THE LUCK OF CHARLES HARCOURT
Short Fiction by Robert Runté
Reprinted fromOn SpecMagazine
July, 1989
July, 1989
THE LUCK OF CHARLES HARCOURTShort Fiction July, 1989 |
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I should have realized from the first that Charles Harcourt had a charmed life, but that first day I was thinking more about Ed Ferguson than I was about Charlie. I was coming back from the file room when I heard Ed shouting in Mr. Petrie's office. You could hear Mr. Petrie raising his voice too, but by the time I realized what was happening, it was already too late. Ed came storming out shouting that he quit, that Petrie was a weasel and that the rest of us were fools to work for him. He emptied out his desk, making a big production out of it, slamming drawers and hurling insults at Mr. Petrie. Mr. Petrie just stood his ground and took it because there was little else he could do. You could see he was furious but there was no point in ordering Ed to get out since that was obviously his own intention. At the door Ed got really nasty, saying how Mr. Petrie even cheated on his mistress, which we all knew well enough, but were shocked just the same to hear it said out loud. It was the most emotional scene I ever remember seeing in any office in which I've worked. We all stood there staring at the office door long after Ed Ferguson had slammed it closed on his career. We were still transfixed with embarrassment and emotion when Charles Harcourt walked in through the same door. I think we half expected it to be Ed coming back to take another shot at Petrie, or maybe to apologize, and the entrance of this stranger broke the spell. As we turned away to busy ourselves shuffling papers or pretending to hunt for something in our desks, I heard Harcourt ask the receptionist if there were any openings in the company. Mr. Petrie turned back from his office and called out for the receptionist to "Send that man in to see me!" Within the hour, Charles Harcourt was installed at Ed Ferguson's desk. I don't think Charlie had any really close friends, but we all got along pretty well in the office and we'd often do things together as a group after work. As time went on we all started to notice that Charlie had this phenomenal good luck. I mean, sometimes it would be big things like his being in the right place at the right time to get the job with the company, but mostly it was trivial stuff. Like a bunch of us would go over to the bank on our lunch hour, and there would be these horrendous lineups. Ever since they put in those instant cash machines, the bank has cut the number of real tellers in half, and it's just unbelievable during the lunch hour rush. We had this running joke in the office that no matter which lineup you got in, it always turned out to be the slowest moving line. Except for Charlie. Charlie would get in a line with ten people in front of him, when the lineup would suddenly melt away. People would realize that they had forgotten their bank book, or that they had filled in their deposit slip wrong, or that the cheque they had intended to cash was dated tomorrow, or that they should have been in the lineup for new accounts over at the other desk. And Charlie would be there at the teller's window while the rest of us were still nine or ten people back in another line. We soon learned to line up behind Charlie. Or if we went out to the mall or a theatre after work --- it could be the Christmas rush or the most popular play in town --- Charlie would always find a parking spot right next to the door. He'd just be driving up when somebody would pull out of the lot, leaving the perfect parking place right in front of Charlie's bumper. Every time. Same thing if there was ever any kind of office draw or pool going. At first people would kind of pressure Charlie into buying tickets because we figured that everyone should participate, but we slowly learned that Charlie would always win. If it was the sort of thing you could share, like a bottle of wine or something, Charlie always made a point of sharing it with the rest of the office, so you couldn't get sore about it --- but it still took all the fun out of office pools, knowing ahead of time who was going to win. And it was no good getting him to buy a bunch of tickets on the principle that as long as he was going to win anyway he might as well contribute more, because he'd simply win second and third prize too. And you couldn't trick his luck either. Once we tried having an "honourary" first prize of a stack of memo pads and saved the real prize for second place. We'd didn't even tell Charlie what the prizes were, but of course that time he came in second on the pool. It was weird. Eventually, we all just lost interest in organizing anything for the office. It was the same with dates. Charlie, Norm Wilson and I used to go to one of those photo dating services every once in a while and triple date. We never expected too much, but it was better than singles' bars, and you never know. But of course we soon realized that we did know: Charlie always got the really hot number for his date. I mean, we'd all pick the date we wanted from the photo album but ours would turn out to be losers for one reason or another, and his would always turn out to be fantastic. Norm tried switching with Charlie a couple of times after Charlie had made his choice but before he had actually asked for the date, but it didn't work. It just meant that Norm's original choice turned out to be the better one after all. Norm even tried purposely picking a real dog one time to switch with Charlie, only she turned out to be really smart and funny and exactly the kind of woman you've always