Shalom Camenietzki
The Winning Ticket
At last, my turn in line arrived. I handed over my ticket to the squat, bespectacled,
East Indian woman at the vendor’s counter, confident that this time it contained the set of
winning numbers. Looking bored, she pinched the small printout with her forefinger and
thumb and as indifferent to her surroundings as a butcher carving meat, brought it under
the blood-red light of a small scanner.
Her face lit up. “Oh, my God!” Her voice rose well above her customary
whisper. “You hit the jackpot!”
My heart raced. It was just the way I’d fantasized it hundreds of times.
Her husband rushed over. A much taller East Indian, he wore monster eyeglasses
that shone less than his bald pate. “Oh, please,” he sputtered, “let me take a picture of
you holding the ticket -- here, beside my wife, against the background of our kiosk.”
“What? Oh sure, sure,” I said, shaken at how the entire scene playing itself out
was a colossal deja vu or, more exactly, the fulfilment of a recurring dream. Why not
make the vendors happy too? Let them share in my joy, celebrate my victory.
The man rummaged under the counter and produced an enormous Polaroid
camera. Smiling and giggling, his wife and I posed, holding between us the fulfilled
dream of millions of Canadians. The flash went off. As the woman exclaimed to two
passers-by, “It was our kiosk that sold him the grand prize!” the camera buzzed. In a few
moments, it ejected the photograph. In the already discoloured picture, an un-photogenic
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me was dazedly trying to smile, while the East Indian woman flashed her teeth and threw
her head back as if she were the winner.
I was on my lunch break. Despite the urge to rush downtown and at once take
possession of my prize, I decided to pass by my office and tell George Dunbar, my lanky,
taciturn manager, that I wasn’t feeling well and was heading home. Why antagonize the
boss before I knew exactly how much I had won? You never knew how long you might
have to depend on your superiors. Better behave as if you still respected them, even
though your bank account had swollen immensely.
For weeks the newspapers had carried stories about the accumulating Super 7
Lottery, stoking people’s dreams of kingly retirement in Florida, Provence, or both. I
knew that week’s prize stood at thirty-five million dollars, the largest ever in Canada, but
was not at all sure, at that point, what my share of the treasure would be. Perhaps I had
won only a couple of million. That was a limited amount and cautious me reasoned that
it wasn’t the right time to tell George Dunbar to stuff my joyless job. “You see, George,”
I’d announce only if I won a much greater sum, “my trips around the globe preclude me
from coming to work.”
I wrote my bank password on the blessed piece of paper, folded it, and buried it
deep in my pocket. A wave of paranoia washed over me. What if one of the passers-by
had witnessed the commotion by the kiosk? What if someone was following me, intent
on knocking me down and stealing my ticket to boundless comfort? I froze, looked
around, and saw a tall man leaning against a column. His chocolate-coloured hands held a
spread-out Toronto Star, which concealed his face and chest. He wore scruffy jeans and
more-grey-than-white running shoes. Panicking, I felt sure he was hiding behind the
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newspaper. As soon as I let down my guard he would grab me, knock me unconscious,
and steal my ticket.
Brushing people aside, I ran. Up the stairs leading to the entrance of the mall I
rushed. At the top, I stopped, caught my breath, and despite my pounding heart, slowly,
ever so slowly, peered in all directions. The dark-skinned man with the newspaper was
nowhere. Nobody seemed to be tailing me. The safest thing to do, I told myself, was to
hop into a cab and tell the driver to take me to the lottery office on Bloor Street.
Outdoors, the grey, overcast sky hung low over my head, and the gloom
intensified my fear of being robbed. I crossed the street and approached a line of taxis
parked by the curb. I opened the door of the first cab, settled into the back seat, and gave
the driver my destination. It reassured me that he didn’t react at all when he heard the
address. Could I be so lucky that he didn’t grasp that his greatest dream was burning a
hole in my pocket?
As the driver navigated our way downtown, it occurred to me that I would have
felt much safer if I’d told my wife about the prize. Even better, I should have asked the
lawyer who had helped us buy our townhouse to meet me at the lottery office when I dealt
with the authorities. I am, basically, a shy man who often doesn’t know whether to keep
my hands inside or outside my pockets. The prospect of collecting the prize and dealing
with the media ambushing the winners scared the hell out of me.
I paid the cab driver. No, he didn’t seem aware of my plans to collect a fortune. I
wended my way to the lottery office and halted at a long counter. “May I help you,”
asked a pale, blond woman with long, maroon nails.
