stevie! Did I wake you up?”
“Don’t worry about it,” the voice on the other end of the receiver said sleepily, “I had to get up to answer the phone anyway. Who the hell is this?”
“Oh come on! It’s Al Konky, your best buddy in the entire world!”
Hesitation now on the line; Konky could almost hear gears clicking as Stevie Primwater, the only man at Sheller Globe he honestly considered to be a friend, tried to make his head work after another Friday night of hard drinking.
“Jesus,” he managed. “Al. Yeah. We missed you at Reinick’s last night.”
“I had to work. Listen, I’m sorry I woke you up—“
“My head’s killin’ me.”
“Well, goddammit, stop drinkin’ all of that cheap beer at night. Switch to Tab or Fresca.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go fuck yourself. What do you need?”
“A car, for my date tonight with Marnie. Can I borrow your Matador?”
“My whatta-door?”
“Matador. Your car.”
“Oh!” Understanding flooded into Stevie’s tone. “Yeah, sure. But it’s a Javelin not a Matador.”
Konky blinked. “Get the fuck out of here. Are you serious?”
“Jesus Christ, Al. You’ve been in that car how many times? Didn’t you ever once bother to read the fucking console?”
“I’m sorry,” he laughed. “Can I pick it up at six o’clock tonight?”
“You can pick it up now. I’m not going anywhere for the whole rest of the day, believe me.” He paused for a moment. Then, tentatively: “Is the Chevette okay?”
“It’s the same as always,” Konky told him, “but your car’s a little nicer to look at. A little.”
“A little, right. Well you know where it’s at. Keys are in the flower pot.”
“Thanks again, Stevie. I owe you a beer for this.”
“Ugh. Please don’t mention beer to me ever again.”
Not long after he signed off there was a knock at the door. Konky opened it to find his neighbor’s eleven-year-old son, Bryce, smiling up at him. As usual, Bryce was wearing dirty clothes, and his hair was a mess. This was due in large part, Konky knew, from the boy’s lack of a mother. For two years now she’d been gone from his dad’s tiny apartment at the end of the hall.
“Hi Mr. Konky!” Bryce beamed, chipper as always despite having a dad who drank and a mom who was never around. “Collecting today. Two dollars.”
“Two dollars for that rag you leave on my doorstep every day?”
The boy’s smile beamed wider. “Of course! How else are the reporters going to buy ribbons for their typewriters?”
“Yeah, shit,” Konky grinned, fishing money out of his wallet. “Here ya go.”
“Thanks! Seeya!”
“Hey.”
Bryce turned around. His face was unwashed, his teeth were crooked; but his eyes could not have been more alive and healthy. “Yeah?”
“You ever get that bike you wanted? The little scooter for sale over on State Street?”
“Naw,” the boy shrugged, as if not getting it didn’t matter. “Dad couldn’t talk the guy down. Plus it doesn’t run anyway.”
Konky nodded at this, giving his own shrug in return. Soon Bryce had disappeared down the steps, and a minute later Konky saw him through the window, standing in the sunlight of the dead-end street they lived on, looking up at the sky with a bag of papers slung over his shoulder.
“Take her easy, kid,” Konky said quietly. “Shit happens and then you die.”
__________
“Shit,” Marnie said, “where the hell is my root-beer?”
Konky leaned over the table and told her to keep her voice down. Other diners frowned in their direction. “Sorry,” Konky simpered to one of them. “I think it was the TV.”
“Oh quit makin’ like you’re Prince Charles,” Marnie groaned. “This is Shakey’s not the Homestead Inn. Jesus.”
“It isn’t Sheller Globe either,” Konky admonished as he forked spaghetti onto his plate. “You shouldn’t talk like that in a public place.”
Their date had been a disaster thus far. It started with Stevie’s Javelin not being clean, forcing Konky to spend five dollars at Jim’s Auto Wash for a scrub-down and a polish. He’d also needed to dump about forty cigarette butts from the ashtray, mop spilled coffee from the console (with the word JAVELIN right there across the center), and wipe french fry grease off the steering wheel. Then, later that night, he’d forgotten to hold the door open for Marnie—he’d just sat there in the driver’s seat after honking the horn, smiling up at her like an idiot. No flowers, either; those had slipped his memory as well.
One look at Marnie made him realize that none of it mattered anyway. She’d come out to the car wearing a ragged green house dress, what looked like a dead animal of some kind twisted into the back of her hair, and no make-up.
“Beautiful,” Konky’d told her, smiling away, “climb on in here and let’s go.”
