SELENA ENTERPRISES, Toronto, Canada. All rights reserved
The novel first published in the magazine THE NEWS OF THE NEW WORLD, North Carolina, USA, 2001/2002
Reprinted with permission
When Jack opened his eyes, he could not understand where he was. It looked like a hotel room. His head was heavy and ached as if somebody had poured molten lead inside.
Jack tried to lift his head from the pillow but failed on the first attempt. Finally, with great difficulty, he moved his body upright and sat on the bed. As he did so, the door opened and his yesterday"s bottlemate entered the room.
"Hi, my friend," he exclaimed, ""How are you feeling?"
Jack wanted to answer: "Like shit", but his mouth was so dry that he could not move his tongue and instead muttered something unintelligible.
"What"s that ?" Nick asked.
Jack repeated his attempt with the same result.
"I think yesterday we overdosed on salubrious beverages," Nick concluded. "Every honest physician will tell you: if medication has no side effects - it"s not medication at all. Sorry. Last night I didn"t warn you about the side effect of this one. It"s called a severe morning hangover. It is the generic rule of any feast: the better you feel in the evening, the worse you feel in the morning. And certainly lack of exercise matters. But it"s not a problem. The cure is on its way."
After these words Nick opened his briefcase, took out a bottle of "Smirnoff" and poured vodka into two glasses standing on the coffee table. Then he opened a mini bar, took out some packets of chips and offered the glass to Jack.
"I wish we always would be wealthy but healthy rather than poor but sick."
Nick proposed his traditional toast, emptied the glass and looked at Jack.
His companion was so horrified by the only sight of the morning cure that he waved his hand, refusing the glass. If Jack could speak, he would cry:
"What are you doing? Take that nasty stuff away or I"ll throw up!"
"Well, " Nick replied, "you should trust an experienced healer like myself. Drink it in a gulp. It"s medication, and medication almost always tastes nasty, until you get used to it. Then it becomes more delicious than morning dew".
But Jack shook his head.
"Okay, then you stay in this beautiful Grand hotel forever and I"ll set out in search of the bingo money. Do you know what time is it? It"s almost seven o"clock at night. You slept through the whole day. Small wonder, since you"ve been praying to the porcelain god for the entire night. But while you were massaging your back, I got the list of all the participants in the plant fair. Luckily yesterday you told me the name of your daughter"s school before you set out on your trip to the underground."
Jack jumped up on the bed as if he had bees in his shorts. Jesus Christ! Yesterday he was so drunk that he had given up his secret to the first stranger he met!
"If you stay here for another hour, I consider our contract to be null and void," Nick added as he put a piece of paper on Jack"s lap. "So if I make a killing, I own the entire bet."
The contract stated that he, Jack Stanton, gave up fifty percent of the money for the winning bingo card with the numbers enclosed to Mr. Nicholas Bender as royalties for managing the project "The Pot of Luck." This was in Jack"s handwriting and his signature underneath.
Oh, no! To present five million dollars to the first crook he met. That was highway robbery! How many more twists of fortune was he supposed to endure? When did he sign it?
Jack did not remember anything. He could remember the beginning of the night, how he entered the bar, how he had the first couple of drinks and then nothing. A black hole.
After Jack read this sheet, his eyes nearly popped out of his head and he immediately gulped a glass. First he felt that he was going to die right away. Jack burst into coughing and turned as red as a boiled lobster.
"That"s okay, that"s okay," Nick said, tapping his companion against the back. "You"ll feel much better in a few minutes. I realize what is going inside you, my friend. But don"t sink into despair and don"t skin me alive. Do you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist?"
Nick took the half-empty bottle of vodka in his hand and said:
"When half of the bottle is finished a pessimist says: only half of the bottle is left. But an optimist will say: there is still half of the bottle left! Do you feel the difference? So think about it in this way. Today you didn"t lose five million dollars. Today you gained five million dollars. Because if you had not met me yesterday, you"d have nothing at all. Believe me, it"s not an easy ride to Wonderland. The card is somewhere in one out of ten pots. Actually it"s one pot of good luck and nine pots of bad luck. They"re in the possession of different people, spread all over the town and probably some have already been or will be resold or presented to other people before we find them. Nobody knows how long it will take us to find this mysterious pot of luck. A day? A month? A year? You definitely haven"t a ghost of a chance to cope with this task without an experienced Chief Executive Officer and General manager like myself."
Now Jack felt much better, his head had cleared up and he was almost ready to agree with Nick.
"In this situation it"d be really difficult to find the card without a good helper, and this engineer of human souls might be the best candidate," Jack decided. "Looks like he"s an arrant old fox and in fact knows every nook and cranny of the human soul."
"If you"re the General Manager and Chief Executive Officer, them who am I?" he asked suddenly.