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I wished I had come with my lawyer, since anxious me couldn’t decide whether or
not to hand over my ticket. What if she claimed mine wasn’t a winner? What would I do
if she vanished? Call the police? I had no evidence to support my claims for millions
except for a slip of paper with the magic configuration of numbers.
Hand trembling, I lent her the decisive piece of paper, which she placed under a
scanner. She covered her mouth with her palm, then let out a scream. “Congratulations!
You’re the only winner! Please step inside. The manager will issue you a cheque.”
The details of what happened next are still a blur because of my excitement. I
recall a bald, all-smiles, moustachioed man in a blue suit and red tie handing me an
oversized cheque with my name and, black on white, the sum of thirty-five million and
no/100 dollars. Delirious, I began to hum the Ode to Joy. I did, after all, get hold of the
money without the help of either my lawyer or my wife.
I also remember a bevy of reporters surrounding me with tape recorders and
cameras. They fired questions which in my frenzy of being super rich, I could answer
only in monosyllables. As they pressured me for details, something to excite their
audiences, I uttered words that later on, when I saw myself on television, surprised me a
great deal. “Keep up the fantasy of hitting the big prize,” I said. “Nurture the dream,
work on it, imagine yourself raking in the loot. Don’t feel discouraged if you’re not
rewarded right away. Play the lottery, and let your fantasies rule you. Don’t try to control
them.”
Despite my excitement and confusion, it occurred to me while being interviewed
that I would never again have to report to George Dunbar.
Instead of tedious
programming at my workstation, I would spend my days travelling the six continents, to
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include Antarctica. Between cruises I’d meet with investment advisors for three-Martini
lunches, or sit down with representatives of charities to determine wise, tax-deductible
donations.
For a whole week Elaine, my wife, my two boys, and my whole family celebrated
my good luck. We emptied bottles of champagne as if they were soda pop. Next, we
pondered where to live. We considered buying a big house downtown, but these plans
fell through when a gust of paranoia overcame me. I remembered how two newspapers
had published long stories about me, including my picture, full name, and home address.
Elaine and I had appeared on local and national television and had, to my chagrin,
become household names. I became so fearful of my family being kidnapped for ransom
that I hired two bodyguards to escort the boys to school. Like shadows, the bodyguards
accompanied us wherever we went. They slept in one of the bedrooms in our small
townhouse, while the boys bunked in another.
“It’s terrible,” Elaine constantly complained, “to have strangers with us day and
night. I want us to have a home, not a fortress with guards. Snap out of your worries,
Mark! Stop going to psychiatrists and popping pills! You have to get back to what you
were before you won the big prize.”
After months of complaining, Elaine finally had her way: I fired the bodyguards
and bought us a five-washroom penthouse equipped with the latest surveillance gadgetry.
Every room in the condo had video cameras and alarm equipment, all well concealed.
Despite the pills and the precautions, I tossed and writhed in bed, listening to every real
and imagined noise. The lack of sleep tortured me, and I imagined masked gangsters
kidnapping my entire family at gunpoint. In the next frame of this scenario, I gave in to
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their demands for cash and didn’t call the police. When you are very rich, you don’t beg
for help. You pay through the nose and feel smug about it.
This also may sound unbelievable: I had money problems with my family. After I
cashed in the bonanza, Elaine got into the habit of buying new clothes and accessories
every week. “We can well afford it,” she said. “Why not enjoy our money? Would it
make you happy if we kept it in the bank, untouched?”
“Of course not,” I said. “But we must keep things in perspective. We can’t just
spend and spend, as if there’s no tomorrow. It’s a moral issue.”
“Next I’ll hear about the millions starving in Ethiopia.”
After much wrangling, we compromised: Elaine agreed to a budget of ten
thousand dollars a month for personal expenses. This didn’t satisfy me since I maintained
that one ought to be prudent even if one had plenty of cash. Elaine claimed that it was my
rigidity talking. I had not, she said, let go of the old days of limited spending and
maximum savings.
I tried my philosophy on my kids, and had nothing but failures to report. Jim, my
oldest, got so incensed at the idea of being given an allowance of one hundred dollars a
week that he got a job flipping hamburgers. He worked after school until ten at night and
paid for all his own expenses. His schoolwork suffered, and he resisted my repeated
urging to work less, study more, and accept my allowance. “I want to be my own man,”
he insisted. “I can do without your godamn money.” Martin, his younger brother, wanted
to follow in Jim’s footsteps. He argued he couldn’t wait until he was sixteen and got a
job at McDonald’s. He too wanted to pay his own way.
