Sometimes, just for devilment, God allows someone, someone wholly unworthy, a lucky day.
God’s rules are that it runs for precisely 24 hours, and at local time. It starts with the first second of the day and ends on the first stroke of midnight. You have to find out for yourself that its happening and the longer you stay in bed, the more hours of luck you waste. That’s all part of God’s joke, which he thinks is a good one.
Frank was one beneficiary. He’d lost his job at a local supermarket six months ago, mainly because he’d been eating the stock, chocolate bars mostly, whenever he felt like it. “Hell,” he thought, “they’re a perk of the job, ain’t they?” He hadn’t worked since.
He was, consequently, fat and getting fatter. He’d divorced his wife about a year before, following a casual affair with a woman called Dawn, another checkout worker at the supermarket. Frank’s wife had been angry. Frank told her she was fat, which was true. She told Frank he was a pig, a statement which also had merit.
Frank had taken photos of Dawn during sex, and sent them to her via his mobile phone. Unfortunately, her husband had seen them, and that had prompted another divorce.
When he looked back on the chaos he had caused, Frank just laughed. After the departure of his wife, he had turned to pornography, and, when he could afford it, a lady of the night called Gloria.
On the day of God’s joke, he was woken in mid-morning by the ringing of the doorbell. Frank would have ignored the ring, but every time he rolled his walrus-like form over to resume his dream (in which he was being massaged by lithe young girls), the shrill sound woke him once more.
He waddled out of the bedroom, yawning and wrapping his stained dressing gown around him. At the top of the stairs, he trod on a shirt that he had thrown there the night before, and instead of falling to his death with a broken neck,surfed the shirt down the stairs to the front door, as though he had been doing tricks like this all his life.
“Phew!” he said, looking back briefly. “Well, there’s life in this old dog yet.”
The doorbell rang once more and he resumed his ill-feeling toward the world in general.
“Well?” he said, flinging open the front door to two young, clean-cut men in suits. Frank looked from one to the other. The taller one had his finger poised to ring the bell once more and somehow couldn’t stop himself from doing so. This time, no noise emanated from the equipment. Instead, the button to which his finger was pressed became surrounded by a blue glow.
The man’s face, which just a short time before had been composed, relaxed, assured, now assumed a look of silent helplessness. Then it contorted in anguish. There was a smell of burning flesh. Smoke was coming from his finger, still pressed firmly against the bell push. His body began to vibrate. His colleague, open-mouthed, grabbed him around the waist and tried to pull him bodily from the house, but they were both now enveloped in a sort of orange haze, the result of what must have been a fair amount of voltage.
“What the...?” Frank said, suspecting he was the victim of a practical joke. He stepped forward and grasped the finger that pushed the bell. “There,” he said as he pulled it away.
All was silence. There was a slight odour of burning. Small plumes of smoke still rose from the two young men. “We are,” one said brightly, “representatives of the Church of Christ Scientist.”
Well it was just at that moment, that the shorter one, the one who had not spoken, realised that his trousers were on fire. Then flames licked around the crotch of the other. They both looked down briefly. Then they threw themselves into the weedy grass patch at the front of the house which dogs regularly used as a toilet, rolling over and over, eventually managing to extinguish the flames. Frank looked on, uncomprehendingly, wondering what was to come next.
Finally, with all the dignity they could muster, they withdrew, raising their hats and releasing more smoke.
“Don’t bother coming back!” Frank shouted at their backs. It had been a good start to the day.
He picked up the newspaper that the boy must have delivered by accident (Frank’s newspaper deliveries having been stopped many months before), grunted and retreated to his kitchen.
There he was greeted by the normal display of chaos. Plates and pans filled the sink, food packages and tins covered the work surface, the floor, the table, the chairs. They spilled their contents casually around them, mingling with glasses and cups. Wine bottles lay scattered on the work surface, surrounded by empty beer cans. Everywhere there were fragments, rotting bread, rank cheese, greenish hunks of beefburger, open tins and plastic containers which had once held chow mein, curry, rice, sauce.Frank’s kitchen could have been an installation by Tracey Emin.
Frank stepped over an upturned chair to reach the kettle. He scratched his belly. The doorbell rang again. Frank grunted once more, and opened the door to find a lady, equipped with all kinds of mops, buckets and brooms, on his doorstep. The bell seemed to have mended itself.
She was wearing a kind of uniform with vivid red and white stripes, a red pillbox hat, rubber gloves. She saluted briefly.
“Sir. You have won a random prize in the Clean Up the County with Kleenage competition. We take on the biggest challenges in cleaning. Then, we make you breakfast! Show me to your kitchen! The only proviso is that we take pictures of your house, before and after, to show on our web site.
Frank must have nodded, because a couple of hours later, his kitchen was as shiny and clean as it had been when his wife had been around. The lady had departed, saying that never had they had such a perfect set of before and after pictures.
