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Powerball Fever GiGi Dane My arm ached
from shoulder to fingertips. The traffic had been heavy with countless
variations of give me five on pump seven and fifteen Powerball tickets.
The promise of three hundred and sixty million dollars infected
everyone. Blow a few bucks on beer and the rest on fantasy. Have some
hope with those cigarettes. Slurp some possibilities with that soda. Stretching
my jaw between good luck smiles, I grew weary of the faces that watched
me so intently. Like I had some miracle to grant. I'd sold a thousand
sets of hopeful numbers before it started feeling dirty. My hands grew
heavier as I took wrinkled bills from truck drivers, mothers with kids
begging for candy bars, dirty-haired winos, neatly dressed secretaries
and everyone else. No optimist was denied her fantasy. No desperate soul
was forbidden his hope. Mostly they
seemed to say what the hell, but a few had desperate hope in their eyes.
Some joked sell me the winner and I'll give you twenty chances to do so.
Others promised I'll come back and buy you that Mustang you've been
dreaming of. Some begged I need to take care of my kids somehow. I kept the
patter light and lied my smile on. Whaddaya think? I got the winner
here? Could be, could be. I got a chance? As good as anyone's. Can't win
if you don't play. Cheap thrill. Hope is addictive. But it's a
lie, my eyes say. You aren't going to win. Keep your money in your
pocket.
But no one sees because greed and need have mated into a maybe
and that maybe could become an upside down world, where they are on top. At the end of my shift, I added my own twenty to the till and rang up my own small hope. Copyright © 2002 GiGi Dane |