Lottery

After Sharon’s death, shot dead on the street on her way to his place, possibly by a stray bullet, Withers lost his art. His photography exhibits, Men with Beards and Beautiful, Beautiful, Turds, had put him on the map. And now, after her murder, Pictures of Sharon. What did it matter? One solitary bullet, whether intended or not, had taken her out like the trash. The current news was full of such incidents but being in the wrong place at the wrong time, if that was what had happened to Sharon, if Menshevitz, his nemesis, had not killed her, felt like a cosmic joke. Menshevitz was a man with a beard whom he had photographed and decided to include not in Men With Beards but with the turds; Menshevitz, or whatever his name was, was that kind of guy. Menshevitz had promised to do him dirty. After Sharon died, though, he claimed on the phone that his kvetch was with Withers, not with the woman the photographer dated.

“She was a victim of the synchronicity of life,” Menshevitz said. “Your gripe is with God or the cosmos or simple happenstance.”

Withers wanted to hit something. Hard.

Menshevitz’s disclaimer didn’t make it any easier for Withers to land his little plane of mortality in the quotidian airfield that surrounded him. He was no pilot, only a passenger, and he had no map for his grief. He would wake at three in the morning soaked with sweat and reaching out for Sharon. He fiddled for a time, took antidepressants but stopped because they didn’t agree with his gut or make him happy, gave him itches that wouldn’t stop. He listened to soothing classical music and to saccharine ballads of the sort the label Windham Hill had championed. William Ackerman, George Winston, Michael Hedges. And minimalist music, he found some of that relaxing. For an hour or more it would help. Terry Riley, Meredith Monk, Philip Glass, Steve Reich. It helped him find sleep. When he wasn’t listening to music, he worked on his photographs of Sharon, work already scheduled for exhibit but in need of tweaks. The goal was perfection; his darkness prevailed.

If reality is synchronicity and happenstance, how does desire matter?

After a time he dated women who looked like Sharon. He was tall, good looking, rugged in a Western way, and his story of love and grief was golden, but he was too angry deep inside at her loss to fake it, to pretend he cared about women who became bed partners. One Saturday, bored with his locked-in grief that he couldn’t express, fatigued by it, yet trapped inside it because he lived with photographs of her spread around his apartment, he walked to the corner convenience store, where the friendly owner, whose name was Patel, a stout man in his late fifties who kept the coffee fresh, and bought five Powerball tickets. He used his favorite numbers on three of them—16/24/34/58/65, 21/41/49/58/62, and 16/19/38/43/47/— and let the machine pick the rest. His Powerball numbers were all in the teens because he remembered his mother telling him more than once that in his own teenage years he was perfect in everything he did. He had no idea what she meant, it was something a mother would say, but it made him sound like a happy kid.

Later that evening, while drinking cognac, his drink of choice after Sharon’s murder, he wondered which of the five tickets would win the huge prize. It thundered outside—or was it the undercarriage of a semitrailer scraping asphalt?—and he took it as a sign.

Big money. What would he do with it?

It enraged him next morning when he woke to overcast skies to find the Powerball prize even bigger and his tickets worthless. What could have happened? Intellectually he understood the odds, of course, but still couldn’t shake the feeling that he had been robbed. He had lost his lover, his manager, and his influencer: Sharon. He was due a spot of luck. “Don’t just survive, thrive,” his mother liked to say. He thought about calling her—she would be having her coffee in the breakfast nook staring out the window at birds and squirrels, surrounded by hanging plants—but knew that she’d yap-yap-yap and turn him maudlin. He’d end up raging about his luck. “Some people have either bad luck or none at all,” he could hear her say. “You’re a successful man who’s hit a bump in the road. That’s all. Grief is our lot in life. Except when it isn’t.”

He walked downstairs and to the corner store to confront Patel about the tickets but came to his senses by the time the bell above the swinging door clanged. He bought 10 more tickets, five Powerball, five MegaMillion. “The odds are better,” Patel said, courteous as he rung up the sale, “with the state games.”

“Good to know. Next time. Thank you.” He saluted the man, who made a face as if sucking on a lemon but returned the salute vigorously.

