Excerpt: Lucky Numbers

Martin started the car, and off they went. Elise gave Martin the address. “Oh, I know where that is,” he said. He didn’t actually need Elise to navigate him anywhere, but she sat shotgun none the less.
“So…” Laura began, “what do we do?”
“We’re going to the lottery headquarters,” Elise said. The word “duh” was implied in her tone.
“Yeah, I get that. But after we are declared the winners, what happens?”
“We’re showered with riches,” Elise replied, also with her obvious tone.
“I want to take a bath in money,” Martin replied as he turned on his blinker. “I want to build a new house with a giant tub for money bathing.”
“Ew. Money is gross,” Roxanne replied. “There’s almost nothing dirtier in our country than the money. It would be like bathing in your toilet.”
“Well,” said Martin, “now that I have that image, I no longer want to do it. Thanks a lot.”
“I’m going to buy a house for my parents,” Jose said. His voice was quiet. You could tell that he had thought about this a lot. “Grandmother needs some extra care, so I would hire her a nurse, and Mom wouldn’t let me buy Grandma her own house, so the house for my parents would have to be big enough for all of them. They would love it. I could get it in a nice neighborhood, with nice neighbors and a good church community. With the neighborhood they live in now, they’re just playing into the Chicano stereotype. I want to get them out of there.”
“Move them out to the suburbs?” asked Roxanne. “Are you sure they’d like that? Don’t they like the church they go to now?”
“Mom has been talking about changing churches for a while now. I think it has something to do with the parish’s politics. I’m pretty sure they ostracized my gay cousin. And that’s just not cool. They need to fine a more progressive church that still feels like a community. Because my mom will never turn away from Jesus. Hell would freeze over first.”
“Or pigs would fly,” Elise replied. “Ooh! I can start working on my genetically engineered pigs. You know, so they would have wings so I could make pork buffalo wings?”
This is not something new to Elise. She’s often talked about her winged pig idea. She thinks pork buffalo wings would be the greatest addition to the bar food movement since French fries.
“Ok,” said Roxanne, “so Jose is buying a big house in the suburbs for his family, Elise is genetically engineering pork buffalo wings… Laura, Martin, what will you do?”
“I’m taking a really long vacation,” Laura said with a dreamy tone. “I’m going to tour the Caribbean islands. And then go to Europe and tour the Greek islands. Lots of islands.”
“That sounds good. I’ll do that, too,” Martin said, glancing in the rear view mirror to glance at Laura. She blinked. She wasn’t sure how she felt about Martin insisting he would be taking a big giant vacation with her. That was a little sudden – they weren’t even technically in a relationship!
Laura decided to change the subject. “What about you, Roxanne? Anything big you’re going to do with your money?”
“I’m going to pay off my student loans and buy a new car. A BMW, probably. Maybe a convertible.” She smiled. “But debt – I’m going to take care of that first. That Visa card really needs to be taken care of – they kept raising my credit limit, and I kept spending. Fell victim to one of the classic blunders.”
“Never get involved in a land war in Asia?” Laura asked, quoting The Princess Bride.
“No, and it’s not never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line. This one is the third classic blunder. Never get sucked into credit cards’ scams. My credit rating is almost shot because I missed a payment a few months ago.”
“We’ll never have to worry about credit ratings again,” Elise announced, cheering. “We won’t need credit for anything – we can pay cash! We’re millionaires!”
“And we’re almost there,” Martin announced, turning into a small parking lot. “Welcome to the source of our riches, my friends.”