<< Go Back

Fool's Luck

By Dave Milbrandt

Order Now!

1600 PENN

Thursday, April 1
The Oval Office

People say it’s better to be lucky than right.
What a load of malarkey, as my grandad used to say.
As I look around the world’s most famous office, one phrase keeps pounding in my head over and over.
I wish I’d never gotten “lucky” in the first place.
My minder’s name is Luca, and he’s a big fella. Not big as in seven-foot-tall, power forward for the Lakers big, but imposing, as in he could pin you to the ground and not break a sweat. He’s also quiet, but his piercing blue eyes never stop scanning the room.
Even though the room is empty, except for the aforementioned Luca, I am still not about to joke out loud about the most famous piece of furniture in the country. What I know about the Resolute Desk is what you can find online or from the movies. It was one of two desks shaped from the timbers of the HMS Resolute, a British ship abandoned in the Canadian Arctic in 1854. After Queen Victoria made a desk for herself, she was nice enough to give us one, maybe as an “I’m sorry” gift for trying to burn the house down about forty years earlier.
People make a big deal about the desk being so valuable, but everything from the portraits for former presidents to the half-million-dollar bronze Remington bucking bronco statue on the bookshelf is a priceless piece of art, which I guess makes the Oval Office one of the oddest art installations in the world. It’s all beautiful, of course, but it makes you feel like you’re part of the exhibit yourself. You’re on display for visitors to come in, gawk at, and take pictures.
Step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and observe Narcissus Americanus in his native habitat.
Watching over the room are three former occupants. Stare at them long enough and you begin to wonder whether they are guardians sent to offer guidance to the lost or ghosts designed to haunt the cowardly.
I know I only have a couple minutes left before I am ushered out, but I reach into my pocket, fumble past my iPhone, and extract the lucite-encased slip of orange and yellow paper. They let me keep the ticket, which was totally against policy, but they made an exception in my case. Lucky me.
I look at the numbers on the slip and remember what a random thing it was that I bought the Powerball ticket a year ago today.
1 year. 12 months. 365 days.
Normally, the years begin to fly by as you get older, but not this last one. That’s because, I put myself and everyone I loved through what seemed at times like a nightmare. All that mattered was what I wanted, what I needed. I ignored my family when it mattered most, and I risked everything for my own selfish gain.
Hubris. Absolute, idiotic hubris.

Order Now!

<< Go Back