That night he tried to use his dreams to influence the numbers on the ping pong balls that would determine the next big lottery winner. He put his mind to the task the way a freeholder cultivating a small estate might put his shoulder to the plow. He gave it all he had. He knew about lucid dreaming and gave it a shot.

It didn’t work. He lost again. Nothing.

He had to fight himself to keep from punching a hole in the wall. He sat at his kitchen table on a red-upholstered stool with his hands steepled on his forehead. The part of him that was always watching what he did knew that he was losing his mind, that he was being ridiculous and stupid, that this was grief playing itself out like a revolving roulette wheel.

He couldn’t pull himself out of his delusion by his own bootstraps.

Monica, the gallery owner who sponsored him and was Sharon’s sister, rapped on his door the next afternoon. She called out his name. “Withers, why aren’t you answering your phone?”

He let her into his place. She looked around. Photographs of Sharon lying on every flat surface. The lottery tickets, which he had arranged in a circle like Stonehenge to invoke sacred luck. Several empty bottles of wine rinsed and left next to the kitchen sink. “What the hell?” she said.

“Hey,” he said, noticing the clock, “it’s happy hour.” He opened a screwcap bottle of house wine from Trader Joe’s and poured two glasses before she could protest.

She studied the lottery tickets and played with her phone. “You won four bucks on this one,” she said. “Powerball number.”

“You’re kidding.” That was good news.

“I’m worried about you,” she said upon parting. “You don’t seem yourself.”

No shit, he thought. He walked to Patel’s after she left and used the ticket to buy two more tickets. A month later he was buying 50 tickets a week, a hundred bucks down the drain. Keeping track of the numbers and checking each ticket after a drawing was a full-time occupation. He hired a graduate student to make prints of the beards, the turds, and even of Sharon, because his work, brought to prominence by Sharon, was still golden even after his 15 minutes of fame had passed. Sharon has subcontracted his work to a company that churned out prints and posters, and he continued to work with them and the prints somehow continued to sell. It was as if she was guiding his career from beyond the grave.

He might as well have been snorting cocaine. He burned through money buying lottery tickets. Monica told him it was time to think about doing something new. “She’s my sister, Withers. I miss her at least as much as you do.”

The Lottery, he thought, decoupage, collage, photographs of people standing in line to buy tickets. Lottery, he thought: the name of my next exhibit.

“Think of me as Matisse,” he told Monica several weeks later, who thought his latest work was not ready for prime time.

“You’re spinning your wheels, Withers. Let’s go out drinking.”

He declined but they polished off what he had left in the apartment and ended up between the sheets. The sex was good. Monica opened herself to him like a goddess and took him downtown. She smiled at his pleasure. “I’m a good time gal,” she said, “not just your gallery pal. I’m surprised you didn’t know that about me.”

After she left, he lay on his bed and pretended he still belonged to Sharon; it gave him something of the same comfort as he had found in the early days of their acquaintance when she would lie with him chastely and chant them through meditations.

The buzz of a fly disturbed his chanting. He found the fly swatter and went on a hunt, imagining a safari, but put down the swatter, distracted by a stray thought, made hot tea, considered his makeshift lottery project and realized it was as Monica surmised, a half-assed inspiration not worth salvaging. She was right, he was marching in place.

He tried listening to the songs of Taylor Swift, which his seldom-seen niece had told him could cure anybody’s blahs, but he found her work bland as plain kefir. The fly tried to explore the inner recesses of his right ear and he grabbed the swatter again to no avail before sitting on the side of his bed with his head in his hands. A bug in the ear, he thought, I never realized that’s actually a thing.

He felt compelled to rush to Patel’s store and buy a baker’s dozen worth of lottery tickets. He picked out all the numbers himself. Patel, the store empty, put down a broom and watched him with amusement. “You want some hot coffee?” he said.

Withers gave him a look that sent him back to his broom. He used the numbers on his VISA card, his library card, and his health insurance card. He decided he would purchase 20 tickets instead of 12. He felt heartburn rising and remembered he had forgotten to take his morning acid reflux pill. “I’m a blank slate,” he muttered.

