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The Man With Lady Luck in a Bottle by Jason Helton  The sun fell through the window of Thomas’s apartment, crawled past the socks and pizza boxes and empty beer cans. It climbed the side of the bed, searching for the man within. Thomas grumbled and rolled over, pulling the sheets around him and fighting for sleep. Somewhere in the distance, an alarm clock screeched and Thomas struck it silent. The sunlight crept closer and the alarm cried out again. Thomas made a sound that was somewhere between a sigh and a plea for mercy and stirred.Mornings were always when Thomas felt the worst. His showers were cold (something in the pipes, the landlord had told him), the coffee was bad, and everywhere was the looming knowledge that work was only an hour or so away. Thomas shuddered. Work was horrible, but the apprehension of it was almost worse. At least when the day began it was that much closer to being over.“Thomas,” said Rick, “I need your report on the Clarks’ file by Tuesday.”Thomas nodded and was silent. Carol approached, two cups of coffee in hand. “Here you go,” she said, handing him a cup.“Thanks.” Thomas gulped it down fast. The office coffee was better than what he had at home. When Thomas had first discovered this, he thought of it as a new low, but now he only saw it as justification for buying the cheap stuff. He had considered never buying coffee again, but had decided against it after he had gone an entire week in a home without coffee. Thomas whiled away the hours, poring over reports and sucking down cup after cup of the sweet office coffee and watching the clock as though each second could be his last. It might have been, at that. Thomas had heard that everyone’s life was ending one second at a time. He supposed some might see this as inspiration to get their act together, but he only wished it would hurry up. After work came the bars and the beers, one after another, a momentary reprieve from life, but a reprieve nonetheless. Sometimes there were women and sometimes there were not, and sometimes they went home with him. Thomas was not a remarkably attractive man by his own standards, but he was certainly not ugly. Like most men he had no idea how he was perceived by the opposite sex.When the drinking was done he would find his way back home and go to bed and dread the coming dawn. So life continued, days bleeding into days. Endless monotony; weeks drug on too long and weekends were over too quickly. Women came and went and so did friends. Happiness came in doses. And then the phone rang.“Hello.”“Hello.”A moment of confusion followed by the flood of recognition; memories cropped up from the forgotten places. College days filled with drinking and partying and too much sleep and too much fucking and just too much. Days when there really were no worries and life was just a party and it seemed the party would never end.“Jack?”“Bingo, buddy. I was worried I had the wrong number for a minute, you’re a hard man to track down, you know? How have you been?”“Fine,” Thomas lied, “And you?”“Never been better and that’s no lie. What are you doing next week?”“I don’t know.”“Well come and see me. I live in Colorado now, just east of the mountains. Beautiful country, you ever see it?”“No.”“Then you’ve got to come out here, man. You haven’t lived until you see this shit.”“I don’t know, Jack. I don’t think I have the money.”“I’ll book your tickets for you. I’ll e-mail a confirmation number to you tomorrow. Is Wednesday good?”Thomas thought for a moment. He would have to take off work, but a long weekend might be just what he needed. It had been too long since he had taken a vacation.“Sure. Wednesday’s fine.”“Great. I’ll see you then,” and the line went dead.Thomas hung up the phone and shook his head. He had not heard from Jack in, what was it, ten years? And now he calls up out of nowhere. Thomas popped a beer and wondered if his friend was in some kind of trouble.Wednesday came and Thomas found himself in Colorado and he saw what Jack had meant. It really was beautiful country, but Thomas still could not shake a sense of apprehension about the whole thing.Then he saw the house-the mansion, rather-and the feeling of apprehension gave way to confusion and even envy. It was enormous; vast. It seemed to stretch on forever and Thomas could only stare.The cab pulled through the front gate and let him out at the door, where Jack was standing, waiting with his arms spread wide. Jack laughed, seeing Thomas’s awkward gaze of naked wonder and said, “Nice place, huh?” Thomas nodded and Jack steeped into the drive. “Here let me help you with your bags and I’ll give you the tour.” The tour took the better part of an hour. Eleven bedrooms, five bathrooms, two kitchens; a man could get lost in a home like this. Thomas was silent for most of the tour, only pointing out, when they made it to the basement, that the one room was bigger than his apartment. Jack only smiled and said, “Yeah.” When the tour was finished, Thomas was astounded. He could not believe Jack had done so well for himself.And why not? Just because you’re a failure he can’t have a good life?We were the same.So you both drank like a pair of fish, at least he turned his life around.Jack spent the rest of the day catering to his friend, entertaining him and-Thomas felt-showing off perhaps more than was necessary. They went golfing, something Thomas had not done since college; drove a mountain path, and spent the evening bar-hopping, just for old times sake.Thomas felt guilty for his skepticism, but he could not drive the questions from his mind. How had Jack done it? How had he turned his life around so easily? Thomas wondered for a moment if his friend was a criminal.After their glasses had been emptied close to a dozen times each, Thomas asked the question.Jack raised an eyebrow, “Do what?”“The cars, the house, the money, how did it all happen?”Jack knocked back another scotch and said, “You really want to know?”Thomas nodded and Jack asked, “Can you keep a secret?”The bartender filled Jack’s glass and Thomas nodded again. Jack said, “Luck.”