Luck

        I'm finishing up my first full week in the chamber. I don't love the afternoon slot, but Monday I return to my old schedule; one of the other patients needs to switch so she can pick up her kids. I imagine her explaining to her kids that Mommy has to spend some time lying in a glass tube every day. As much as my life has not turned out the way I had hoped,  I have managed to avoid the complications that go along with breeding.

    As the days get longer, I start taking my daily walks later in the evening, just before dusk. I'm not supposed to be on my feet too much, so I usually just do a loop around the neighborhood. For a change of scenery, I walk along the edges of the PSU campus. I don’t spend much time down there, but maybe I should; the older parts of campus are pretty, with lots of trees and older buildings. When I return, I walk up 15th Avenue, directly across the highway from the Imperial Arms. My building looms, silhouetted against the darkening sky, like a giant molar. 

The following night I decide to get another look at the building from that angle. I head out a little earlier. The row of buildings along 15th Avenue that I see directly out my window are mostly low-income housing. The sidewalks in front of them are lined with people in various stages of fucked-uppedness. I narrowly miss being knocked over by a number of men and women in a drunken, distracted hurry. 

I pass the various on and off ramps I see from my windows, crisscrossing over one another. I ride past here with people sometimes, but in the ten years since I moved here, I’ve never walked around in this area. There’s not a lot of traffic on them this time of night, it’s surprisingly quiet.

A woman crouches in the street, picking through the grass that grows in a narrow strip beside the curb. She looks up and says something, but when I ask her to repeat herself, she turns back to the grass. As I start to walk away she calls to me again. I prepare to lie and say I don’t have any money on me, but she just asks me if she can give me something. She holds out two small three leaf clovers, pinched between her fingers. Her nails are covered in chipped silver polish. I take them and thank her. 

“Do you need any more for anyone?” she asks. Her clothes are disheveled but her face is lovely, framed by twin braids of thick black hair. I tell her no, it’s just me and the cat. “Tell the cat meow for me,” she says as I walk away. 

        As I slip the tiny sprigs into my wallet, I peer closer at them. They are four leaf clovers after all; the extra leaf on each is smaller than the rest. How long as she spent down there, searching patiently for these things?  I should have given her a couple of bucks, but she didn’t ask for anything. The chances of coming across a four leaf clover are are one in 10,000.  I look back at her, crouching in the gutter, fully engrossed in her work. I think about going back, then continue on my way as the sun goes down.