"Bravo!" Nick exclaimed, clapping his hands. "The Great Mute has his voice back. As far as I"m concerned, I prefer military terminology. In the military, the position of the General Manager is equal to the position of Commander-in-Chief. So I"m a four-star general at least. But you can call me simply "Commandante Nick". As far as you"re concerned, I promote you to nobility status, you get the rank of adjutant-esquire and are entitled to wear aiguillettes, epaulettes and other glittering accessories that make military officers irresistible lady-killers."
"Well," Jack agreed, "it looks like I don"t have much choice. Let it be an adjutant-esquire. Anyway sounds better than a second class technician."
"The right words said at the right time," Commandante concluded.
He poured the rest of the bottle into glasses and proposed a toast:
"To the success of an outstanding military operation "The Pot of Luck"".
"Where are we staying?" Jack asked when they finished their drinks. "Who is paying for this room? Looks like a very expensive one."
"This is the Grand Hotel - the best in Smallton. I don"t stay in cheap inns. A girl-friend of mine used to say that a wife of a military officer is always at least a rank above her husband. Her husband was a colonel. Following this logic a four-star general should always stay at the five-star hotel at least."
"So you"re paying, are you?" Jack asked.
"No. I"m not a member of Parliament or a cocaine godfather. This suite is worth $250 a night. Even if I had this kind of money, I"d have found a better application for it."
"But then who is paying for it?" Jack cried, losing his temper.
"The University of Waterloo. By the way, my name is professor Van Leebrook. And you"re an associate-professor Lee Vanbrook. We"re microbiologists. Chemists and botanists. Or something of this kind. It"s best to keep your mouth shut. But if, by chance, somebody down in the hall asks you: "What , colleague, are you working on now?", answer: "Investigating an influence of something very tiny and invisible on something very huge and important." Something that nobody has ever seen on something that nobody will ever see. By the way, this is the best way to get a huge long-term grant from the government."
"But why would somebody ask me?" Jack asked with surprise.
"Because there is an annual Microbiology and Environment conference in progress, hosted by the University of Smallton. And the front lobby is teeming with curious egg-headed scientists. By the way, professor Van Leebrook from the University of Waterloo was supposed to be one of them. But then he changed his mind and canceled his prepaid room reservation. This was not difficult to find out via my friend-hacker. Then, at the last moment, late at night the professor changed his absent mind again, called and asked to restore his reservation and put it on the same account again. But now he comes with his colleague - associate-professor Lee Vanbrook - and needs a suite. Gotcha me mucho?"
"But this is . . . this is . . ."
Jack tried to find a proper word that would sound not so scary as felony. Nick encouraged the Adjutant.
"Well, what is this? Go ahead."
"I don"t know. I"ve never been in the situation like this before. It looks like we"re doing something illegal. Like we"re stealing something."
"Please, once and forever, don"t you dare forget that Nicholas Bender is not a criminal. I"ve never stolen anything. Sometimes I borrow with infinite amortization time, that"s true.
"By the way, my granddad was very famous in post-revolutionary Russia. In the twenties he could get money from nothing, practically from the air and finally he became a millionaire. Then two fellows wrote a novel about him that became a classic. My deceased grandpa knew 400 relatively honest ways to separate an individual from his money. I believe nowadays I know at least as twice as many. But I"m still a kitten in comparison with Ottawa sages who know thousands of them.
"As far as this room is concerned, we have already paid for it with our tax dollars. At least you did. But if you still want to use such a vulgar word as "steal" always remember the law of smart being number six: no matter how much you steal from the government you will never return what they have already stolen from you. Any time I read articles about horrors of so-called Mafia, it makes me laugh at the media. I did my masters and doctorate on organized crime studies and can assure you that there is no more powerful Mafia in the world than found among organized Ottawa bureaucrats in this country. These people have already ruined public education granting an honorable privilege to be functionally illiterate to each forth compatriot, ruined Medicare, granting you an honorable right to stay for months in a humiliating line for treatment. Everything they touch with their long, sticky, money-grabbing fingers aims at squeezing out as much dough as possible from you. Isn"t that what organized crime is doing? Another ten-fifteen years for them in power and this country goes down to the drain because when everything falls apart every small village thinks it will do better on its own. Trust me, this country won"t survive the twenty first century, just as the Soviets didn"t survive the twentieth. So hurry up! Get your piece of cake before it"s all gone. That will be your contribution to the glorious battle with the Dge"n"Dge."
"What"s that?"
"The Godfather named Government."
Probably, he"s right, Jack decided. For tax money I"ve already paid to finance all those countless symposia and conferences I have the right to spend at least one night in a decent hotel.
The second glass of morning dew painted life in pink and blue colors again. Like yesterday night Jack felt great. Problems seemed to be minor and easily solvable.
"I"m hungry," Jack said and took his wallet from a pocket of his jeans lying near the bed. He shook it for a while but the only funds he managed to shake out were a couple of pennies. The twenty dollar bills had disappeared.
