![[PANK]](https://pankmagazine.com/wp-content/themes/pank/assets/images/pank-logo-large.png){kind=logo}
By Olivia Peña
Manuel Reyes is a winner every day. He sits in front of the communal TV to watch the seven o’clock news—a static mess of black and white; anchors with their polished smiles delivering even more bad news. Beneath their crisp ironed suits, the lottery numbers for that week’s drawing. He stares at the ticket crumpled between his paint stained fingers. His wife’s suggestion, all those years ago, had been baby oil to remove the colors from in between his hairy knuckles. But he liked to peel away at the splattered mess, nerves pulsing through his chest, as the winning lottery numbers scrolled lazily across the screen. He plays the same numbers every week. 8 and 30 for his ex-wife’s birthday. 9 5 1 for Riverside—the only aspect of his life left unscathed after the divorce. And the Mega Million number enclosed in a white circle (with the power to change his life), always the number seven—his daughter’s favorite number, he hoped, unsure if she even still had favorites. The last number she mentioned was 40, $40,000, which she explained with a sigh, her new job was paying her. “I have a degree for fucks sake,” she said. Manuel sighed with her, blew air into the receiver of his pre-paid metro phone. “You deserve much more, mijita,” he said, even though it was more money than he would ever see again in his lifetime.
Every day, Manuel imagines all that he will buy with whatever amount he wins. 80 million this week, advertised in red fluorescent numbers, hanging from the window of every liquor store and Vons from the shelter to Hole Avenue. 50 million after taxes. Or maybe 30 million—Manuel was never good at calculations. His ex-wife had set up all work and finances for him. Found houses that needed color, deciphered what was fair to pay, and paid whichever partners he needed for the job their cut. She was always carrying the burden for them both.
Manuel settled on 40 million. 39 million would go to his daughter, Amelia. So much cash, she could quit her job, throw away her long pencil skirt, pull her thick curly hair out of that tight bun, become whatever it was she really wanted to be. 1 Million For himself. Manuel Reyes— millionaire. First, he would buy a modest trailer at the park beneath the 91. He didn’t need anything extravagant. Anything was better than the itchy cots of the SDA shelter on La Sierra, or the shelter downtown, where he had to sleep with his stuff under his back, and even then, he would wake up with pieces of himself missing.
Next, he would buy A 1997 Honda CRV like the one he had when Amelia was little. The one he would drive to Dodger Stadium, park, and eat cinnamon rolls out of the trunk before a game. Amelia with frosting all over her blue and white vest. And finally—second-hand furniture. A rightful place to put all of his things—a nightstand to keep his medication that he now had to haul around the sun stained streets in a plastic bag, waiting for 3PM when the shelter doors opened.
Manuel didn’t win last night’s drawing, and blames the liquor store for his misfortune. The man in the crisp suit mentioned, as Manuel crumpled the ticket in his hand, that there had been a shooting shortly after Manuel left. A father, critical condition, Manuel’s age, and while he should have been thinking, that could have been me, instead, he shouted “lousy”, drowned out by the noise in the shelter, and threw the ticket to the ground. So he tries a new liquor store, for good measure, in the morning. The sun is overbearing, the heat is lazy and settled around every isle of the liquor store. The clerk doesn’t understand how he pronounces Super Lotto. Manuel makes the money signal, his fingers dry and crisp. The clerk understands. Manuel has five dollars left in his wallet, so he looks at the endless rows of rolled up scratchers.
“Power Shot Multiplier. Win up to $100,000!”
Half of Amelia’s salary, he thinks, tapping his fingers on the glass. “Siete,” he says to the clerk, who repeats “seven” aloud in perfect English.
Outside, a woman walks by with a clear bag of pastel pan dulce, a baby on her hip, and a pocket full of coins, surely in route to Lavanderia Magnolia. Paletero men stroll lazily in search of a few kids cutting class, hungry for cartooned paletas in the heat of the morning. Manuel uses his fingernails to scratch the surface of the Power Shot scratcher. First, he sees $15 x2 and he is a lucky man. Thirty dollars could buy him pupusas and platanos fritos at Reinas. $50 x14 and he’s staying in a hotel tonight. Forget platanos, he wants a burger with double meat, medium rare, because now he has options. $500 x2, and the street starts to spin. Cars are zipping by without a sound, and the heat is making him dizzy. The woman with the pan dulce is a blur of pink and brown, the son on her hip is a shadow. $1,000 x18 and he’s calling Amelia. Punching numbers into his flip phone. His hands are shaking as he tells her $20,000, at least $20,000. “I can’t bring it with me to the shelter,” he says, and she understands. Unlike her speeches via early morning phone calls. Her relentless offers of her apartment, offering her pullout mattress couch to him. “That’s your problem, you have too much pride,” he hears Amelia or his ex-wife saying. He doesn’t have to explain that he cannot bring the ticket home, wherever that may be tonight. “Meet me at work,” she says, and Manuel tucks the ticket deep into his pocket.