“I don’t understand.”Jack started on the new drink and began his story.“About seven years ago I was no different than you. I had figured that after we graduated life would be easy, but I couldn’t hold a job and I was living paycheck to paycheck. I went to parties, spent too much time in bars,” He might as well be describing me, Thomas thought, “it wasn’t that different from school actually.“Then one night I was making my rounds and I found myself here, and sitting in that stool, right where you are now, was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.”Thomas was puzzled and started to ask what a woman had to do with his newfound success, but Jack continued.“So I asked her for her name and she wouldn’t tell me, but she asked me to dance and so I just thought she was playing with me, but I danced with her and bought her a drink. We talked for hours and I began to think I was falling for her. Might have just been the booze talking, but I desperately wanted to know her name, so I asked her again. She laughed and told me that I didn’t strike her as the kind of man to be trusted. I asked her ‘Why not?’ and she told me that names are powerful things, not to be given lightly. I told her that I would give her my name, but she said she already knew it, and she told me my name, where I lived, where I worked; the woman knew everything.“I asked her if she was stalking me and she just laughed and told me I was silly. I asked her for her name again and she sighed and said if I bought her one more drink she would tell me. So I bought her the drink and she told me her name.”“And what did she say?”“She told me that she was Lady Luck herself. The Goddess of Luck in the flesh. At first I didn’t believe her, but she told me to look into her eyes, and when I did I knew that it was the truth. She had the most beautiful eyes I have ever seen; like dark green forests. They shone like the moon and pulsed and swirled as she spoke. She truly was what she said.“So I got to thinking and I ordered us another drink, and then another. We drank the night away, laughing and talking like old friends, and when she was good and hammered I ordered a bottle of wine to finish the night. I poured the wine and kissed her and she smiled and when we had finished the wine I put her in the bottle and screwed the cork in tight. I’ve had her there ever since.”Jack finished his story with a smile and Thomas looked on, bewildered. “You’re lying.”“No. Every word is true.”“But that’s impossible.”“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?”“You put her in a bottle?”“Exactly.”“How?”“I don’t believe you.”“You should.”“Don’t you think that’s a little selfish, keeping her in that bottle all this time?”“I give to charity, help out when I’m needed, I’ve paid my dues. Who cares if I get a little fat off of it?”“Don’t you think she’s a little unsatisfied with the situation?”“I don’t know. She’s never told me.”“Have you asked?”Jack only laughed.The bartender announced last call and Jack stood to leave.“Come on, we can take a cab back to my house. I’ll pick up the car in the morning.”Thomas began to protest, but stopped. He could not remember ever winning an argument against Jack and he was fairly certain he would not win this one. He only said, “I still don’t believe you.”“Believe what you want to believe, but you asked what happened and I told you.”They caught a cab back to Jack’s and Jack told Thomas that the guest room was all made up for him. Thomas went to sleep that night thinking of Jack’s story and how absurd it was, but he found himself wondering, in spite of himself, if Lady Luck herself was lying in a bottle under his bed. “Let me out.”Thomas started and sat up in the bed, shaking his head to silence the dream-voice, but it came again, “Let me out.”It was feminine, silky and sweet, but it filled the home and reverberated in his head and his eyes. “Let me out.”“Downstairs.”Thomas snuck down the stairs and into what Jack had called the foyer.“In the grandfather clock. By the wall.”Thomas crept to the clock and opened the door slowly, wincing when it creaked, and half expecting the glass to fall out of the door and come crashing to the ground. He felt the walls of the clock and felt his hand brush against something. He pulled out a bottle of wine that was filled with some sort of green vapor. It was glowed in the dark of the room and when the voice spoke, the green mist swirled and pulsed in time.“Let me out of here,” the voice cried, now high and shrill.“Are you Lady Luck?” Thomas asked.“Yes, now let me out.”The next morning, Thomas told Jack that he had to fly home. He said that his boss had called in the night and told him that there had been an emergency with his client and he was needed immediately. “Hey, sounds like you’re getting to be a pretty important guy. You should ask for a promotion.”Thomas said he was sorry and Jack said that he was welcome anytime and drove him to the airport. A few months later Thomas called up an old friend from college. Her name was Sandy. They had never dated, and Thomas had always regretted it and decided to make up for lost time. Of course, he did not tell her any of this. She was just coming out to see an old friend.“Hey, Sandy,” Thomas said, when the cab dropped her off."Nice place," Sandy replied, drinking in the sight of the beautiful home. Thomas smiled at the wonder in her eyes. “Come on in, I’ll get us a bottle of wine and we can catch up.”Thomas led her inside and made his way to the wine cellar and as he approached the back rack, where he kept all of his best wines, he heard a smile voice crying to be let out, crying from a bottle that had never been opened and, if his luck held out, never would be. Jason Helton writes from Lee's Summit, Missouri. His story, "The King of the Sky," appeared in Sweetgum Notes 2.2. Copyright © 2006. Do not reproduce without permission.
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