infinite sandwiches

The first time I won anything, it was a plastic pencil sharpener from the school book fair. You could pick any color. I picked red, because I’d associated it with luck for some reason, and it was the only one left. For weeks, I sharpened pencils to the nub, waiting for something magical to happen. I ended up with a lot of stubs and a pile of red shavings. It’s safe to say that I have been trying to figure out luck ever since.

———

My parents used to say you should never mention good luck out loud, lest you jinx it. They said you should never say “things could be worse,” because that’s an open invitation for things to prove you otherwise. They said you should knock on wood, cross your fingers, toss salt over your shoulder, avoid black cats and ladders and sidewalk cracks. Growing up, my grandmother kept a horseshoe over the door, open side up. “It helps me catch luck,” she said when I asked her about it while cooking lentil soup. Years later, someone hung it upside down, and the whole house had water damage for a year. Make of that what you will.

———

Last Friday, the Mega Millions jackpot reached $1.6 billion. This number was so large it no longer felt like money, just a meta, like “infinite sandwiches” or “eternal youth.” At the gas station, a man with a clipboard bought fifty tickets in a row, checking each one off a list. I asked if he played every week.

“Gotta be in it to win it,” he said, throwing a wink. He was wearing a T-shirt with a cartoon leprechaun and the words Feelin’ Lucky on it. I did not ask how it had been working out for him so far.

I bought a single ticket and promised myself I’d check the numbers. I never checked the numbers. My luck is at its best when I’m not paying attention. For all I know, the ticket sat there in a drawer for god knows how long, alive with possibility. I was a millionaire every morning when I woke up, at least until the coffee kicked in, and I remembered I would still have to go to work. There was a kind of comfort in not knowing, in the same way a wrapped present was more exciting than the gift inside, or the way a closed fortune cookie held infinite futures until you broke it open.

To me, the ticket wasn’t about money. It was a tiny slip of paper that kept the door cracked on a better life, just enough to let the draft in. Maybe that was the whole trick, the not-knowing.

———

E. said I had “neutral luck.” Neither good nor bad, but slightly askew. If there was a random giveaway at the grocery store, I would win a coupon for a free can of beets. If there was a raffle at work, I would win second place, which was almost always a branded beach towel or a $10 gift card to a place that was no longer in business.

One time, E. and I flew standby to London. We were the last two people to make it onto the flight, wedged into the second-to-last row by the bathroom, knees pressed to our chests. The man next to us got a complimentary upgrade and free drink tickets. We got a malfunctioning reading light and a child kicking the seat from behind. After we landed, we waited an hour for our luggage, which arrived covered in mystery goop.

“That’s about right,” E. said, holding the suitcase at an arm’s length.

“Could be worse,” I said.

Before I could finish my thought, it started raining outside and stranded us for another hour down the cab line.

———

People like to talk about streaks. Hot streaks, cold streaks, losing streaks. Being “on a roll.” My uncle from my mother’s side kept a poker log in a spiral-bound notebook, tracking every hand, every win and loss, convinced that the universe was secretly operating on some knowable, trackable pattern.

“The universe has a memory,” he said, whatever that meant.

Once, at Thanksgiving, he explained to the whole table that luck was like the weather: random in the short run, predictable in the long run. “Eventually, you get the same number of sunny days as rainy days,” he said. That year, he lost his job and his boat and got shingles. He started keeping his lucky penny in a different pocket.

———

According to the internet, there were scientific studies about luck. People who thought they were lucky are, statistically, luckier than people who thought they were not. Something about attention, openness, taking chances. If you were looking for good fortune, you noticed more opportunities. If you were bracing for disaster, you found it everywhere.

For a while, I tried to be “open to luck.” I tried to keep an eye out for opportunity. Mostly, I noticed when there was no line at the post office, or when the elevator arrived on my floor before I pressed the button. I didn’t buy scratch-offs, but I did pick up pennies from the sidewalk. Heads or tails, didn’t matter. A penny was a penny.

One time, I found a $20 bill in the grocery store parking lot. I used it to buy a rotisserie chicken and a six-pack. When I got home, the chicken was undercooked and the beer was skunky. 

“That’s just how your fortune goes, huh?” E. said, picking at the raw bits on her plate.

———

As a kid, I thought luck was something you could accumulate, like pennies or trading cards. I kept a shoebox under my bed labeled Lucky Stuff. It held a rock shaped like a foot, a plastic whistle, a stubby pencil, a quarter from 1993, and a broken watch. I carried the watch in my pocket during standardized tests and spelling bees. I always thought it gave me an edge.

Years later, I found the box in my parents’ attic, tucked behind a stack of tax returns and Christmas lights. The contents looked less like treasure and more like a failed attempt at time travel. I couldn’t remember why the whistle was lucky, or what happened to the matching shoe-shaped rock. The watch was still broken. It still made me feel lucky.

———

Luck is a story we tell ourselves after the fact. Every time I barely made a light or got the last donut or ran into an old friend at the airport, I called it luck. Every time I tripped over my own feet or spilled coffee on my shirt or got locked out of the house, I called it “just my luck.”

At the DMV, the number system was designed to punish all hope. You took a ticket, sat in a plastic chair, and waited while every number except yours was called. When it was finally your turn, you were caught in the bathroom.

The last time I was there, the woman next to me had been waiting two hours for her number. She was reading a book called The Art of Manifesting. “I’m manifesting a good outcome,” she told me when our eyes met. Ten minutes later, they announced the system was down. “I manifested a break,” she said, packing up her purse. Just her luck.

