Luck

Prompt: A story about good or bad luck


Arthur Huxley walked briskly down the street towards the café. He had a two hour block set aside during the afternoon and he intended to spend every possible minute of it with Christine. He considered it his greatest piece of luck to have hired the beautiful receptionist and that he had drawn her into this affair so easily. I’m the luckiest man in the world, he thought as he hurried along the sidewalk.

Arthur didn’t notice the aging Jamaican he knocked aside. Scarecrow thin, with clothes that were once colorful and now faded, long dreadlocks and a sorrowful brown face, the man blended in with the dispossessed masses and the other crazies. Arthur was vaguely aware that the man shouted something about voodoo and made some sort of hand gesture behind his back, but this was New York. Everyone flipped everyone off. If he greeted Christine with a raised middle-finger, she might not even notice.

He spied her waiting just inside the café that was their rendezvous. In each hand she held a cup of coffee, as thoughtful in those little things as she was between the sheets. His mind raced ahead to the hotel where he would soon be experiencing her…thoughtfulness, but he was jarred from those pleasant thoughts by a white splatter of shit as some passing bird vented its bowls on the shoulder of his suit. His seven hundred dollar suit.

Arthur closed the last distance to his mistress cursing, the smile gone from his face.

“Hi,” he said brusquely.

“Here, let me help,” she said. Thoughtful.

Christine juggled the coffee, trying to hand him one of the small napkins that was curled around the cups. He reached for them, snagged one too quickly, and pulled the coffee cup from her hand. The lid popped ajar and scalding coffee splashed his hand.

“Motherfucker!”

Christine winced at the curse as much as for her part in burning Arthur.

“I’m sorry, Arthur. Really, I am.” She took the rest of the napkins more carefully and helped to wipe his hand. “I’ll go get some more napkins.”

He followed her inside and took the proffered napkins into the bathroom to clean up the bird shit. Well, these things happened, and it was only a few minutes. He still had most of the afternoon, and he was sure that as soon as he had Christine naked and squealing that he would forget all about these annoyances.

Except the faucet was broken. He wiped up the stinking crap as best he could with dry napkins and paper towels.

“Your sink is broken,” he accused the barista as he walked out of the café. “Let’s get out of here,” he told Christine.

“Looks like you’re having a bad day, hun,” She smiled at him and leaned close. “I’ve been thinking and…I’m willing to try that…that thing you asked about.” She blushed, looking very shy and very vulnerable. Arthur was considerably cheered and was half-tempted to throw her down and do that thing right there on the sidewalk.

He settled for a passionate kiss and a not-so-subtle grope. The screeching of tires and the honking of horns shattered his rising good mood.

“Arthur!?”

He looked around wildly, but the voice was clear. A car was stopped dead in the middle of the street, cars stalled bumper to bumper behind it, the cacophony of horns not loud enough to drown out the sound of his wife yelling. She stared out the window, leveling a gorgon’s gaze at Arthur.

“You bastard!”

Christine pulled away, the pretty blush gone, her cheeks pale now.

“I…I should go…” she stammered. Christine turned on her heel and trotted quickly away without looking back. Arthur knew that he’d never get her back in the sack now.

“Don’t bother coming home, you two-timing scum!” Arthur flinched, turning back to face his furious wife.

“Wait! Janice! I…I can explain!” He started towards the car, but the tinted window was already rolling up, shutting him out.

“Explain it to my lawyer!” With a screech of tires, Janice lurched into motion, smacking the side mirror against a parked cab and shattering it. She was driving his car of course.

“Wait!” Arthur stepped out into the street to give chase. He wasn’t sure what he could do to salvage this situation, but if there was salvaging to be done he would have to talk to Janice to do it.

Unfortunately, with the sudden dam in traffic gone, two cabs tried to slide into the vacuum. But Arthur had also stepped out into that space. He turned just in time to see the two cabbies looking, not at him, but at each other, multi-language curses flying, and then he was hit.

The crunching metal and the brittle snap that accompanied incredible pain blended together. More horns were honking, more people were cursing, but the only thing that Arthur could hear was one tall, scarecrow-thin man bending over him.

“Bad luck, mon…”