Ecstatic Cahoots: Fifty Short Stories Read Online Free PDF

me. “To our lucky night—hey, I’m spreading the luck around, right?—your luck I picked you up, mine cause I got picked up.”
    “Huh?” I wasn’t sure I liked the sound of that, and held off on taking my swig.
    “Check this out.” He fished into his shirt pocket, handed me a folded scrap of paper, and flicked on the overhead interior light.
    The paper unfolded into a lipsticked impression of a kiss, a phone number inscribed in what looked like eyebrow pencil, and the words, Call me tonight. Tonight underlined.
    “You ever seen a woman so hot you didn’t want to stare but couldn’t take your eyes off her? I don’t mean some bimbo at a singles bar. I’m in the Seasons and I see this almost-blonde in a tight green dress. She’s drinking with this guy and don’t look happy. He leans over and whispers something in her ear, and whatever he said, it’s like, you know, an eye-roller. She turns away from him and as she’s rolling her eyes to no one in particular she catches me staring. She got these beautiful eyes. And I roll my eyes, too, and just for a sec she smiles, then goes back to her drink. Doesn’t look at me again, but five minutes later she gets up to go to the ladies’, and when she does I see that green dress has a plunging back. Sexiest dress I ever seen. She walks right by my table, and on her way back she drops the note.”
    He reached for the flask, took a hit, and flicked out the interior light. Blowing snow reflected opaque in the headlights; it was hard to see ahead. He flicked the headlights off, too. “Better without them,” he said. “Ain’t no oncoming traffic to worry about.”
    We’d driven blocks, passed the L station on Wilson, and the little Asia Town on Argyle, ignored all the traffic signals on Broadway to keep our momentum, and hadn’t seen another car. We were approaching Sheridan Road. I was finally warmed up, though my feet were still numb. He took another swallow—he was drinking two to my one—and passed the flask. It was noticeably lighter.
    “You believe in love at first sight, man? Romantic crap, right? An excuse some people need to get laid. I’m thirty-four years old and that’s what I always thought, but now I don’t know. Or it’s more like I do know. I know what’s going to happen like it already happened. This snowstorm, the whole city shut down, you know, like destiny, man, destiny in a green dress.”
    “ Verde que te quiero verde ,” I said.
    “Say what?”
    “Lines from a poem.”
    “My mind keeps going over how she rolled her eyes and suddenly we’re staring at each other and boom, across a crowded room.” He rolled his droopy eyes to demonstrate. “What’s that old song—my Pops used to sing it with an Italian accent: Some-a enchanted-a evening you may see a stranger …”
    I’d wondered why he stopped to give me a ride—out of kindness or because he’d mistaken me for a woman alone, or to have someone along who could push, in case we got stuck. I recalled a Chekhov story from a Lit class called “Grief,” about a horse-cab driver who on a freezing Moscow night tries to tell his story to every passenger he picks up, but rather than listen, each person tells him his own story instead. Finally, near dawn, as he unharnesses his pony, the cabdriver tells the story he’s been trying all night to tell—that his little daughter has just died—to his pony. Lino was driving with a story to tell, not about grief or love or even male vanity. It was about luck, and he needed someone to hear it.
    “What you going to do?” I asked him.
    “What am I going to do? I’m going to call her! She’s hot, man. She’s waiting. She wants me. It’s a sin if a woman wants you and you don’t go. You ever had anything like this happen to you? What would you do?”
    “Probably worry about what to say for openers.”
    “You could recite a poem. I got the perfect line, man. I’m going to ask her: What did that guy whisper to make you roll your eyes?