Patel told him to take a cup of coffee. “Gratis.” The man looked sweaty even in the crowded, air-conditioned store, and Withers wondered if he might call the police to report an emergency, a man buying lottery tickets compulsively, wound up tight like a coiled spring ready to unwind, but why would a storekeeper complain about somebody spending money? He poured himself the coffee, steaming hot, always fresh in Patel’s shop, and sipped it, imagining the bullet that ended Sharon’s life. He squeezed his eyes shut but that only made the image more acute.

Men with Beards. Beautiful, Beautiful Turds. Song of Sharon. Powerball!  Yes, that was it, not Lottery, just the name of the game as a metaphor for what society was becoming, or had become. Should he find big winners and photograph them? What about the ones who blew it all? Had anybody done any good in the world with their money?

Withers slept and dreamed that Sharon was speaking to him from someplace out in the cosmos. She was dressed all in pink. A Barbie doll. She had been nothing like that when she was alive. More a woman aware that any moment might be her last. “Withers,” he remembered her telling him, an amused but transformative smile on her face, “any moment together might be our last.”

Now here she was, in all her former glory. “Sharon,” he whispered.

She shimmied before him. Not a word. A kind stare. Or at least Withers took it as kind. She was the Oracle of Delphi. “Sharon,” he said. “The lottery project. Yes or no?”

She shimmied. He took that as ambiguous. He was scared to death she might vanish. Was he asleep, dreaming? He had recently watched The Whale, a movie about a grieving man who ate himself to death, and squinted at the figure before him, thinking that his devotion to her now that she was gone had turned into cannibalism.

She shimmied a final time and faded. The Oracle had no answers. He called Monica. “Your sister just paid me a visit. We need to talk.”

She made him wait until nightfall. She brought Thai in cardboard containers.

Seven months later, some thought their marriage was in bad taste. Some felt it solved the issue. “Till death do we part,” each pronounced in turn. “No more subventions,” Monica said; in his earlier days, before Sharon the influencer had made him a big name in art, Monica had required him to guarantee that she had a chance to break even. “And no more lottery tickets. Capiche?”

Everybody who attended the ceremony was asked to dress in white. The reception took place at Monica’s gallery. The bride and groom surrounded themselves with Sharon’s photographs.

Menshevitz called again, interrupting Withers at the reception. “You think you get to be happy?”

“You again?” Withers said, drained, flushed from Prosecco. “Are you watching me?”

He heard a thin laugh like tinfoil shaking.

“I’ve never been happy, Menshevitz. I synthesize. I’m a synner.”

That stopped his nemesis momentarily.

“What do you love, Menshevitz? Tell me true.” Withers was curious about his nemesis; it surprised him, the urgency of his question.

“Indra’s Net, by Meredith Monk. A net of jewels spread across the globe to connect us all.” Menshevitz talked about the myth and Monk’s use of it.

Withers had trouble catching a breath. He and Monica had recently talked about the production.  “If that’s so,” he managed to say, “then why this persecution?”

Menshevitz, changing his tune, launched into a diatribe so threatening and obscene that Withers hung up on him. He wondered if he should alert the police. Was Monica in danger? The guy knew it was his wedding night. What else did he know?

The reappearance of Menshevitz, or whoever he was, was what it sounded like, an officer said. “A disgruntled fellow with a chip on a shoulder. It pays to be careful.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means be careful. If you see something, say something.”

In response, Withers changed the name of his exhibit to Indra’s Net.

He and Monica were good for each other. She had a head for business but knew how to dance and didn’t mind a stiff drink to celebrate almost anything at all. Unlike Sharon, though, she was no influencer. In person, she could be revelatory, even charismatic with her resounding, full-faced laugh, but on social media she came across as flouncy, not flashy. She was practical about art; she considered it worthwhile, even sacred, and expected it to make money for all involved.

Menshevitz called when publicity for the show went viral. Withers had changed its name to Sharon’s Net and that made all the difference. “I gave you that name.”

“No. You didn’t. I still think it’s possible you took Sharon from us.”