On the way out of Norwalk Stevie’s car broke down. Konky had gotten out and popped the hood, not quite able to get his mind around all the steam billowing from the Javelin’s engine while traffic blew by them on route 250.
“Radiator,” he’d told Marnie with a stupid grin on his face.
“No shit, Sherlock,” she’d come back with. “Do you need to piss? Sometimes that works when a car needs coolant.”
“Really?”
Her eyes rolled. “No I’m just fuckin’ with ya. Yes, really! Now do you or don’t you?”
He hadn’t, but a trucker on his way to Marblehead had been kind enough to stop and fill the radiator from a jug of water in his cab. Kind enough, that was, for a small fee.
“Five bucks,” he’d told Konky, holding out his palm.
“Jesus Christ!”
“Five bucks or wait for somebody else.”
So Konky’d paid the five dollars, and the Javelin had given him no further trouble. Now here they were at Shakey’s, and at least the spaghetti was good. Konky stuffed a huge forkful into his mouth and chewed while pretending to look ruminative. This brief moment of serenity perished, however, when Marnie pulled a face (uglier face) and reached for a napkin.
“Wipe it,” she ordered, reaching towards his beard.
Instantly the napkin went up in flames—she’d forgotten about the candle flickering on the table between them.
Konky snatched a glass of water and dumped it all over Marnie’s hand. “Jeez!” he hissed.
“Damn it, Al, look what you did!”
“I told you not to talk like that in public. Please,” he added, smiling up at a waiter who had just arrived.
“Is everything all right?” the other man asked with an even tone.
“Yes, fine,” Konky assured him. “Just a little mishap with the candle.”
“Can I get you some more water?”
“Thank you.”
Marnie, meanwhile, had turned the usage of one napkin into the usage of five. The sleeve of her cheap dress was soaked. “Thanks a lot,” she grimaced.
“I didn’t want you to get burned.”
“Right. There’s spaghetti sauce all over your beard—you might wanna do something about it.”
“Oops.”
“Fuck-a-doodle-doo, Al.”
“And now let’s find out the winning lotto numbers this week, right here from our very own Richard Heddenfayce. Richard?”
“Hello, Vicky! Yes, let’s get those numbers indeed…”
Konky stared at the TV mounted on the wall, where the network reporter was reaching into a glass-paneled wind machine for the first of what would be six plastic spheres with black numbers printed on them. Frowning, Konky reached into his wallet and pulled out the receipt he’d gotten from Eddie two nights previous.
“Eighteen!” Heddenfayce smiled after twisting the number towards the camera. “Thirty-five!” he continued, twisting another. “Twenty-six! Twelve! Forty-one! And one more, ladies and gentlemen, let’s wait. Here it comes up the chute. Twenty-nine! Well there you have it, Vicky! Those are this week’s lucky numbers! Did you win? Ha-ha!”
Konky looked from the TV, to his ticket, to the TV, and back to his ticket again. Something wasn’t right. This had to be a mistake. For all six of the numbers matched perfectly. In the time it had taken for the balls to pop up in the machine (about ninety seconds), he’d become a millionaire.
“Huh,” he said, blinking down at his hand.
“Al?” Marnie asked. “Are you all right?”
He put the ticket back into his wallet and smiled. “Yeah, I’m good.”
Still smiling, he pitched over face-first into his plate of spaghetti.
__________
On the following morning he woke up on the floor of his apartment. An empty bottle of bourbon lay nearby, along with two ashtrays full of crushed out cigarettes. By degrees, Konky began to remember his night of celebration. Had Marnie been a part of it? No, he didn’t think so. He’d dumped her off somewhere before making a beeline at the nearest bar. After that, everything went black.
He sat up gingerly, rubbing one hand on his temple and the other on his lower back. “Cock,” he muttered. “What a night.”
His eyes flew open wide. The ticket! Where was it? His pants pockets were empty—in fact, his fly was unzipped and his member was protruding out the pee door in his boxer shorts, whatever that all meant—and nothing else but dust-bunnies littered the floor.
“No! Fuck no, oh please, no!”
His head turned left, then right. There underneath the desk lay his wallet, flapped open like a dead bird. Konky snatched it, plunged his fingers under a yellow photograph of his mom smoking a Camel, and pulled out the lotto ticket. A sigh of relief plumed from his lips. Everything was cool.
In fact, things were so cool, it was time to claim the jackpot and start living like a millionaire. Step number one involved dialing the 800 number on back of the ticket. Konky did this while slumped in his favorite recliner. After three rings a pleasant female voice spoke into his ear.
“Ohio Lottery offices, this is Megan, how can I help you?”