wanted to meet. Naturally we all kidded Charlie about it, and he would just look embarrassed and pooh-pooh the whole thing and say how it was all in our heads. I remember one time in the cafeteria, Charlie was standing there trying to tell us that we were making this whole "luck" thing up just to bug him, until we noticed that the cashier had given him $15 change for a ten dollar bill. Sometimes he'd get really mad about it, like when a bunch of us wanted him to go in with us on a "Lotoluck Bonus Draw" ticket. He told us that lotteries were "a tax on the stupid" and that he thought they were immoral. When we pushed him a little he started yelling about how we were blowing the whole thing out of proportion, how he was sick of these jokes about his "good luck", and how we would knock it off if we were his friends. I'm embarrassed to admit that Norm kept insisting. Norm said that as our friend Charlie should be willing to share a little of his luck with us. Charlie just went nuts. He shouted at us that we weren't his friends at all since we were just interested in exploiting him, and to stop it once and for all, or else! He didn't get to say "or else what" because Mr. Petrie came out of his office to see what all the shouting was about. We all slunk back to our desks. We ended up buying the ticket by ourselves, but of course we just lost. We didn't bring it up again for a long time after that, though it was always implicit. People would ask Charlie if he was going to the bank at lunch or if he was thinking of driving over to the mall after work, before making their own plans. You tried not to be obvious about it, but I guess we all exploited Charlie's luck in small ways. Then one day, Mr. Petrie's brother-in-law came over to pressure Mr. Petrie into buying some tickets from their lodge. Petrie didn't want the tickets, and he never got along well with his brother-in-law, so he was pretty put out that he had to buy a whole booklet full of tickets to get rid of the guy. Then the brother-in-law made the mistake of joking how Petrie had wasted his money, because he himself had bought ten booklets and fully intended to win. Petrie was sufficiently petty to sick the poor bastard onto Charlie, just to make sure his brother-in-law lost. Charlie didn't want to buy a ticket either, but of course Mr. Petrie was his boss, so what could he do? Ten weeks later he was duly informed that he had won an all-expense-paid trip for two to the opening night of "The Play's the Thing" in New York. As usual, Charlie tried to give the tickets away, but without success. He offered them to me, but as luck would have it, they were for the same weekend as my brother's wedding. He offered them to Norm, but Norm had finally set up a date with that woman from the dating club. After months of trying to get her to forgive him for ever having hinted she was unattractive, Norm didn't want to blow his chances now by postponing it even for a week; and she flatly refused to fly to New York for the weekend on a first date. Charlie offered the tickets to Mr. Petrie, who was tempted since it would greatly annoy his brother-in-law, but his daughter was graduating that weekend, and family came first. Charlie offered to pass them on to Mr. Petrie's brother-in-law, not realizing how things stood, and Mr. Petrie made it clear that he thought Charlie should use those tickets himself, or else. So like it or not, Charlie was stuck with the tickets. He was, as he confided to me one night, terrified at the prospect. This was a little hard for me to grasp at first, but I gradually came to understand that Charlie lived in superstitious dread of his own phenomenal luck. Most of the time he simply refused to acknowledge that there was anything unusual happening. He was generally able to dismiss any particular incident with a perfectly rational explanation. After all, it is inevitable that some lineups will move faster than others, and even the best parking spots have to come empty sometimes. Someone was bound to have taken Ed Ferguson's job, just as Charlie was bound to find one sooner or later, so there was nothing unnatural or mystical about bringing the job and Charlie together. And yet, in his darker moments, Charlie had to admit that he had always had unusually good luck. "I'm still young," he told me, crying into his beer, "But I'm using up all my luck at once! I wouldn't mind waiting in line sometimes or parking at the far edge of the lot, but I can't control it. I try to hang onto it until I really need it, until I'm in a life or death situation and need all the luck I can get, but you can't conserve it. I try to hold onto it, I try not to be so lucky, but I can feel it leaking out, draining away, drying up. I hate when I win something because it means I'm that much closer to running out." "That's silly," I'd told him. "I'd think it would be great getting all those breaks all the time. I'd love to be as lucky as you are!" "But don't you see," he said, "I'm using it up too fast! I'm wasting it on things that don't matter. Then when I need it, it will be gone!" "Then the sensible thing to do," I argued, "would to have a go at some big things now while you still can. Like the "Lotoluck Bonus Draw". Why don't you and I split a ticket ---" "No, no, no!" he shouted. "If you win big, you lose big too! It all has to balance in the end. There's nothing special about me. I don't deserve more than anybody else. Don't you see, if I keep winning like this it just means I'm getting my share of good all at once instead of in installments like everybody else. But then I'll have to take the bad all at once too, forever and ever, instead of mixed in with the good like other people."
