Rolling in the Deep (6 page)

The thing that sucks about moving upstate and not knowing anybody is that when you win the lottery, there’s no one to talk to about it.

Cry me a river, right?

I’ve been pacing the linoleum on my kitchen floor for days, going over the press conference and wondering if I should have just left, like Holly did. Talking to the newspeople fed the fire, and now my phone won’t stop ringing. I don’t know how they got my number. It’s a human-interest story, they say, a rags-to-riches story. And everyone wants a piece of it.

I chop probably my seventeenth onion on a cutting board my mother gave me two Christmases ago. In the last several days I’ve cooked three separate pots of soup, a batch of gorditas I brought down to Patty at the store, and two trays of penne for the freezer. I think I’ve washed every dish in the house twice. But no matter how I try to keep busy, my brain won’t stop spinning.

It’s not just the news media. All these organizations I’ve never heard of are calling, too, and sending emails. Requesting meetings. Requesting money. This is only the beginning, I know that. My lawyer and the lottery commission guy both warned me to expect it, but it’s one thing to consider having to say no, theoretically. It’s another to be the jerk who has to do it in reality.

I throw the onions into a heating sauté pan and get to work on the carrots and celery.

There will be places I give money. I wouldn’t know what the hell to do with all this cash otherwise, and it’s only right. I just have no idea how to make those decisions right now. The check won’t even clear into my bank account until sometime next week.

The kitchen starts to fill with the scent of mirepoix, a comforting smell. A familiar smell. I ran out of stock last night. Might as well make a new batch for the freezer.

There are people I’ll want to take care of, before anything else. My brother and his kids, obviously. Tony has done pretty well for himself, but college isn’t cheap, and God knows the guy could use a vacation. Maybe we could go on a cruise to Alaska or something ridiculous like that—just us, while the girls are with their mom. That’d be fun. Two dudes playing shuffleboard next to a glacier.

Then there are the cousins to think about—all the kids of Mom’s brother and sisters in Mexico and Texas. My
tío
has passed, but the aunts are pretty young still. I’ll have to decide how much to set aside for them, and how to divide it fairly without causing any ill will, which won’t be easy. Dad’s family is pretty minimal. He was an only child of a single mom, and she died before I was born.

I push the vegetables around in the pan with a wooden spoon and try to imagine what Dad would think of all this. I knew him mostly as a photograph on Mom’s bedroom wall, through the stories she’d tell about him. He was a good, stable person, she always said. She loved his Brooklyn-Italian accent. He made her laugh. Twenty years after his death, she still couldn’t talk about him for more than a few minutes without crying. It never occurred to her to remarry.

I’ve wondered over the years what he would make of his sons. I have his smile, people have told me. I have what Mom claims is a genetic devotion to Italian food. But I have no idea what it would have been like to have a dad to throw a ball around with, to talk about things with. It was always Tony who played that role for me, even though he was only five years older.

I wish he were here with me now, or that I were back in Queens, where people knew me. Where at least one person would understand the bat-shit madness of the last few days.

Although, honestly, that one person would not be my brother. It would be Holly. And I can’t talk to her.

Ironic that the phone’s ringing off the hook and the one person I most want to talk to won’t return my calls.

I throw some fresh thyme and peppercorns into the pan, add water, and cover it up. Then I pick up my cell.

There are dozens of missed calls and voicemails I haven’t listened to.

Texts, too. One from a coworker at Cogmans that I almost don’t bother to look at. I quit yesterday. My night job at the restaurant I kept, on the off chance that I find the balls to apply to the Culinary. But Cogmans? One of the local stations caught on to the fact that Holly and I worked there together, and the place has been mobbed with news vans. Practically everyone we worked with has been interviewed on TV. I hated the job anyway, except for Holly, and now that it’s a three-ring circus, I’m done.

I read the text.

Ray! Come get yr last paycheck. Brk rm, noon. Ltr, Chris.

Weird. They can’t mail it? I text Chris back to ask but he insists that I come in and pick it up. Which I don’t mind, actually. I’ll go certifiably nuts if I stay alone in this apartment all day. I finish the stock, let it cool, and throw it in the freezer. Then I shrug on a jacket and head out to my truck.

