Lucky Number Zero
Short fiction for gamblers on a roll — until they’re not
At Ron’s insistence, we stopped at the aptly named Chinese Buffet in Pinole before heading over to Golden Gate Fields for the afternoon races.
I had already eaten a full breakfast; he had not. That left me nursing a Coke and studying the racing form as he filled up.
He finished his third plate after about 20 minutes.
“Much better,” he said, patting his sizeable belly through his blue and yellow Cal Bears T-shirt.
He laid a twenty on the table and started to get up.
“Aren’t you going to check your fortune?” I asked.
“Right,” he said, settling back in. “I guess I’d better.”
He cracked open the cookie and pulled out the tiny rectangular prophecy slip, holding it at an odd angle under his glasses as he tilted his head back. Nearsighted since childhood, he quickly opted for removing the lenses so he could read without all the contortions. His new progressives were proving problematic.
“What’s it say?”
“Not much,” he said, turning it over between thumb and index finger. “But it’s got the same thing printed on both sides.”
“What?” I had no reason to doubt him, but the words came out in a skeptical tone.
“See for yourself. It’s weird. I gotta go take care of some business for a few minutes,” he said euphemistically before walking toward the bathroom.
Alone at the table, I read the fortune and pondered its meaning.
“Lucky Number Zero.”
The same words were printed in emerald green on both sides. Most fortunes came with a pithy saying on one side and a number or set of numbers on the other. Not this one. To make matters stranger, I only remembered getting fortunes printed in red or black, never green.
I looked over the racing form again to see if any of the horses’ names stood out in light of the fortune’s message. A horse named “More Than Luck” was running in the fifth race at 15–1.
I was all set to tell Ron about “More Than Luck,” but he had something else on his mind when he got back to the booth.
“Okay, now hear me out,” he began, so I did.
His theory was that the fortune meant we were supposed to skip the track and go straight to the roulette table at the casino.
“It couldn’t be any clearer, Zane,” he stated in a matter-of-fact voice. “It’s got to be a sign.”
He didn’t have to twist my arm. Since getting sucked down the gambling hole a few years earlier, I’d learned how to pay attention to possible signs — even when they turned out to be nothing of the sort.
As we got up from the booth, eager to cash in on our insider knowledge, I reminded Ron he had to do something first.
“You’ve got to eat the cookie,” I said, “or it won’t come true.”
A look of relief came over him as if someone had reminded him to turn off the stove before he left the house.
“Good point. Glad you remembered that part, buddy.” He made the cookie disappear in one bite.
Within 20 minutes, we were parking at the nearby Lytton Casino in San Pablo. We discussed our roulette strategy on the drive over. The plan was to bet on zero, repeatedly, until it hit. But we couldn’t decide if we should start with $20 apiece five times in a row, or $10 apiece 10 times in a row.
We bellied up to the table, both of us exchanging five twenties for 20 $5 chips. Despite having finally agreed with Ron that the 10 and 10 strategy was the way to go, my hands pushed my head aside as I made my first bet. Without really feeling in control of what I was doing, I stacked four chips on zero.
Ron, who had already placed two chips on the green zero square, shook his head in disbelief.
“But what about our strategy?” his silent glare seemed to ask.
Nonetheless, he wasted no time in adding two more of his $5 chips to the stack. We each had twenty bucks riding on the spin. At 35–1, that would make the payout $700 apiece if our lucky number came through.
“A whole lotta money on nuthin’, huh?” the croupier quipped, laughing after spinning the wheel. Asshole, I thought.
Round and round went the little white ball, waiting for gravity to draw it into one of the 38 numbered slots — also known as pockets — on the wheel below.
“Oh no,” Ron lamented as the ball circled. “There are two of us here. Do you think we should have bet something on double zero, too, just to cover our bases?”
Before I could respond, we had our answer. The ball clunked down with a purpose — right into the zero pocket. Ron and I had just won $700 apiece.
“I told you, buddy!” Ron exclaimed after we high-fived. “That fortune cookie was a sign if I ever saw one!”