"Yeah, but if you have the 10 million dollars, you can get through an awful lot of bad luck. A couple of major lotteries and you're fixed for life, no matter what happens after." I confess to a certain self-interest here, as I still had hopes of his going halvers on a ticket.
"Rubbish," I told him. But I began to see why he refused to play lotteries, and why he always tried to get rid of anything he won, and why he was so terrified about the trip to New York. When he failed to give the tickets away he started to fear that this was it. After all, he normally should have been lucky enough to find someone who wanted them right away. So he tried to hide from his doom by ignoring the tickets. He made a blind date for that weekend and went out as if he had nowhere better to go. When he and his date went back to his place, they found a limousine waiting. He hadn't read the contest fine print which explained about the pickup and delivery service. His date was thrilled. Embarrassed and fatalistic, he allowed himself to be bundled off to New York. He kept a nervous watch on events to see if his luck was still holding or whether things would start to go wrong. It was difficult to tell, however, since the contest organizers had put a lot of effort into seeing that everything went smoothly. The lack of airline delays, the quick limousine ride to the hotel, and the efficient manner in which the desk clerk switched them to a two-bedroom suite, were perhaps more indicative of the publicist's professionalism than Charlie's luck. Similarly, the next day's tour of art galleries and museums, the fine supper at the contest representative's favorite restaurant, and the best seats the theatre had to offer for what turned out to be a terrific play, could all be interpreted as part of the one big win which would shortly exhaust his supply of luck. Nevertheless, Charlie started to relax. Things were going well, even with Julie, his date. Since he had clearly met her after winning the trip, Julie could not be considered as part of the same piece of luck. His luck therefore seemed to be holding. It was only the nagging knowledge that he had been unable to avoid the trip to New York that suggested that the Fates had something special in store for him. On the way back to the hotel, however, his driver left the freeway for a shortcut only to have the limousine breakdown in an unsavory section of town. The driver apologized profusely, the more so for seeing Charlie's stricken face, and ran off seeking a service station. No sooner was the driver out of sight than a dozen bikers roared up and surrounded the car. As Charlie told me later, he knew then that this was the end. It was obvious that the Fates had maneuvered him into this ridiculous position and there was, therefore, no point in trying to avoid his doom. Determined to face death with dignity and courage --- and incidentally to protect Julie who stayed hidden in the limo --- Charlie left the relative safety of the car to confront the gang. Charlie was a little vague on what transpired next, but the end result was Charlie sprawled on the pavement with a serious knife wound while the gang sped off into the night. Charlie was, of course. unconscious thereafter, but Julie eventually got him to the hospital. Charlie didn't have any next of kin, and the only phone number they could find in his wallet was for the office, so Monday morning Julie called me from Charlie's bedside. After I got the whole story, I tried to impress upon Julie how important it was that she convince Charlie that his luck was still holding out. After all, he was still alive where he might well have been dead, and that was pretty lucky if you looked at it that way. Julie didn't seem to see what I was on about, but she did say that Charlie had been cursing his rotten luck all night. As it happened, the doctor came in to see Charlie while I was still on the line so I got to hear the diagnosis myself. "It's the damndest thing," said the Doctor. "When I started to close the wound I spotted some dark spots I took to be debris or dirt from the knife, but when I enlarged the incision I discovered a very nasty tumor. Another six months and it might well have been inoperable. It's a one in a million fluke, but if the knife hadn't gone in exactly at that one spot at that one particular angle, I never would have seen it, and it would have gone undetected until much too late. Ironic as it may seem, Mr. Harcourt, your would-be assailant saved your life." "My god," said Julie, "You are lucky!" "Damn!" said Charlie. |
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"The Luck of Charles Harcourt" © Robert Runté 1989
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"Someday I'm going to win something big and it's going to use up all the luck I have left. Then no matter how much I win or how hard I try to stay safe, that will be the end."