The Numbers Were With Me

I polished off a fifth of gin as my fourth wife continued her second guessing diatribe. She was imploring me for the third time to take a second chance at a once in a lifetime offer. Number four was a ten when I met her, but had deteriorated to a six over time. She had hardly touched her seven and seven, as she talked on. It seemed her half-brother was out of work for the umpteenth time. She wanted me to hire him to make him feel whole. I had said no innumerable times, but she claimed that he was willing to redouble his effort. Would a half-brother redoubling his effort equate to a whole day’s work? Being three sheets to the wind, such was my conundrum as I reached for the first of my twelve-pack.

I awoke on the couch eight hours later and immediately took two aspirin, along with my twelfth and final beer. Number four was nowhere to be seen, but she had left the television on channel seven, which was showing the eight o’clock news. It seems that three men had held up the seven-eleven at nine the night before, bringing the number of burglaries to eight over a thirty-day stretch. Feeling like a fraction of myself, I stumbled some twenty steps to the phone and dialed. Five-five-five-two-eight-five-nine. She answered on the sixth ring.

“Where are you?” I asked.

Eight seconds or more elapsed before she answered.

“At the 21 club on the corner of 5th Avenue and 7th Street,” she said coolly.

I hung up, grabbed my .357 and headed out the door to my ’67 Mustang. I had a sixth sense that something was up. I drove eighty all the way, finally hanging a ninety degree turn onto Seventh Street. Two minutes later I pulled into the first spot I could find, dropped fifty cents into the meter, and walked the half block to the club door. I tipped the six foot four doorman five and went in. There she was, dressed to the nines, with two other men. A third large man was at the next table, a five o’clock shadow darkening his face. There was no question he was getting at least four squares a day. He had the look of a small time criminal that had seen three hots and a cot in his time. The odds were fifty-fifty that she wanted to eighty-six me.

“I’m leavin’ you,” she spat, between her four remaining teeth.

Many think that one is the loneliest number, but I suddenly felt as if two tons had been lifted from my chest. While I was not in seventh heaven, I was definitely on cloud nine. I had done a complete one-eighty since I met her.

“Three cheers!” I yelled triumphantly, and turned to leave.

As I hit the street, I was suddenly aware that the temperature was in the eighties, and I was still in my thirties. I suddenly had a second lease on life, which I would not squander and regret in my sixties. After all, it would be all too soon that I would be six feet under. I headed to the casino to bet on the hard eight. How could I miss? The numbers were with me, Trey V. Cero III.