"Don"t be frustrated," Nick said and showed his empty wallet. "We"re in the same boat. The usual state after a nice swill-up: the face is gray, the money is away. But we should not care about cash. As I told you, in this country money is lying everywhere and we"ll pick it up when we need it. Now let"s go for supper. Courtesy of the University of Waterloo."
"Hey, stop it, what are you putting on?" Nick exclaimed when he saw Jack putting on worn jeans with a flower on a Bible spot and a T-shirt inscribed "Sex instructor. First two lessons free."
"Why?" Jack asked.
"Shame on you. You are the adjutant-esquire, associate professor and the companion of a true gentlemen. And you"re dressed like a septic tank cleaner. Look at me."
Now Jack noticed that Nick was dressed in an elegant black suit, white shirt and fashionable red tie.
"But this is all I have!" Adjutant exclaimed despondently.
At the napkin company, Fridays were casual days and that day everybody wore something that might astonish even an arrant street beggar.
"Okay, go take a shower and don"t forget to brush your teeth. Otherwise the radiation pattern from your mouth may mislead sensitive bookworms in the dining lounge and make them think that instead of the microbiological symposium they have arrived to the world championship of heavy drinking without light snacks. Meanwhile I"ll try to find something for you in my mobile suitcase. And bear in mind: if you want to achieve success working with people, you should be always well-dressed, smiling and cynical. And spare no flattery. People love it."
In half an hour, two respectable gentlemen, both in suits, one wearing a red tie and another a green one, were having dinner in the tastefully-decorated dining lounge of the Grand Hotel.
"Here is the hit list," Nick said when the companions finished desserts. "Ten people. Ten plants. Ten pots. And only one is lucky. One hit and nine misses. The bad news is that it"s impossible to trace who bought your daughter"s plant. The good news is that all the pot owners are parents of your daughter"s classmates and we have their addresses. I had a word with a few teachers and the principal, so I have some idea who those people are. Who do we start with?"
"Let"s start with the first number on the list," Jack suggested. "We go immediately to him. If we have no luck, we can go to the next one and by the end of this weekend we"ll have the money."
"Sounds interesting," Nick replied with an ironic smile. "How do you see our visits? We break into a house, destroy the plant, break the pot and, if nothing is in, we say "Sorry "bout that, we"re just looking for the bingo card that won ten million bucks". Then we rush to another house to repeat the same procedure all over again. In this case I"m afraid we"ll meet the end of the weekend without any money but in fetters. In the local cop-shop. What"s more, rumors about the treasure pot will spread all over town and the real owner will immediately find your precious card. Do you think he"ll bring it to you on a silver platter?"
"I"m simply impatient to get the money as soon as possible," Jack answered.
Adjutant looked very excited. His cheeks flushed and his eyes flashed.
"I also want to get to the money as soon as possible. But I hope in high school your teachers introduced to you numerous wise proverbs like "haste makes waste", "slow pace wins the race" and others like that."
"So what do we do?"
"We have to make sure that no owner suspects the real value of his pot. This means that getting access to each plant may take a while. Meanwhile, we can combine business and pleasure. While looking for the card, we can play a kind of gambling game. Each of us alternatively names his candidate from the list. I"m so generous that I yield to you the right to name the first candidate. If your candidate fails, then I name my one. If mine fails, you name the next one. And so on until we hit the target. The companion who is lucky to guess the right candidate gets an additional million dollars from the other one"s share. Four million dollars is still very good money. But six millions is certainly better. So, are you a high roller?"
Jack hesitated. But then morning dew and the bottle of wine they finished at dinner finally added the required self-assurance.
"Okay. Agreed," he answered and hit Nick"s palm with his own.
"Well done. I love people who take risks. Life without risk is like a salad without dressing. Tasteless, vapid and insipid. So, professor, the choice is yours!"
Commandante moved the list closer to Jack.
Jack studied the piece of paper lying on the table before him. Ten lines with the names and addresses. He took a pen out of his pocket. A right hit and he gets six million dollars. The wrong hit and . . . Four million is fantastic money too. But who knows how long it will take to find the right addressee? Jack felt as nervous as an astronaut before his first flight. Finally, he closed his eyes and put a mark somewhere in the middle.
"The die is cast," Nick said taking the list. "So, let"s see what we have. Mr. Brian O"Broen. I"ve got some information about him. An interesting guy. I believe we"re ready to go right away."
"Where do we go?" Jack asked.
"To the central cemetery"
Jack raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"Is he dead?"
Nick laughed in response.
"No. I wish he were. It"s much easier to strike a bargain with those amenable fellas than with fussy live ones. You can never make a living person feel happy. Humans are always complaining, that"s their nature. But if you know what the individual is complaining about, what his crank is, what his whims and whimsies are, the ball is on your side. Complain about the same, touch his cherished string and you"re his best friend. The friend in crank is more trustworthy than a bank. And it looks like I know what his crank is about."
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