Mr. Lucky

dummy, take the money. He wanted to cry; would have had he been alone.

“Time’s up,” she called out.

A strained laugh came out of his mouth. Being a nerd, Ricky carried a miniature screwdriver in his shirt pocket, and he got on his knees and unscrewed the air-conditioning vent, then removed his winnings from his belly pack and stuffed them into the small rectangular hole in the wall.

A strange smell was coming out of the vent. He took a deep whiff, trying to place it. Like badly burnt toast. Rita knocked on the bathroom door.

“Rick-y!”

“I’m coming.”

“Not without me!”

“Ha-ha,” he said.

He screwed the vent back into place. Opening the bathroom door, he saw Rita sitting on the bed with their drinks, her blouse partially unbuttoned.

“Here I am,” he said, sitting down beside her.

She passed him his soda. “Bottoms up.”

They clicked glasses, and Ricky felt her stare. He put his drink on the floor, then said, “Listen, something’s come up. I think it would be best if you left.”

“But we’re just getting started.”

She had a mouth that could make your heart melt. Ricky was a sucker for beautiful girls and had to remind himself that this one wanted to roll him. Staring past her, he said, “I really think you need to go.”

She squeezed his leg. This time the little man did not respond. “What’s wrong? You got a wife at home you’re not telling me about?”

“Something like that,” he said.

“Sure you don’t want to play around?”

“I’m sure.”

The dreamy look vanished from her face. Putting her drink on the floor, Rita picked up her purse. “And I thought you were someone special,” she said.

Ricky looked into her eyes, trying to see into the soul of a woman who’d take advantage of a lonely guy and steal his dough. Did she care that he was hypersensitive to sleeping medication and that her mickey might kill him? No, she probably didn’t. He stood up and pointed at the door.

“Get out,” he said.

Her face turned to granite. She went to the minibar and slipped on her pumps. She didn’t seem tipsy anymore, and walked calmly to the door before stopping.

“Maybe some other time,” she said.

“I don’t think so.”

She scowled, the lost money eating a hole in her. In the movies the guy got to say something clever right about now, and Ricky pointed at the door. “See you around, sweetheart.”

“Who said that? Bogart, or was it Edward G. Robinson?”

“Jimmy Cagney.”

She lingered at the door, smiling coyly. “Sure you don’t want me to stay?”

“You don’t quit, do you?”

“Quitting is for losers, big boy.”

“Get lost, or I’ll call security.”

“You’re so brave.”

“Keep it up and I’ll toss you myself.”

“A slob like you?” She pulled a can of mace from her purse. “I don’t think so.”

Ricky blinked. A thick black snake about nine feet long had slithered into the room and wrapped itself around Rita’s shapely legs. Thinking the booze was messing with his head, he watched the snake begin to squeeze the life out of her, only to melt away in a harmless puff of smoke. Rita looked at the floor, sensing something was wrong.

“What’s that funky smell?” she said.

“Something’s burning. You’d better not open that door.”

“Why not?”

Because somewhere deep down inside I want to believe you might really care for me, he thought. “I think the hotel’s on fire,” he said.

Rita put her hand on the knob and twisted it. “Right. And you and I are going to stay in this room until the firemen come. My hero. Well, if I stay, it’s going to cost you, toilet-bowl head. Four hundred bucks an hour, a grand for the night.”

Ricky winced. All his life people had soiled him with names, but for some reason this dagger hurt more than the others. He hadn’t intentionally lost his hair, but women seemed to think something was wrong with his genetic makeup because he had. His lower lip began to tremble, and he had to think hard.

“How about twenty bucks, and you have to shine my shoes in the morning?”

Rita’s mouth dropped open: score one for RS. Jerking the door open, she said, “Stick it up your ass, fat boy,” and marched into the hallway.

A loud whoosh! greeted her as the fire smoldering in the hallway sucked up the bedroom oxygen and caused the hallway to burst into flames. Rita stood in the center of it. She acted confused, like someone trapped in a carnival fun house, and Ricky watched in morbid fascination as her flowing blond hair and baby-doll red dress sparked, then burst into bright orange flames.

The smell of burning food was unmistakable. He imagined a fire raging out of control in the hotel restaurant, perhaps caused by a punctured gas line or a greasy stove. Once the fire exceeded eighteen hundred degrees, its radiant heat flux would travel up the elevator shafts and air-conditioning ducts and cook the building like a giant souffle. Rita was getting the full treatment, and she ran back into the room like she’d been shot out of a cannon.

“You bastard!” she screamed.

Ricky sidestepped her mad charge and watched her sail headfirst through the glass slider. Choking black smoke filled the room, and he kicked out the remaining glass and followed her onto the balcony.

Only, Rita wasn’t there. He went to the railing and stared down. Her burning body lay in the grass five floors below. She had landed with her arms spread out, like a kid making an angel in the snow. I could have saved you, he thought. He lifted his eyes. The moon wore a face that resembled a sly little grin.

Screams carried up from below as other guests opened their sliders and came outside. Suddenly, Ricky remembered his twenty grand in the bathroom. He tried to go back inside and was met by a blinding column of smoke.

He staggered off to the side of the balcony. With his hands he found the wall of the hotel, and put his back to it.

He asked himself how this could be happening. Tonight, his luck had finally changed. He’d made a huge score on his own. But instead of staying downstairs in the casino and continuing to gamble, he’d let the first pretty girl to wink at him talk him into coming upstairs. He’d ruined a beautiful thing and had no one to blame but himself.

The hotel began to shake. He could hear flames roaring through the building and guessed that the fire had gotten so hot that a deadly electromagnetic wave had been created. The souffle was just about done.

Time to talk to the Big Guy, he thought.

In college he’d written a paper about all the novels Ernest Hemingway had written in which characters had prayed at the point when prayer wasn’t going to do them any good. For Hemingway, prayer and tragedy were forever linked, the world a sad, distrustful place. Ricky’s opinion was about the same. Life sucked, then you died. But just in case God was listening…

“Oh, God, please spare me from dying,” he said, his eyes tightly shut. “Please, God…I won’t ever fuck up again.”

Flames jumped onto the balcony, singeing his arm. He let out a cry and opened his eyes. He was thirty-five, no family, a guy with big dreams but nothing to show for it. He looked over his shoulder into his room. The fire had eaten away the ceiling, and conduits and sheets of insulation were dropping onto his bed. Soon the room would be