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Since redeeming the winning ticket two years ago, I had incurred a remarkable
number of losses. First to go were my friends at work. The day I came to say goodbye to
them and to George Dunbar, I was initially greeted with loud exclamations of merriment
and congratulatory comments like, “Please don’t forget us now that you live a life of
leisure and have nothing to worry about.”
No worries, eh? Little did they know what I went through every night.
Within weeks it turned out that my friends at work were trying to forget about me.
Having plenty of time on my hands, I invited them for lunches and after-hours drinks.
My calls went unanswered. It didn’t take long for Elaine to come with an intriguing
explanation. “They are so envious that they don’t want to meet you at all. They’d rather
stew in their own bile than see you in a triumphant mood.”
“What triumphant mood? I hardly sleep at night!”
“But you exude prosperity. Your eyes tell the world that you belong to the Wealth
and Leisure Club. Your buddies feel it, and they seethe with resentment.”
“It can’t be!” I said. “They are my friends! We go back many years. Of course,
some of them conceded that they envied my luck. They even asked for tips on winning
the lottery.”
“Don’t be so naïve! Your so-called friends are angry! You climbed a giant
mountain and in the process left them behind, in the valley. Accept it, Mark, they don’t
want to deal with the feelings you evoke in them.”
It was hard to admit that she was right. However, soon I realized that, except for
Fred, my old friends from high school and university had also stopped calling me. It was
time I acknowledged their blend of envy and anger, rather than wallow in superficial
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astonishment. As for Fred, he and I went out for dinner a few days ago. As we sipped
our cappuccinos, he looked embarrassed but, anyhow, hit on me for a hundred thousand
bucks. “A loan,” he said. “ I’ll use my townhouse as a collateral.”
“Fred,” I said, “we’ve been friends since grade five. That’s a long time, man.
Still, I don’t want money to come between us. Why don’t you get a loan from your
bank?”
He smiled embarrassedly and asked the waiter for our cheques. When I told
Elaine the incident she said I shouldn’t be surprised if I don’t hear from Fred again. “He
wanted an interest-free loan. You refused to play his game, and he feels resentful.” She
heaved a sigh. “Things have changed dramatically, Mark. Now that we’re very rich, I
also feel that my old friends are avoiding me. As I said before, I bet they feel envious or
angry -- probably both.”
“What are we going to do for a social life?” I asked, anticipating loneliness and
isolation after Fred too didn’t answer my calls.
“We’ll hang out with our kind of people: wealthy folks, globetrotters,
philanthropists, people of leisure.”
Easier said than done. Despite the many gala dinners and balls promoting the
cause of every imaginable organ or disease, I made no new friends. Several times a week
I went out wearing my tuxedo. Still, I remained miserably on the sidelines, not really
enjoying myself. I missed my old friends, and I envied Elaine, who had managed to
connect with a number of women. When my mood was down, I called myself a wealthy
nebbish.
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Except for charities asking for donations at dinnertime, nobody called me. I no
longer picked up the phone, but instead, let the answering machine take messages.
Though I was supposed to enjoy my boundless leisure, the fact was that daily I racked my
brain to figure out how to spend my time enjoyably. I didn’t miss my boss or my old job,
but when I sat down to dinner, I missed the old feelings of competence and
accomplishment that came after a day’s work at the office.
Nowadays, twice a week, when I’m not travelling or stuffing envelopes as a
volunteer in some obscure community agency, I meet my stockbrokers in their offices.
They’ve offered to make house calls, but I’d rather kill time travelling back and forth.
The brokers talk and talk about the fate of my stocks and rattle off reasons why I’m still
not making twenty percent a year on my investments. They chatter incessantly about
Tom, Dick, and Harry, the managers of mutual funds who look after my easily earned
money. As they babble on and on, my mind wanders, and I fidget in my chair because I
feel no affinity to people I’ll never meet in person. Still, it troubles me when sooner or
later the brokers suggest that I make changes in my portfolio -- changes that bring them
hefty commissions. I feel so guilty about having made a fortune without working for it
that I don’t stand up to the chatterboxes.
Quite often I think about the man who was reading the newspaper in the mall the
day I found out that I’d hit the jackpot. What if he had robbed me? How would my life
have turned out without my millions? I’m sure I would have grieved the loss of my
fortune for a long time. I would have had no choice but to toil and moil at the office and
put up with George Dunbar nagging and chiding me. The whole year long I would have
pined for my hard-earned three-week vacation with my in-laws in Mississauga. But each
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day I’d look in the mirror and see a hassled man who, nevertheless, had tried his best to
live in dignity.