———

Superstitions were just luck in bad disguise. I didn’t believe in lucky numbers, but I avoided 13 when I could. I didn’t believe in astrology, but if my horoscope read, Take it easy today, I was happy to obey. I didn’t believe in fate, but I believed in parking spaces, more specifically, that the moment you gave up and drove away, a vacant spot would appear.

When E. and I were looking for apartments in Philly, we missed out on three in a row. We lost to someone who “applied five minutes earlier,” or “offered to pay six months’ rent up front,” or “just had a better vibe.” By the time we got approved for one, we were so relieved that we ignored the weird stains on the carpet and the mysterious draft from the windows. “Lucky us,” I said, tripping over a broken floorboard. E. squeezed my hand and went back to work.

———

My friend Natalie believed in signs from the universe. Every time something happened, she told me, “It’s a sign.” She was always seeing patterns: the same number on a receipt, a certain bird breed in the yard, an old song on the radio. She made wishes at 11:11, threw coins in fountains, and knocked on wood for protection. She was the perfect child for my parents.

“Luck is mostly about paying attention,” she said, nodding her head for impact. “You’ll see the universe is trying to tell you something.”

I wasn’t sure what the universe was telling me, but lately it seems to be speaking in riddles: One-way street. Do not enter. No exit.

———

According to science, luck did not exist. According to religion, everything was destiny. According to my uncle, luck was just “being in the right place at the right time, with the right amount of liquor.”

These days, according to me, luck is being able to find your car keys on the first try.

———

At work, the company launched a Lucky Day raffle. Every Friday, someone got an Amazon gift card for “making a difference.” The first week, the winner was Olga, who started the wellness newsletter and once brought in gluten-free brownies that no one ate. The second week, it was Jon, who set the new record for most emails sent in an hour. The third week, it was me. I won a $15 Amazon card and my picture in the company email.

E. asked what I was planning to buy with it.

“Maybe a lucky rabbit’s foot,” I replied.

She said, “Why not buy a lottery ticket?”

The next Friday, the raffle went to Brenda from HR, who immediately left for a better job.

———

Once, I had a run of bad luck so intense that it felt biblical in a way. First, my car broke down in the parking lot of a mattress store. Then my credit card got declined at the pharmacy, even though I had just gotten paid. Then, my dentist informed me that the weird pain in my jaw was probably stress-related, which was not covered by insurance.

That night, I microwaved a burrito, which exploded within a minute. I ate it anyway, picking out the unscorched bits.

The next morning, I found a $5 bill in the laundry. Balance restored, I reassured myself.

———

All my life, when I told people about my luck, they laughed. They told me about the time they won concert tickets, or a year’s supply of soap, or a free vacation they couldn’t take because their passport expired. They told me about losing wallets, finding wallets, getting pulled over and waved through, missing flights and catching the next one just in time.

Everyone had a story. Everyone was always just a little bit lucky, or just a little bit cursed. Usually, both at once. I used to think the world was divided into lucky people and unlucky people. The lottery winners and the rest of us. The ones who always got the green lights, the ones who always got the parking tickets.

These days, I think it’s more like a lottery for the daily weather. Some days it’s sunny. Some days it pours. Most days it’s just cloudy with a chance of tiny miracles.

———

E. asked if I remembered the time we found a perfect four-leaf clover in Fairmount Park.

“I think so,” I said. “What about it?”

“We lost it five minutes later.”

———

Every culture had its own luck rituals. In Italy, they say it’s good luck to step in dog shit with your left foot. In Japan, black cats are considered good luck. In Russia, it’s lucky to sit quietly for a minute before leaving the house.

In my house, we just hung evil eye amulets everywhere and hoped for the best. Sometimes they performed their little, unseen magic like that one time the stove clicked on by itself when we were asleep but didn’t emanate gas. Sometimes, they were just a placebo with a pupil in the middle, like little leprechauns with an overworked, musky smell. Either way, they kept the place alive.

———

I read somewhere that if you flipped a coin 10,000 times, it would come up heads almost exactly half the time. But sometimes it would come up heads ten times in a row, just because. Sometimes it landed in a storm drain, and you never found out the result.

E. and I kept a jar of coins by the door. Whenever we had a big decision (pizza or Thai, road trip or stay home), we flipped a coin.

“Best two out of three,” I usually said.

“Luck favors the persistent,” E. said, flipping again and again and again.

———

Last month, my dad won a free cruise in a radio contest. He’d never entered before. He called me to give the news, and two days later he told me he decided to give away the tickets to his neighbor, who’d just retired and always wanted to go somewhere warm.

“You’re just going to give it away?” I asked. “Just like that?”

“Why not,” he said, sounding almost relieved. “I already got lucky once.” 

I guess he had a point.

———

The world kept spinning, the lottery kept growing, the gas station kept selling tickets, the leprechaun guy kept checking his list. Every week, I bought a single ticket, just in case. I still don’t check the numbers. I figure, if I never know, I could be a billionaire any moment. Schrodinger’s jackpot.

Some mornings, I walk to the mailbox and feel lucky for no reason. A bird lands on the fence. The neighbor waves. The coffee is hot and the sky is the color of nothing in particular. I find a penny on the sidewalk, heads up.

Could be worse, I think.

Lucky me.

Sarp Sozdinler is a writer based between Philadelphia and Amsterdam. His work has found places in Electric Literature, Kenyon Review, Wigleaf, HAD, Hobart, X-R-A-Y, Burial, Flash Frog, Pithead Chapel, Fractured Lit, Maudlin House, and elsewhere. His stories have been included to anthologies such as the Pushcart Prize, Best Small Fictions, and Best Microfiction, and selected as finalists for the Los Angeles Review Short Fiction Prize and the Passages North Waasnode Short Fiction Prize. He serves as the editor of The Bulb Region.