Ticket to Paradise

Nights spent drinking were always followed by mornings at the Giddy Up Café. I didn’t even have to order, just sit down and wait for the waitress to bring me a mug of strong black coffee. And pull tabs. A mountain of them, cascading down in an avalanche of lost hope. I remember that morning as a chilly one in December. The windows were decorated for Christmas with a painting of Rudolf sneaking a bite of Santa’s syrup smothered flapjacks. I sat in my usual booth, drinking and smoking and gambling and winking at the waitress with the ferocious head of permed hair until gradually the fog of morning burned away and the bill was settled with a crumpled dollar and a handful of coins. Bells on the front door jingled and jangled as I pushed through it out onto the cold street. I paused in front of the diner, brushing dry bread crumbs off my collar while thinking--a man can only get so far on a winter’s day, after eating cigarette smoke for breakfast and then stepping outside for a breath of fresh scrambled eggs. I was poor, alone, and terrified that I might have caught a venereal disease the night before. But that was all about to change as the bells on the door behind me chimed again. Turning, I saw a cream colored hand near my shoulder. It belonged to the waitress and in it she held a solitary virgin pull tab. “You forgot this Chuck.” I plucked it from her fingers and thanked her warmly and then she was gone. Alone again in the cold I was, but now with a hope--a fiery hope that this was my ticket to paradise. There was no hesitation, I yanked it quick, like a Band-Aid ripped off of a hairy wound. Only two words appeared under that tab and this what they were: Big Winner. I pissed my pants in the street that morning. I pissed my pants for the last time outside of the Giddy Up Café that chilly December Morning, and I didn’t care a bit.