As I’m pulling out of my street, a network news van pulls in and heads toward my house. I send a silent prayer of thanks to Chris for busting me out just in time, but when I arrive at Cogmans it’s even worse. I see the cluster of antennas and portable satellite dishes as soon as I turn into the parking lot. Luckily there’s employee parking and a private staff entrance in the back. I ease around the building, throw a baseball cap on my head, and duck inside through the back door.

It leads straight into the warehouse, which is quiet this time of day since most of the staff is on the floor helping customers. The only person I can see is Timmy, the day manager, sneaking a cigarette near one of the loading docks.

He spots me, and inclines his chin in greeting, lifting the cigarette.

“Guess you’re not gonna narc on me about this anymore, are you? Now that you’re out of here and all.”

I take off my cap and run a hand over my hair. “Wouldn’t anyway. How you doing, Tim?”

“Can’t complain. Who’d listen if I did?” He takes a deep drag.

He looks smaller, which I guess is no surprise. He doesn’t have any power over me anymore, and we both know it. It’s diminished him in both our eyes.

“Chris said I should come and, you know, get my last check.”

He shrugs. “They got something for you and Holly in the break room. A cake or some shit. Act shocked.”

“Yeah?” I stand there like an idiot for a minute and watch him smoke. “You want to, uh, join, or…”

He lifts a hand dismissively. “Nah. You go. More cake for you.”

“Okay. Right. Listen, thanks, Timmy. For, you know—”

“Shut it, Lopez. Go roll around on a bed full of hundred-dollar bills or something.”

I laugh. “What’s in that cigarette, man?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” He points his fingers into a gun shape and pretends to shoot me. “Get the fuck out of here already.”

“Yeah. Okay.” I salute him one last time and head into the store.

The lights on the floor are bright and severe compared to the stockroom, and my eyes take a minute to adjust.

My ears, too. As soon as I open the door a rush of sound barrels into me—the electric whir of the track lights overhead, the wailing of a child one aisle down, the awful light-rock music playing on the intercom. The buzz of shoppers arguing, sighing, pushing against heavy carts piled with stuff.

I walk through the aisles on the way to the break room and take in the racks and baskets that fill every corner of available space. Plastic toys, synthetic clothing, giant televisions—I picture all of it stacked up for miles on top of a landfill someday. And that day won’t be too far off, judging by the quality of the material, by the fact that it’s built to break so that consumers will buy more.

A young woman in her twenties passes by with a cart full of meat and DVDs, and all of a sudden what I most want to do is turn around and run.

I come to a standstill in the middle of the aisle.

I can do that now, if I want to.
I can run. I don’t have to be here anymore. I can be anywhere I want, go anywhere I want. Be anyone I want to be.

I don’t have to stand here smelling the plug-in air freshener. Or breathing in the fine layer of weirdly chemical dust that coats every item in this store, which we can never fully clean.

I can leave.

But the woman with the cart next to me can’t. She can’t afford to shop anywhere else. All my coworkers, waiting for me in the break room with a cake to celebrate my lottery win—they can’t leave. They need this job, just like I did a few days ago.

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with that.

From the other side of the media section Chris calls out to me. “There he is.” He gestures toward an open door at the back and then turns to announce my arrival. A chorus of cheers goes up as I approach the door, and inside, a cluster of balloons and a sheet cake wait on a table surrounded with chairs.

“All right, Ray! You made it. Congrats, man. Sincerely.”

Everyone in the room claps, and my eyes immediately find Holly, standing awkwardly in the back of the room. It’s strange seeing her here in the store without her uniform on. She’s wearing a denim skirt and a worn-looking yellow T-shirt, and looks like one of Charlie’s Angels. My heart contracts, and I take an involuntary step forward.

Chris follows my gaze. “Holly got here first, yeah. Sorry. She gets the first slice of cake. Hol? What do you say?”

She smiles at him and comes forward. They’ve worked together for a few years, I think. Chris is an older guy, in his late sixties. A retired schoolteacher who puts in part-time hours. He sets a fatherly arm around Holly’s shoulders and guides her to the cake.