There was no more talk of betting double zero. Amazingly, we held to our modified strategy and played zero, and zero only, at $20 a pop for the next four spins. On the last spin, the ball once again dropped landed on our lucky number zero. Another $700 apiece.
“Can you believe it? Wow! Wow!” Ron was giddy.
“Let’s do five more spins, $20 per spin,” I said, doing arithmetic in my head. “We’ll leave after that.”
Incredibly, we won again on the last spin. But only because Ron realized I had unwittingly given us another clue. Down to his last four $5 chips, he decided to put $10 on zero and $10 on the number 5 as a tie-in to the number of additional spins I’d suggested. I did the same thing.
Like something meant to be unfolding just as it was supposed to, the ball fell into the red number 5 pocket. We each made another $350 and, surprisingly, had the good sense to walk away after we each tipped the croupier a $25 chip. In spite of his smart mouth, a $50 tip was about right for the guy who had spun the wheel and released the ball so effectively.
Once we got back to the van, we talked about heading to the track in time for the last few races. But Ron said he needed to get back to his apartment and call the bookie before the line changed on Thursday Night Football. As of that morning, the Broncos were 3-point favorites heading into Kansas City.
“You know I can’t pass on a home dog, Zane. We’ll hit the track another day.”
“How much are you going to put down?” I asked, sensing more gambling action on TV tonight.
“I was thinking a couple hundred on K.C., just to make it interesting.”
“Sounds good. Put me down for $200, too.”
But right before he dropped me off in Berkeley, I realized that “Lucky Number Zero” meant something else, too: One of the teams was going to be shut out!
In a rush, I explained my insight to Ron.
“I have to go with the Chiefs and the under,” I said. “Give me two hundred on the Chiefs, two hundred on the under, and a $200 parlay on the Chiefs to the under.”
“You know something, Zane? I think you’re right. I’ll bet the same way.”
Was I right? Close enough.
Final score: Chiefs 24, Broncos 6. Not a shutout, but well short of the over/under, which had been a lofty 41.
All told, Ron’s decision to stop at Chinese Buffet before going to the track resulted in us winning something like $2,700 apiece. Like the restaurant’s name, the fortune it provided us with was as straightforward as possible.
On Saturday, we went over to Warren’s to watch college games. We each had more than a thousand dollars riding on a total of eight games. Rather than just betting on the Pac 10 teams we ostensibly knew a little bit about, we also loaded up on schools from places we’d never even heard of before getting bit by the gambling bug. Flush with casino cash, we were certain our winning ways would continue.
Minutes after we’d arrived, Ron told Warren how we’d won big because of the lucky number zero fortune cookie. Warren, always a bit of a cynic anyway, downplayed our magical tale.
“Coincidence,” he said dismissively. “Nothing special. I once won a grand on Dallas after seeing a guy dressed like a cowboy riding a horse in El Sobrante.”
We protested. Ron was especially upset.
“Hell, Warren, I’ve seen cowboys riding horses in El Sobrante, too. That doesn’t mean a damn thing!”
Warren just laughed, clearly taking a sick pleasure in bursting our bubble.
“But the fortune was printed in green,” I insisted. “I mean, have you ever seen a fortune printed in green?”
“I don’t base my bets on fortune cookies,” Warren scoffed. “I’m the kind of guy who wants to see hard data before making any bets.”
For Warren, “hard data” meant looking at a weekly gambling newsletter he subscribed to during football season. He paid $99 to receive The Sgt. Lock Insider from early August through Super Bowl week. It usually arrived on Wednesdays.
“Look, guys,” Warren continued in a low voice, the voice of someone conveying privileged information. “Sgt. Lock said to take the Chiefs and the under. That was a no-brainer. I won on that parlay, too. Nothing supernatural about it.”
That night, nursing our financial wounds back at Ron’s place, we blamed Warren for our change in luck. We’d each lost in the neighborhood of $1,200.
“That idiot jinxed us!” Ron said, opening a cold bottle of Stella Artois.
“I know. We never should have watched the games at his place. He’s bad luck. Remember that Mississippi-Mississippi State game last Thanksgiving?”
