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Jackpot

Kirk Alex

(short story excerpt from Blood, Sweat and Chump Change –– Taxi Tales & Vignettes by the author)

    A small one, you keep telling yourself. Just a break is all I need, a bit of luck. My time’s coming. I’m no quitter. Can’t quit now. But the years slip right through your fingers, all those years, so many, too many (over two decades). Your youth, you paid for that Jackpot (that never arrived and never will—not here) with your youth. Twenty-four years, what should have been your best years—your youth. You bet on the Jackpot. The only “Jackpot” you’ve ever known is one referred to facetiously in the cab business: Get the old lady at the supermarket with the shopping cart full of groceries, who is going two blocks and will pay you in coupons and will expect you to carry her many sacks of groceries up a flight of stairs–– and it will do nothing for you but eat up your time.&mnsp;.&mnsp;.&mnsp;. That’s the only Jackpot you’ll ever know.
    A heavy toll was paid for that bit of wisdom you gained/retained. That bit of wisdom not even worth the two bits required to cross the San Pedro Bridge.
    You take pride in not being a gambler. Think of men who gamble their money/lives away as weak-minded fools.
    What would you call the two decades-plus you bet on a dream? Twenty-four years you lost/bet on nothing more than a mirage?
    Some Jackpot you ended up with. Not even worth the two bits required by the meter on West Pico Boulevard for one hour of time at the roach-infested Chinese all-you-can-eat buffet/slop that you stuff your face at six days a week (they’re closed Mondays, thank god), because a burnout forty-five-year-old case like yourself is no longer inclined to give a damn what he fills his belly with anymore, how he dresses; the lack of a social life.
    One more Jackpot equals the Asian waitress grabbing a napkin and pouncing on a cockroach on your table inches from your plate, crushing and disposing of it (without so much as a blink). Like that Jackpot that never arrived.

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