See, my parents can gamble with their restaurant and it’s okay, because hard work and talent can change the odds in your favor.
But nothing changes the odds in a casino; they got all these big fancy hotels in Vegas to prove it. The house takes back around 15 percent of all the money gambled, guaranteed. You might win a thousand bucks today and you’ll be all excited, totally forgetting that over the past year you lost a lot more than you just won.
Life is kind of like that—I guess Gunnar knew that more than anyone. All our little daily thrills don’t change the fact that our chips eventually run out. It’s the scalding pot of truth we gotta make tea out of. The tea’s pretty good most of the time, unless you’re that poor slob who got struck by lightning five times. If you’re him, I can’t help you, except to point out that your life has the noble purpose of making the rest of us feel lucky.
I didn’t know where Mr. Umlaut was on the lightning-lottery scale, but I had a feeling he was standing in a stormy field, wearing lots of metal.
On Saturday night I was determined to put all the struggles of the Umlaut family out of my mind entirely. This was to be a night of fun. This was my first date with Kjersten.
Of course we wouldn’t be alone—it was a double date with Lexie and Clicking Raoul. Like I said, I couldn’t turn down the chance to take Kjersten to a fancy restaurant, and Crawley’s was among the fanciest. I was quick to discover that the responsibility of dating an older woman is enough to fry all your brain cells. The logistics alone ... How are you going to travel? Does she drive you? Is that humiliating if she does? Do you take a bus, and if you do, does that make you seem cheap? Do you call a taxi and go broke from cab fare even before you get where you’re going? Or do you walk there together and have everyone snicker at you because she’s taller than you?
In the end, I settled for simply meeting her at the restaurant. My mother raised an eyebrow when I let it slip before I left that Kjersten had a car.
“This girl you’re seeing drives?”
“No,” I answered. “It’s one of those self-driving cars—she just sits there.”
My mother is usually pretty quick, but I suppose she didn’t trust her own grasp of changing technology, because she said, “You’re kidding, right?” It was very Howie-like. I found that disturbing.
“I’ll be home by eleven,” I told her as I headed out the front door. “And just in case I’m not, I put the morgue on your speed dial.”
“Cut my heart out while you’re at it.”
“I’ll put it on my to-do list.”
I made a mental note to actually put the morgue on her speed dial. She’d be mad, but I also knew she’d laugh. Mom and I have a similar sense of humor. I find that disturbing, too.
I arrived ten minutes early, dressed in my best shirt and slacks. Kjersten arrived three minutes late, and was dressed for an evening on the Riviera.
“Is this too much?” she asked, looking at her gown that reflected light like a disco ball. “I heard that Crawley’s has a dress code.” Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t tacky or anything—in fact, it was the opposite. Heads turned when she walked in. I kept expecting flashes from the paparazzi.
“It’s perfect,” I told her with a big grin. The gown and the way she had put up her hair made her look even older, and I started to imagine us like one of those tests they give little kids. The one that goes:
I greeted her with a kiss on the cheek in clear view of the entire restaurant, in case there was any doubt who she was with.
“You look great,” I told her. “But you already know that, right?”
We were seated at a table for four, and I wasn’t quite sure whether I was supposed to sit next to her, or across from her, so I sat down first, and let her choose. This was probably the wrong thing to do, because the waiter gave me a look like my mother gives when I do something inexcusable. Then he went to pull out Kjersten’s chair for her—clearly what I was supposed to have done.
“I hope you don’t mind this double-date thing,” I said.
“Just as long as they’re not all double dates,” she said with a little smile. She reached across the table and took my hand. “I’ve never been taken on a date to a place this fancy before. You score a ten.”
Which meant there was nowhere to go but down.
“Of course,” she said ... a little bit awkwardly, “I’ve never been on a double date with a blind couple before.”
“Don’t worry—they’re just like people who can see,” I told her. “Except that they can’t.”
“I don’t want to say or do anything wrong ...”
“Don’t worry,” I told her, “that’s
Lexie and Raoul arrived a minute or so later, and I wondered where they’d been, since Lexie lives right upstairs, and then I wondered why I’d wondered. I went up to Lexie and took her hand. Kjersten was confused by this, until I guided Lexie’s hand into hers. It was something I was just used to doing; it spared Lexie the awkwardness of an inexact docking procedure when it came to shaking hands.
We sat at a table that used to be reserved for famous people from Brooklyn, until they realized that people from Brooklyn who got famous never came back.
Lexie released Moxie, her Seeing Eye dog, from his harness as soon as we sat down, and he obediently took his place beside her chair.
We made awkward small talk for a while about the differences between public high school and their ultra- high-end school for the wealthy blind. For a brief but unpleasant few moments, the girls had this little tennislike discussion about me, like I wasn’t there—all I could do was follow the ball back and forth.
“I like Antsy because he’s not afraid to say what’s on his mind,” serves Kjersten.
“Believe me, I know,” returns Lexie. “Even when he shouldn’t say anything at all.”
“Oh, but that’s the fun part,” Kjersten smashes for the point.
I decided a change in subject matter was called for.
“So,” I said to Raoul as the busboy poured water not quite as expertly as I did, “you don’t have a guide dog— is that because clicking does it all?”
“Pretty much,” said Raoul proudly. “Echolocation makes canes and canine companions seem positively medieval.” He’d been pretty quiet until now, but once the conversation became about him, he perked up. “Personally, I think it could be an adaptive trait. Evolutionary, you know?”
“Raoul doesn’t have a guide dog because most people don’t get them until they’re older,” Lexie explained curtly. “Technically I’m not supposed to have one either, but you know my grandfather—he pulled some strings.”
“I don’t need one, anyway,” Raoul said. Then he clicked a few times and determined the relative location of our four water glasses, and the fact that mine was only half full, on account of the busboy had run out of water since he didn’t check his pitcher the way you’re supposed to before you start pouring. And he calls himself a busboy!
“That’s amazing!” Kjersten said.
But I wasn’t so convinced. “He could have heard the water being poured.”
“Could have,” Raoul said, “but I wasn’t paying attention.”
“Okay, then,” I said, crossing my arms. “How many fingers am I holding up?”
“He can’t be that specific,” said Lexie, jumping to his aid, but Raoul clicked, and said: “None. You didn’t even put up your hand.”
Kjersten looked at me, and grinned.
“All right, Raoul wins,” I admitted. “He’s amazing.”
“And the crowd goes wild!” said Raoul.
“Can we just order?” said Lexie, running her finger across the Braille menu. Maybe it was my imagination, but she was moving her finger a little too fast for her to actually read it. I’ve seen Lexie read before. I knew the pace of Braille—or at least
“They’re flying me out to Chicago next week,” Raoul said. “To do a national talk show.”
At that, Lexie closed her menu a little too hard. The sudden clap made Moxie rise to his feet, then sit back