She had provided a breakfast that had been challenging in its proportions, but Frank had accepted that challenge, and moved on, to a half-bottle of whisky,unearthed amongst the bottles of cleaning fluid under the sink, an area of the house that had been untouched since his wife’s departure.
Now the bottle was empty and Frank was snoring on the sofa, dreaming of lottery numbers, which, unbeknown to him, would have won him a cool five million, had he thought of actually buying a ticket.
He woke and struggled out to the kitchen. He was surprised to find that he felt quite well, despite the morning’s drinking session. There was still some coffee and he reheated that and poured it into a cup, looking out of his back window.
“Uh?” he said, becoming suddenly alert.
He thought he could see, across the lines of traffic that passed the house, Dawn’s husband and he was carrying a gun. Frank pressed his back to the wall at the side of the window, remembering how the man had vowed to revenge himself. Dawn had lost her job at the time of their affair and was rumoured to have fallen on hard times.
Frank then heard the screech of brakes, a scream and a bang. When he looked out again, he couldn’t see the man with the gun, but he heard shouting. Someone was screaming, “He was pointing the gun at me! He was pointing it at me! I had to drive at him!” Frank heard sirens approaching. He didn’t watch the lifeless form being loaded into the ambulance or the man dragged off to the station by the police. Instead, Frank went back to his coffee. It seemed that things were working out for him that day, but he wasn’t surprised.
He read his horoscope in the paper. “This will be a good day,” it said, “but at midnight Mars will come into conjunction with Uranus. Go home early.”
It was almost six o’ clock. Frank picked fluff from his navel, looked at it and ate it. He was beginning to feel that sex would have to be on the agenda for the evening, but he wondered how he might be able to pay for Gloria’s company. His wallet barely contained a note.
Instead of going out, he went to the back bedroom and turned on the computer. The self-administered relief massage watching pornography was curiously satisfying. The girls had seemed to look straight into his eyes and smile as he achieved a shuddering climax.
“My gosh,” he said to himself. “If I can only raise the cash, Gloria’s in for a treat tonight.” He admired his bulky form in the mirror; his noble, unshaven chin above it all. He headed down the street to the pub.
As he stepped from the house, pulling up his collar, the rain stopped. The dog next door growled at him, but when he looked at it and threatened it with a fist, it slunk back to its kennel. A small light began to glow in his brain, but he shook his head and turned it off.
Carl was behind the bar polishing glasses. Derek was idly throwing darts into the board. Frank casually slipped a coin into the fruit machine and pulled the handle. It reacted by vomiting a glittering stream of coins onto the floor.
“Blimey,” said Carl from behind the bar, “that must be the biggest jackpot we’ve had all year.”
Frank expansively ordered drinks for the three of them. Carl put the plasma TV on when the football was about to start. Frank said, “Three-one to the Reds.”
They watched the game, drinking steadily.
A couple of hours later, the announcer confirmed Frank’s prediction, just as, at half-time, the winning lottery numbers had been the ones Frank had dreamed. The small glow in Frank’s head flickered into life once more.
“Derek,” Frank said, “Want a game of darts? Ten quid to the winner?”
“Make it twenty,” said Derek, who was captain of the darts team.
Frank, whose skill at darts was negligible, won. “Double or quits?” Derek suggested.
They had time for two games before Carl called time at eleven. “Bloody hell,” said Derek.
“Thanks Derek,” said Frank, chuckling. “I’m off to see Gloria.
When he got outside, the rain stopped once more. A taxi, almost unheard of in the deprived area of town where Frank lived, drew up alongside him. “Take me to the Fun House,” Frank said.
Nadia, who ran the Fun House, greeted Frank like an old friend. She poured him Champagne, sat him down and said, “You’re in luck, Frank. We’re running a two girls for the price of one special tonight. I suppose you’d like to see Gloria. You can have the Mirror Suite as there’s no one in there.”
“Blimey, Frank,” said Gloria when she went into the room, “Get in that shower. You stink like dead fish.”
Frank chuckled. “Put your boots on,” he said. The clock was ticking towards midnight.
Frank emerged from the shower, releasing a cloud of steam into the room. “Is this how you’d like me, Frank?” Gloria said, bending over the back of a chair dressed in a pair of high boots, stockings and not much else. She was thinking, “Thank God he likes it this way. At least I don’t have to look at him.”
Frank drooled. “Where’s this other bird, then?”
“She’s on her way. She’s quite new to this game, but she said she’s looking forward to meeting you.” Frank started grunting away behind her. A distant clock chimed. The door of the room opened and shut.
“Hello, Dawn,” said Gloria gasping, “Join in how you’d like.”
Frank’s eyes widened suddenly, as he felt something quite uncomfortable enter his anus.
God had a good laugh and went back to imagining other universes where he could have a bit of fun.
© Michael Spring, 2008
Franks's Lucky Day by Michael Spring was read by Camila Fiori at the Liars' League Saints & Sinners event on 8 June 2008.
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