“We don’t have long, unfortunately. Timmy’ll have my ass if I’m not out on the floor in a minute.” He clears his throat while Holly begins cutting and handing out slices. “Listen, everyone. I just want to take a minute to raise a glass—or a plate, I should say—to these two lucky people you see before you. Holly here is an old buddy, and Ray, we only just met you but you seem like a stand-up guy, and you did hook our girl up with some serious cash, so thank you.”

Holly hands him a slice of cake, and he grins at her. The whole room, in fact, is grinning, and I look around at their faces—these people who could have been my friends. They stand together, shoulder to shoulder, and regard Holly and me as though we’re aliens. Which of course we are now. One by one, they congratulate us before they head back to work, and I believe that they do mean it. The understandable envy is harder for some to hide than for others, but they do their best to set it aside. They wish us well.

We’re not in the same boat as they are now. We have access to things they’ll never be able to reach for. We have a kind of freedom—a freedom from worry. About bills, college tuitions, health crises, mortgages, emergencies. We will always and forever have a cushion between us and the real, immediate survival concerns that most people spend the majority of their lives trying to face.

They file out of the room as a group and leave Holly and me behind, which is only fitting.

We may not be in the same boat as they are anymore, but on their boat, they are all together. They have each other still.

Who will we be the same as now? Will we walk into a country club, say, with stacks of cash in our hands, and be received with open arms? I doubt it.

To our friends here at Cogmans we’ll be members of a different class, an outsider class—the super-rich. And to the super-rich we’ll be the Beverly Hillbillies.

I glance at Holly. She looks like she’s thinking similar thoughts, and I feel a sharp pang for her. These people might have been my potential friends, but they were Holly’s actual friends. Awkwardness with them is going to make things very lonely for her.

Chris claps us both on the back as he heads out. He, for one, is doing his level best to put us at ease, which is pretty generous if you ask me. I think Holly once told me that he’s a deacon at his church, and a hospice volunteer.

And I’m the one who wins the lottery. How is that fair?

“Congratulations, you two,” Chris says, stopping at the door. “Couldn’t have happened to better people.”

Holly goes over, hugs him tight, and thanks him. He walks out to the store, whistling, leaving Holly and me alone.

She eyes me warily. “Hey, Ray.”

The worn fabric of her T-shirt clings to the curves of her hips, her breasts. Which I should not be noticing. Not now.

I clear my throat. “Hi.”

“This was nice of them, wasn’t it?” She tosses her cake plate in the trash and starts cleaning up the table. “We should probably fix this up before we go.”

“Yeah. Of course.” I move in to help. “How you doing? You…Everything okay?”

She won’t look at me, which in a way I’m grateful for. I have a feeling she’d be able to read the turn of my thoughts, and at the moment, they’re not about cake.

It’s been only a few days since I’ve seen her alone, but the number of times I’ve replayed kissing her in my mind is embarrassing to even think about.

Except that remembering it at night in my bed, alone, it hasn’t ended with a kiss. In those silent, furtive versions, I’ve taken her back to my apartment. I’ve touched every part of her.

I grit my teeth and gather up the used napkins on the table.

“Yeah,” Holly says. “I’m…I’m fine. It’s settling down a little now. You know, the craziness.”

I pause across the table and weigh the risk of looking into her eyes.
Man up, Ray. You’re a grown-ass man and should be able to handle talking to a woman without losing your shit.
I straighten and face her full-on. “It’s starting to sink in, right?”

She nods but doesn’t answer. Almost as if she can’t. Her eyes hold mine, and she takes in a long, shaky breath. Then she looks down and puts the plastic cover on top of the cake. “I’d, um…I’d better go.”

I stack up the rest of the clean plates and step back from the table. “Yeah. Okay. Me too.”

She grabs her purse from a chair and starts toward the door.

“Are you parked in the front?”

That stops her short. “Yeah.”

“The reporters.” I stand with her just inside the doorway. A few feet away, shoppers continue filling their carts to the sound of a Muzak version of a Steely Dan song. I notice a pile of earbud boxes have fallen to the floor and almost step out to clean them up. But then I remember it’s not my job anymore.