“You take my photograph, put it with turds instead of beards, and now you plagiarize. That’s three strikes. You’re out.”

“You know what I think about that? You’re a doppelgänger, maybe out there in cyberspace or something. You don’t exist.”

“You photographed me, you shitgibbon. How can I not exist?”

“Did I? I have a photograph you tell me I took but I have no idea where or when. It might be a glitch.”

“You son of a bitch! I’m as real as you or your new fucking wife!”

“No. I don’t think so. Maybe once upon a time.” Withers wanted the guy riled enough to spill the beans if he had anything to do with Sharon’s death. “If I’m wrong, prove it. Let’s make an appointment. I’ll photograph you again. I’ll call the exhibit The Assassins. Because there’s more than one of you, isn’t there? Inside your head, I mean. Because you have no interiority.”

Menshevitz didn’t take the bait. “You forget that I admire Meredith Monk. By the way, I don’t have the beard anymore but I have your number and I’m not going anywhere.”

This time it was Withers who ended the call. Menshevitz immediately sent him a text. “I’m a lonely man, Withers. You and I have more in common than you think. I’m talking about systems. You’re as much bound to this feud as I am because we’re so much alike and only one of us gets out alive.”

That was ominous enough to merit another call to the police. Withers felt that he was caught in quicksand. It was a constant irritant, like somebody next door playing pickleball all night. His marriage felt spongy, as if Sharon’s murder and the rage of Menshevitz were yin and yang. The whole thing, including his marriage, had the feel of a psychic game board. The photographs were somehow to blame for the death of the woman he still loved. Monica might be next in line and if it happened it would be his fault. His damned art was to blame but he couldn’t live without it. Besides, who was Menshevitz to put him on his heels like this?

Sharon’s Net. Subtitles: Lottery. Altarpiece. Avatar.

The cops couldn’t find Menshevitz.

Could he be an A.I.?

If so, somebody must be pulling his strings, programming it to harass him. And surely there had been a real man with a beard who gave him the name Menshevitz? If he was living in cyberspace, he might well be impossible to find. If Menshevitz wasn’t his name, though, and the police didn’t think so, the world outside his apartment window was a damned good hiding place too.

He told Monica about the mess. She shrugged. “What can we do?” She made Manhattans and clinked glasses with him before fishing out a cherry to chew. “Life goes on, Withers. We can’t bring Sharon back and the cops can’t track down the guy who calls himself Menshevitz. I’ve beefed up the security at the gallery against vandalism and we have good locks on the strong doors here. If somebody’s out to get us, they’ll probably get us. Right? We’re civilians. You’re an artist. I’m a gallery gal. I don’t pack heat. Wouldn’t want to. If you did, I’d be frightened you’d shoot me by mistake. So let’s take the officer’s advice and be careful.”

Sharon’s Net opened with a grand reception. Monica had security on hand. The night was festive: plates of finger foods, good wine, overhead strings of blinking white lights to indicate how Sharon’s Net was integrative and undeniable. A life celebration. A study of systems, one placard stated, at how a mechanism like a lottery permeates all areas of life. Withers had invited Patel, putting a punctuation mark on his lottery compulsion (once and for all, he hoped) and the man put on a suit and came with his wife, who wore a gossamer gown in honor of Sharon’s Net that did her slight figure proud. Withers gave a talk about how everything connects and kept it short. He was careful to avoid cliché, the tired idea that a butterfly moves its wings in Poughkeepsie and a hurricane wipes out a village in Brazil, but that unstated idea was his thesis. He felt like the hard outer case enclosing a chrysalis and expected something to break free, the next exhibit perhaps already undergoing transformation before he even glimpsed what it might entail.

The rock that exploded the gallery’s plate glass window broke something, all right, but it wasn’t theoretical. Such violence was not a rarity anymore, but usually it occurred only after a cop killed an unarmed man or it happened on the streets among roughs and rowdies.

Monica moved fast, enlisted help to pick up shards. Security rushed into the street.

One cynical guest, in a beret of all things, sneered. Withers overheard: “Just the thing to pick up sales and get headlines. You think Withers arranged it?”