“How could I forget?” Ron asked sarcastically, remembering the probable win that turned into a crushing loss after we went over to Warren’s to watch the second half.
We stewed in our juices to the tune of two more beers before I walked the five blocks to BART to take a train home. We were so distraught that we weren’t even sure what NFL bets to make the next day.
Nonetheless, with no real confidence in our picks when Sunday morning rolled around, we bet. And we lost. I dropped another $550; Ron lost another $770. He had tried to get a little something back on the Sunday night game, which I sat out.
The money I’d won at the roulette table really would have helped me out. I could have paid Chase the $1,800 I owed from the cash advance I took two weeks earlier, money that enabled me to pay the bookie after a bad weekend. That still have would have left me with almost a grand in profits. Not anymore.
I went to bed that night beating myself up mentally and feeling knots in my gut. What the hell was wrong with me? I’d been given a break and threw it away like it was just another downward drop on the same old roller-coaster ride.
The next morning, a phone call from Ron roused me from a fitful sleep. He was chipper and cheery to the point of almost sounding unmoored.
He had a plan. The Dolphins were playing the Jets in Miami on Monday Night Football, and despite not being sure about which way to bet, he knew how to find out.
“Let’s go to Chinese Buffet again,” he suggested. “The fortune cookies will tell us what to do!”
It sounded like a good idea to me.
We each ate two plates of food, careful not to jinx ourselves by talking about the cookies before the waitress brought them with the check.
When they finally arrived, Ron opened his before I even reached for mine. His facial expression changed from hopeful expectation to confused anger.
“It’s blank! A blank fortune! What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
I opened mine to see I had fared any better.
“There are many fish in the sea,” I read aloud. “You only need to catch one.”
“Bingo!” Ron blurted out. His faltering confidence in fortune cookies that can provide accurate clues on how to gamble was fully restored. Relieved at our good luck, I made sure to eat the cookie before leaving.
We put what remained of our Thursday winnings on the Dolphins, sure that my fish fortune had pointed us in the right direction. Ron, happy now, was pretty sure his had been blank so that we wouldn’t get confused by conflicting wisdom.
The Dolphins were favored by 4 points, and they came out strong Monday night. They were up 13–0 at the end of the first quarter. I was at my place and he was at his; our brief phone conversation before the second quarter started was borderline ecstatic.
But our good vibes soon gave way to despair. By halftime, the Jets had pulled to within three; they came out soaring in the second half. The final score wasn’t even close: Jets 34, Dolphins 17.
Ron called me right after the game was over.
“You know,” he said sadly, “I’ve been thinking.”
“About what?”
“About your fortune cookie today. If I remember correctly, a dolphin isn’t a fish. It’s a mammal.”
Speechless, I felt a cold chill run down my back.
“We interpreted that message all wrong,” he lamented.
What could I say? He was right. Dolphins are not fish. We may have only needed one fish from the sea, but a dolphin did not fit the bill.
“You’re right,” I finally managed. More silence ensued.
“Lucky for us, though,” Ron said, trying to bring us both back from deep despondency, “we’ve got a sure thing on Saturday.”
I said nothing.
“Louisiana-Monroe is playing LSU in Baton Rouge. LSU will kill them!”
“Sure they will. But what’s the spread?”
“Right now, it’s 47. But Warren thinks it’s going to go up. One of Louisiana-Monroe’s starting running backs twisted his ankle Saturday. He’s questionable for the LSU game. I’m going to call the book first thing in the morning and get down at minus 47.”
“OK,” I said. “You may be on to something. I’ll call you by 7:30 if I want in on the action.”
We hung up, and I went to bed almost immediately. I could not fall asleep. I was angry at myself for yet another misinterpretation. I should have known better. “Lucky Number Zero,” printed in green, had been a clear, obvious signal.
But Ron’s blank fortune and the one I received, printed not in winning green but in the usual red ink? That was just static.
Give a gambler a lucky break, one obvious indicator as to how things are going to unfold, and the next thing you know he’s on some crazy fishing expedition for a fish that doesn’t even exist.
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