Maybe if you rub those tickets together, you’ll excite the numbers. But listen to me, friend, you don’t ever want to let them rub off on you. Don’t even look at them too much or you might get Marked. You think you’re gambling now, but you don’t know the half of it. Before the numbers catch up with you, I better tell you about Dave.
The time finally came when Dave’s days were truly numbered. Gone were such naïve notions as “Thursday,” or “Two Days After He Bought The New Hat,” or “Cindy’s Birthday.” No. Now it was 226.
He had had to buy a new watch with a special button from a shop in between the Men’s and Women’s restrooms at Donnie’s Late Nite. All of his clocks were instantly obsolete. He had been switched over to a new system and these anachronisms had nothing useful to say on the matter.
Dave couldn’t believe he had made it to the triple digits. He had never imagined making it past Day 30. 30 was the quiet neighbor who didn’t bother any of the other numbers, the perfect vessel for latent menace. By Day 27, Dave had been convinced that 30 was his assassin, triple-pronged with venom. How foolish he had been back in the double digits!
Dave had learned to appreciate many new things since that fateful evening when the bald man had torn him from sleep and proceeded to strip off warm layers of reality. Dave awoke to this mad revenant hovering above his pillow, the herald of secrets now laid bare.
“Today is Zero!” it had proclaimed, shaking Dave by the hair. “Zero! Understand? Tomorrow will be One! One!” Then the bald man curled back a flap of wallpaper and was gone.
His life irrevocably changed, Dave took to the streets early on the morning of Day One. “What day is it for you?” he demanded of everyone. “What day is it for you?” He beseeched the garbage man, the newsboy, his girlfriend, his boss, but they each recoiled from his ravings.
At last, the young urchin by the subway answered him, “Twenty-four. It is twenty-four for me.” Uplifted by this, Dave puzzled his way through the first day of being Marked.
But the next day, on Two, the urchin was gone and he never saw her again.
The Lowballs were a stretch of dark road they all had to walk. That’s where Dave discovered that there were no guarantees and very few handouts. After that, the numbers pounced on him, like a hungry night beast. Eventually, he moved out of the slack-jawed befuddlement phase of meeting this particular beast, into studying its eating habits, wrestling with it, and recognizing its cruel scent on others.
“445,” said the saucy redhead at the bar. The Marked could pick each other out of a crowd.
“Liar,” Dave said. “You’re a fucking liar!”
She just chuckled and tapped her special watch.
“Ha! You can buy high numbers at any Chinese Laundromat in the city!” Dave snorted. “It’s an illusion, babe. A sucker’s game.”
She rolled her eyes and turned back to her drink.
That’s about the time I met up with Dave. I refilled his glass and listened to his tale, though I knew most of it already.
“Those numbers sound pretty harsh,” I told him. “But then, I was never any good at math.”
“You don’t understand, pal,” he said, turning to go.
I caught his shoulder, bringing his eyes back to mine.
“When you want to know how high they go, you come back here and we’ll have ourselves a chat. Then you’ll know exactly what I ‘understand.’ You’re learning to count all over again and that’s a hard lesson. But you’re just a Getter. Beware a Giver, friend, for that is a cockatrice you dare not face.”
As he left the bar, I could tell my words had found no purchase in poor Dave’s heart. Shaking my head, I readied another glass. Keeping tabs on Dave would not be a problem for such a generous creature as myself.
Day 666 found Dave in a church. On 667, the nuns turned him loose on a city that was by all appearances solid, though its foundation still remained suspect.
Day 2000 and Dave was in a backwoods cabin lined with canned hams and kerosene. He had again been spared, although he had long forgotten why he wanted to be.
After Day 2056, Dave kind of fell off the map. Even I couldn’t sniff him out. If his number came up or not, I’ll never know. Maybe he finally made peace with the Numbers Game. Or, maybe one day he’ll kick in the door of the daycare center screaming, “3036, you shit-heads! It’s 3036!” This is the biggest crapshoot in the universe and you never know how things will turn out.
Still got those “winning tickets?” Still think the numbers will be kind to you? Well, it must indeed be your lucky day, because I’ve got news for you, friend:
Today is not really today. Today is Zero.