The walk to Amelia’s job makes Manuel’s skin melt and his bones ache and pop. When he gets halfway there, he has to sit down on a bus bench and watch as busses drive by and push hot exhaust into his face. When he arrives in the parking lot of the tinted office building he sits on the curb, scratching the bar code for Amelia. From the revolving door, she is beautiful, and even more so up-close, just like her mother.
Before she sits down, he tells her his plans for the money. For her to keep half for herself and to give half to her mom. “Ten grand a piece or whatever after taxes. Mira,” he says, pointing to the x18 and x14. She slings her bony arm around his damp shoulder and asks why he’s so hot. “No air condition on the bus,” he says, shaking the ticket towards Amelia. She holds the ticket in between her manicured fingers and pulls a quarter out of her pocket, scratching the winning numbers section. In the right hand column, there are no moneybags or rolls of dollar bills, no Powershot written in bold, glittered letters—just numbers.
“You forgot to scratch this, Pa. You didn’t win. You forgot to scratch this section to see if you got one of these. See,” she says pointing to the moneybags on the side of the scratcher. Her voice is all pity and no excitement. Heat spreads through Manuel’s stomach and rises until his entire body is ablaze. The same embarrassment he imagines he would feel, body slung across Amelia’s pullout couch, is a fire under his skin.
There is no liquor store downtown. No red lotto numbers gleaming, carrying the broken hymns of men in Riverside with everything to lose. Down a few blocks and to the right is a fancy corner store, though. With a bright yellow neon sign that reads “wine, cheese, and deli sandwiches” hanging from the front window. There, Amelia pulls out a crisp twenty and asks for two of the same ticket. “Eight,” she says, in perfect English, pointing under the glass. Manuel chimes in, hands in pockets. “Y un Super Lotto tambien, por favor.”
“Super Lotto too, please,” Amelia says, handing over the cash.
They find a nearly empty park, save for a pigtailed girl swinging alone. Her Nanny is sitting, hunched, on the bench nearby, with eyes glued to her phone. Manuel barely recognizes the park at first, because it is immaculate—fresh, bright red bark soft beneath their feet, swings and monkey bars that glitter in the sun. The Super Lotto ticket looks out of place on the newly painted cherry wood bench, 8 3 0 9 5 1 -7 staring up at Manuel. The park, and Amelia, so much different than they were before. Manuel remembers days he used to spend there, pushing Amelia in the same rusted swings with her mom sitting on the same bench, yelling, “too high, too high, she’s almost to the sky!” Their laughter, together, a chorus when life was simple. He thinks of telling Amelia about the numbers. He could start there. And in between every squeak of the swing, he could say every apology that ever crossed his mind. First, “I’m sorry you had to miss work for this.” Then, “I’m sorry you have to worry about me.” Or maybe, “I am sorry I can’t be an example,” which he thinks sounds completely different translated in his head.
“Power Shot Multiplier. Win up to $100,000!”
Amelia scratches the ticket in her lap, brushing the black dust from her perfectly ironed slacks. The girl on the swing is laughing, swinging her legs to and from the sky to go higher. “Nothing,” Amelia says, turning the ticket over. She puts her head on Manuel’s shoulder, looking down at the ticket he’s already begun to scratch. The sun feels dull and calm on Manuel’s face, and there’s even a small breeze. He wants to stay in the park forever. But, instead, he keeps scratching, iridescent dust collecting under his paint stained fingers. Amelia, for once, stays longer than usual. And Manuel continues, and knows he will keep playing, over and over again until he is a winner.
Olivia Peña (@oliviapenya) is a Black-Salvadoran writer and storyteller from San Francisco. She earned her MFA from the University of San Francisco. Her writing has been supported by the Tin House Summer Workshop and her work has appeared in The Acentos Review.