“Hello, Megan,” Konky said cheerfully. “I hit your biggest jackpot last night. Six million dollars.”
“Well that’s very nice to hear, sir,” the woman replied without the slightest change in tone. “May I have your name, please?”
“Albert Delaware Konky.”
Keys clacked on the other end of the phone. “Delaware like the state?”
“That’s right.”
“And how do I spell Konky?”
“K-O-N-K-Y.”
“Okay, Mr. Konky, please confirm that your ticket has these numbers printed on it. 12-18-26-29-35-41.”
“Those are the ones I’ve got all right.”
“Very good, Mr. Konky, let me just transfer you to our claiming department.”
“Hot damn,” Konky gushed, grinning from ear to ear.
“Yes sir, Mr. Konky. Please hold.”
There was some clicking on the line, and then the sound of another number being dialed. Feeling like the lord of all he surveyed, Konky spread his legs open to let what was quite possibly the loudest fart he had ever cut escape his bowels. Life today seemed just too good to care anymore.
“WELCOME!” a voice shouted through the receiver, making him jump, “to the Ohio Lottery’s claiming department! And congratulations on your success!”
“Why thank you very much,” Konky replied, easing back into the chair.
“Please be advised that our offices are closed on Sundays—“
He sat up. “What the fuck?”
“--but you may call back on Monday morning at 9AM for instructions on how to claim your prize!”
“Goddammit!”
“Thank you very much for calling Ohio Lottery! Have a pleasant day!”
“Goddammit, goddammit!”
The recording ended; the line went dead. Konky put the ticket into the desk drawer. He showered, dressed, then went out to get some breakfast.
Bryce waved up from a pile of toy cars on the front walk. “Hi Mr. Konky!”
“Hey, Bryce. Traffic jam?”
He laughed. “Yeah. Dad’s sick this morning so he told me to go outside.”
“I know just how he feels,” Konky said, wishing he’d remembered to take aspirin before setting out.
“Is there a flu going around?”
“Yeah. Sunday morning fever. Stay happy, kid.”
“I will!”
__________
He called in sick from work that night. Some of the bars in Norwalk stayed open on Sundays, and Konky intended to hit every one of them he could find. This turned out to be a mistake for multiple reasons. One of them involved waking up on Monday afternoon with the biggest hangover of his life. But long before that, at around 3AM…
“Yeah, it looks like you’ve been hit pretty good here, Mr. Konky,” the policeman said, entrenched in the shambles of what had once been Konky’s apartment. “TV. Stereo. You said you had some cash put away in your closet too?”
“Yeah,” Konky growled. He felt sick in a way he had never known before. Frustration, despair, and what had to be the sourest kind of hatred there was boiled in his belly like a poisonous stew. “But I don’t give a shit about that. I wanna know why the fuck whoever it was robbed my apartment felt the goddamned need to clean out my desk. Jesus Christ, he had my TV on one shoulder and my stereo on the other! Why would he even bother? WHY?”
The officer let out a long breath of air. “Well that’s hard to say, Mr. Konky. These kinds of criminals know they don’t have much time to do their work, so they grab anything they can as fast as they can.”
“MY DESK!” Konky bellowed. He swept a tree of coffee mugs off the kitchen sink, shattering glass everywhere.
“Was there something special inside of your desk, Mr. Konky?” the officer asked with his brow raised.
“Personal shit. Papers.” Then, under his breath: “Fuck!”
“Documentation? Birth certificate? Driver’s license?”
“Cash vouchers.”
“I see. And what was the value of the vouchers?”
Konky’s eyes widened. “What was?” he asked. “Does that mean I’m totally fucked out of my belongings for good, officer?”
“They will be difficult to recover, Mr. Konky, I won’t lie about that. But the department will make every effort to resolve this matter.”
Konky’s hand went to his forehead and rubbed. He felt like crying, except that tears required energy, and he didn’t seem to have any on hand. After the officer left he slept for the rest of that morning with his arm hanging over the edge of the bed. Twelve hours later he came around with a terrible hangover. He rolled over and fell, hitting his head on the floor. That made it even worse. Still, he managed to stand and stagger into the next room to give the desk—as well as the area around it—one final exploratory sweep. But no joy came of it. The six million dollar ticket was gone.
The next stop was the bathroom. There, he vomited into the toilet for almost five minutes before nearly passing out on the floor from exhaustion. His bowels felt twisted and tight, ready for revolt. As if on cue, a sudden stabbing pain ripped through them. Konky got his pants off and his butt on the toilet-seat just in the nick of time to avoid disaster.