Laura Caldwell - The Night I got Lucky

“I’m so sorry,” I said.

“I am, too.”

“It’ll come together.”

“So why is nothing happening? I’m getting scared.” Her eyes darted to mine, then back down. She seemed slightly embarrassed by her confession. She rushed on. “And it’s not just professionally. I mean, I’m tired of living with my family. I’m tired of dating these neighborhood boys my mother keeps setting me up with.”

“Alexa, you’re an awesome person, and let’s face it, you’re gorgeous. You’re going to find someone.”

She blew on her coffee. “Someone like your Chris, huh?”

“Exactly.” Chris and I had been working hard to be honest with each other, to make time for each other. We’d begun to carry the packages of our marriage more carefully again. It was sometimes uncomfortable and foreign, but it was imbued with the low light of optimism, bringing our home a whole new kind of feeling. “You’ll find a Chris for you,” I said to Alexa.

“I’m starting to doubt that.” She stared at the white mug of coffee in front of her, her eyes flat, her mouth downturned.

“Hey, look at me.”

She glanced up, her eyes still emotionless.

“I think you’re going to get everything you want,” I said. “And I mean everything. It just might not be an easy road. Can you handle that?”

Her eyes flickered with passion now. “Are you kidding? I’ve never had an easy road in my life. I just want something to happen. Now.”

I sucked in a chestful of air, biting my lip. “I want to give you something.”

“A loaded handgun?”

“No,” I said, chuckling. I reached in my bag and found the frog, my hand closing over it. I looked up to meet her eyes, nervous. “Here you go.” I held out the frog, a scrap of jade in my pale hand.

Alexa took it. “That’s really nice of you.”

I could tell she was underimpressed, and I couldn’t blame her. I remembered my own less than wondrous reaction when Blinda gave it to me.

“It’s sort of a…” I said. How to put this? “It’s a charm.”

“What kind?” Alexa turned it around and studied it.

“Trust me on this.” I closed her hand around the frog and gripped her fist in mine. “It’s a good luck charm.”

A lexa Villa moved through the darkened apartment. This was her favorite time, when the place was silent. When her mother, her aunt and all the kids were asleep. The apartment was never truly dark, due to the blazing streetlights outside, but with the blinds closed like now, those lights gave a yellow radiance she found comforting.

She found her purse on the kitchen counter, next to a stack of dishes crusted with macaroni and cheese. Ignoring the dishes, she brought the purse back to her single bed. Across the room, in the other twin bed, two of her nieces slept soundly, their dark hair mingling on the white of the sheets.

Alexa switched on the tiny, bedside lamp and dug in her purse for her notebook. She’d just had an idea about a Hispanic university dean who might give her some work. Her fingers brushed past pens and lipsticks and her checkbook. The notebook seemed to be missing. But what did it matter? He probably wouldn’t want her PR services. Probably no one would. She didn’t have an office yet or any capital to get one. The doubts about this path she’d chosen got bigger and bigger. She lay back against the headboard, feeling overwhelmed with a sense of futility.

Think positive, she told herself, but it was tough. Listlessly, she reached for the purse again and pushed her hand deeper inside, her fingers closing over something small and cool and smooth.

She sat up and took it out. She held it under the lamp’s circle of soft light. The frog Billy had given her. An odd present.

She looked at it closer, she saw that it glittered in the lamplight, as if it was made from polished stone. Something about the frog struck her as charming. She studied it some more, turning it around in her hand.

Then she set it on her nightstand, right next to the lamp. Forgetting about her notebook, she turned off the light.

The next morning, Alexa helped get the kids ready for school and out the door. Once the place was quiet, she sat at her makeshift desk. She took a few deep breaths and rolled her head from side to side. It was getting harder and harder to get herself going in the morning.

After a few more neck stretches, she reached in the milk crate to the side of the desk and took out a few files. She lifted her cell phone and switched it on. As she did so, it sprung to life in her hand, the screen lighting up pink then green then purple, the ringer chiming loudly through the apartment.

It was probably the second bank she’d applied to, telling her she’d been rejected for a loan. She sighed as she hit the answer button. She reminded herself of her internal promise to be professional, no matter what. “Alexa Villa,” she said. “Good morning.”

“Buenos dias. This is Carlos Ortega. I’d like to talk to you about your business proposal.”

Would you want to get everything you wished for overnight? What are those things you would ask for?

If all your wishes were granted, do you see any problems that would arise? Are all your desires realistic? Do they fit your personality and your life?

Why do we so often think the grass is greener on the other side? Have you, or someone you know, gotten what they wished for and found the grass wasn’t so green? How did they handle the situation?

Do you know anyone who, like Billy, feels as if they’re trying to make things happen in their life but who is actually rather passive?

For Billy, the price of wish fulfillment was the feeling that no one in her life had free will. Would you want your wishes granted if the players in your life had no say in it?

What did you think about Billy’s unresolved feelings for her absentee father? Do you believe that abandonment like that in one’s childhood can affect the adult?

Laura Caldwell, who lives in Chicago with her husband, left a successful career as a medical malpractice trial attorney and a partner at a successful firm to follow her dreams of becoming a novelist. In the span of 18 months, she sold four chick-lit novels to the Red Dress Ink imprint and three suspense novels to the MIRA Books imprint, the first of which is Look Closely.

But in addition to her now-successful writing career Laura does have two other jobs. She’s an adjunct professor of law at her alma mater, Loyola University Chicago School of Law, where she teaches Advanced Legal Writing. Laura is also a writer and contributing editor for Lake Magazine, a lifestyles publication based in the Indiana/Michigan area where Laura has a second home. Her freelance magazine work has been published in Woman’s Own, The Young Lawyer, Australia Woman’s Weekly and many other magazines.