Withers felt an urge to bum rush the guy, hard and fast, but thought again and realized it wasn’t an unreasonable conclusion, however irrational. If it was Menshevitz, it even made sense to consider the attack a collaboration. Didn’t the man shadow him like his unconscious? In a weird way, it was almost a comforting thought. Almost.

He took center stage. “Drinks are on the house,” he shouted out, “but it’s an open bar anyway.” He heard the laughter he sought. Even the beret raised his glass.

A few of Monica’s gallery aficionados and several of Sharon’s BFFs retreated to the back of the gallery to drink and nibble and finish out the evening, to honor the occasion and their lost friend, but everybody else took the busted window as a sign that it was time to go. Security had called police, of course. They arrived, filed a report, promised to check CCTV cameras. The usual questions. The usual non-answers.

Home by midnight, Monica made the requisite Manhattans as a nightcap. “Let’s celebrate,” she said. Somebody had covered the broken window with plyboard and she had arranged for security to spend the night. None of the work was damaged. “That’s the only thing that counts,” she said. “Cheers.”

“Thank you for that.” He raised his own glass and pulled out his phone. “Let’s call Menshevitz, shall we?”

He punched the number he had saved but was told it was out of service. “Go figure.” He grinned and gulped. “C’est la vie.” He mentioned to her what he had overheard the beret say.

“He’s right that it won’t hurt business.” Monica shimmied on her way to refresh her drink, which had gone down fast. “For a man with an apocalyptic imagination, you’re taking this rather well, Withers.” She sat next to him, leaned back and sighed, probably with exhaustion.

“I am, aren’t I?” he said. “I suppose we can get used to anything. Global warming.”

“Active shooters,” Monica said.

“Busted windows.”

They went on like that, but there was an elephant in the room because neither had gotten used to Sharon’s murder, which was still unsolved and looked like it would stay that way. “We used to have plots,” Withers said. He heard sirens outside the window and the shouts of drunken revelers. “Now we have incidents.”

“Occasions,” Monica said.

“Interventions.”

“Episodes.”

“Insurrections.” The elephant in the room stopped them again. Withers noticed. “A big blood red stop sign.”

They decided to deflect. They needed a break. It was all Withers could do not to cry. He cared for Monica, she cared for him, but it wasn’t like what he thought he had, or was close to having, with Sharon. What he and Monica had together was Sharon and shared grief because she was gone for good, however much she might shimmy in his dreams, whatever Delphic Oracle business he might concoct in his unconscious.

They talked about books—both had read the six volumes of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s Min Kamp, or My Struggle, where there was no conscious repression whatsoever, only a writer deciding he had the right to spill the beans about anybody in his orbit. The freedom Knausgaard felt to reveal everything fascinated them both, but Withers felt the writer, who frequently gnashed his teeth about the damage such revelations caused, was a hypocrite. Monica admired the gush of information. “His truth is his truth,” she said.

“How often these days do we hear that?” Withers snapped. “Art mediates. Or it’s supposed to mediate. The guy could have changed the names, at least. Instead, he admits he has it both ways. He can tell ‘his truth,’ but it’s fiction, he says, so he can change what he wants when it suits him.”

“Fair point,” Monica says. “It’s a great book.” She meant all six volumes.

They left it at that. They agreed to disagree, just as they did about Sharon’s murder. Withers wanted the culprit brought to justice, whether it was Menshevitz or some asshole who ended her life with a stray bullet intended for some other poor soul. Monica didn’t think that kind of closure would make any difference, at least not to her. “Justice is a concept,” she said. “Some things can be reversed with justice. Not death. She’s still gone.”

It was a dead-ender. They reached it almost every night. They both knew the two of them wouldn’t be sitting together, a married couple, if Sharon was still alive. Maybe not, anyway. Who can know such things for sure?

They went to bed. After they made drunken love, Withers had to fight hard to stop himself from picking up his phone to see if the big lottery had a winner or not. He could make a run to Patel’s store. It was open all night.

It hurt not to have a stake in the big game.

SUPPORT

DIVERSE VOICES
IN LITERATURE