A Windfall

The day was hot. The sky was blue. Graveyard was tired. He'd been pounding the pavement for hours. He was looking for work. He had no job. He had no money. He was flat broke. You know how that is. Sweetbreads and applesauce, he said to himself, I need some cash real bad.

Just then a big canvas bag came sailing down out of nowhere and crashed into the sidewalk inches from his feet. Graveyard looked up. The tall buildings looked silently down. The bag sat upright in the middle of the bright, astonishing day. People walked around as if nothing had happened. Clams and sourdough, he said to himself, I coulda been killed. Graveyard knelt down. He tried to open the bag. It was fastened at the top by a lot of tricked-out leather and metal doohickeys. He had trouble making his fingers work. Everything around him looked like a mirage. Hard melons and soda water, he said to himself, I coulda been killed. And this time he really believed it. He focused his mind. He focused his fingers. He tried to open the bag again. He unbuckled the buckles. He unstrapped the straps. He looked inside. His mind went around like a pinwheel. The bag was packed to the brim with plastic-wrapped bricks of fresh one-hundred-dollar bills. He buckled the buckles. He strapped up the straps. People walked around as if nothing had happened. Graveyard felt drunk. Then he felt hellasmacked. Then he felt like he was going to have a heart attack or something. Slowly, he got to his feet. Slowly, he picked up the bag. It was big. It was heavy. It was like trying to pick up a child who didn't want to be picked up. He pretended to look calm. Then, without a glance in any direction, he just rushed off up the street. Just rushed off. Hugging the bag to his chest. As if it were his. As if it had always been his.

Ambience was in bed. In the current era she was almost always in bed. She wasn't sick. She wasn't tired. She just wasn't feeling good about herself. She'd been feeling this way for a long time now. She didn't know why.

This was a good day. So far. She'd only cried once. Even if it had lasted on and off for more than three hours. She wiped her face with her blue sob rag. It was actually a prayer cloth she'd ordered once from a televangelist who was a dead ringer for BubbleWrap, the famous stand-up comic. To Ambience, tears were sacred. They were the juice life squeezed out of you.

She was propped up on giant pillows a rancid shade of orange she couldn't quite believe was decorating her life at the moment. She was watching television. Whenever she was down she watched television. Lots of television. E. coli contaminations. School shootings. Child predators. Any television.

Right now the set was tuned to The Go-Boom Hour on TheHappyChannel. Sixty crankin' minutes of all kinds of crap being blown up in super x-mo. Her favorite segment was the ratings blockbuster "Exploding Cart O' Meat." The detonated beef seemed to actually blossom. Like flowers.

Her good buddy on these daily voyages on a mattress was her aloof cat, NippersPumpkinClaws. Nippers lay sprawled at the foot of the bed in a careless bundle of regal grandeur. His whiskey-colored face fixed in a permanent expression of sour disapproval. Was there any pleasing this cat? Not likely. And the slightest movement Ambience made was instantly absorbed into those spooky green owl-like eyes. Not that Ambience even moved around all that much. A trip to the john was a regular safari. Her favorite animal, in fact, was the turtle. For all the obvious reasons. She wanted to be a turtle in her next life. Or even in this one.

She was nibbling on something sweet and sticky she had found in an uncovered bowl in the refrigerator. One of Graveyard's dubious leftovers. She didn't know what it was, but it tasted good. Was it good for her? She didn't know. How many things could a person worry about in a day?

She was also — the ever-dutiful multitasker — leafing through a week-old edition of one of the last hard-copy newspapers, The Mammoth City Muffler ("If It Ain't in the Muffler, It Ain't the Truth"). Every now and then she liked actually holding the news between her hands. She liked rattling its pages. It seemed more real, more true. She never knew much about what was going on in the world outside her head. Mostly, she didn't care. Why should she? Sometimes, though, she did feel a bit squidgy about being so dumb. But then, any time she made the rare effort to actually find out what was going on in the world outside her head, she only found the same stuff that had been going on the last time she had dared to look. People screwing each other, people screwing each other over, people screwing each other up.

These were not good things to be saying to oneself. They gave her a bad case of the hurries. Like there was a secret sender planted somewhere deep inside her, hacking into her system an endless stream of malware to make her sick. She'd been searching for the Off switch for years. No luck. Other not-so-good things to say to oneself: Am I fat? How are we going to pay next month's rent? Why do I have to die?

Suddenly Nippers's head jerked up and froze. All fine feline attention converging on the open doorway and beyond. Then, in a furry blur, the cat was gone over the edge and under the bed. That was easy to read. Graveyard was home. Nippers didn't trust Graveyard. Graveyard didn't trust Nippers. They had a dysfunctional relationship.

Then there he was, filling the doorway and grinning. Seriously grinning. This surprised Ambience. She hadn't seen Graveyard so much as smile in ... well, she didn't know how long. These were not smiley times.

"What's with you?" she said. He looked exactly like the "damn fool" her father had always claimed he was.

Graveyard held up a dirty old canvas sack. Grinning and grinning.

"You got a job," she said. "As a mailman." She could believe just about anything about him at this point.

The bag thudded to the floor. "You know I can't work for the government," he said.

"Why not?" She hated it when people made grand pronouncements about themselves. They were almost always lying.

"Principles," Graveyard said.

"Don't make me laugh," she said. Then she laughed.

"You'll see," he said. "Oh, boy, will you see."

He bent over. He opened...