I called him Chris the Redeemer. I think he might have been Vietnamese. The World Cup was in Rio and they were showing that statue of Jesus on TV all the time, the big one on the mountain with his arms spread. I’d been working at the Quik Fix for like six months when Chris started coming in to turn his stacks of winning scratchers into stacks of cash. After the third or fourth time he came in to redeem his tickets, I looked up at the TV mounted in the corner and saw an aerial shot of the statue. “Christ” became “Chris” and the name stuck. With me, anyway. Terry, my manager, just called him, “that little motherfucker.”
My dad set me up at the Fix because he knew Terry from league night at Moonlite Lanes. Our store sat in an ancient strip mall that hadn’t been updated in decades. The shops were all falling apart, the parking lot hadn’t been repaved since before the internet, and the only two places that seemed to stay in business were us and Bobby’s Chicken & Subs, although the weed shop looked like it was doing well. We were a few blocks from the poorest part of town but we were also near a freeway onramp; the last stop before you headed into the hills toward Lemmy Lake. That meant bikini top girls in the summer. Not a bad perk at all.
I’d made it to shift manager at the Barnaby Bagel in the mall, but my climb to the top of the bagel empire ended when I got caught borrowing a little cash from the safe. A buddy of mine scored a load of mushrooms up in Oakland and offered me a good deal on two ounces. I remembered some dumb college kids at the skatepark mentioned they were on the lookout for some while we traded wins in games of SKATE. So, when I closed up the bagel shop, I slipped a couple hundred out of our little safe under the register. I was gonna sneak the money back in when I opened the next morning, after I’d hiked the price and sold them off, but I’d been busted. The boss decided to open the place herself and saw the safe was light. I gave her the money, but she gave me the boot. I’m not a dealer or anything, just saw an opportunity.
The Redeemer started coming in a couple times a week with all these tickets he hadn’t bought from us. We didn’t even sell the kind of tickets he was cashing in. The ones he had were decorated with glittery Chinese dragons. It drove Terry nuts.
We never sold him anything, actually. We had browsers all the time who didn’t buy anything. But usually, they’d skulk around the shop, look at our lame assortment of chips, or the three-hundred varieties of Monster we carried, see the No Customer Restroom sign, and split. But the Redeemer never browsed or shopped – no pack of smokes, not a bottle of water, nothing. He always left the Fix with more money than he walked in with.
For weeks, he’d sweep in, slide his thick pile of scratchers across the counter, and lean an elbow on the glass over our selection of tickets. He never said a word. He’d just stand there surveying the store while we got his money.
A cloud of coolness surrounded the Redeemer like the dirt coming off that kid in the Charlie Brown cartoons. There was a no-fucks-given aura about him that was genuine, not like those fake toughguys who need to tell you constantly about how much they don’t give a fuck. He wore the same outfit every time I saw him: red button-up shirt, black slacks, and a long, flowing duster that went to his ankles. He wore the coat no matter how hot it was. His eyes were always concealed behind an ink black pair of wrap-around Oakleys. The kind you saw hanging off the back of a sunburnt neck at a Korn concert in 2002. His hair was long and wispy and his widow’s peak framed his scalp like the McDonald’s arches.
The dude looked like he floated. It’s hard to describe. It feels a little strange to call another man graceful, but that’s what he was. The door would swing open with a chime and in he’d float, his duster and weightless hair blowing on non-existent wind. He moved like a dancer or a fighter and his nails were perfectly trimmed at the end of his spindly fingers. They looked thick, like he got them manicured. I’d never seen a guy with nails like that. He never looked hurried or bothered, you could never detect a mood on him. A lot of people think they’re the main character but, when the Redeemer came in, I felt like an extra in a movie, just a burnout bagboy playing my part.
“That little motherfucker is up to something,” Terry said after the first couple of weeks, folding his dense, hairy forearms across his lime green polo. “That shit ain’t right. Nobody’s that lucky.”
But T could never prove anything. The Redeemer's tickets scanned in the machine like the others. We gave him his cash, and out he floated, disappearing around the corner of Bobby’s at the end of the strip mall. Terry even followed him out one day after giving the Redeemer a bit of a head start.
“Have a good one,” I said to Chris, after paying him out. He nodded his thanks and drifted out the door. As soon as the last strands of his wispy hair had blown past the front window, Terry hitched his Levi’s against his big ol’ belly and stomped out after him with that bulldog waddle of his. He came back in scowling, his mouth tight under his graying mustache. He plopped back on his stool like a petulant toddler.
“Well?” I asked him.
“Motherfucker vanished,” he answered. He breathed heavily from the short burst of exertion and shook his balding head as his tucked-in polo stretched against his girth. “I swear to God. He wasn’t that far ahead of me.”
“I mean, what did you expect to find?” I asked him. Terry scoffed as if the question was ridiculous.
“I’m telling you, that little fucker is up to something.”
“The Redeemer always wins,” I told him. Terry fuckin’ hated that. He didn’t like the nickname at all, said it was blasphemous against the statue. I don’t know if you can be blasphemous against a statue.
“Have you seen that little guy with the shades and long coat?” I asked Lisa one time when she came in for her daily Nutrigrain bar and Mountain Dew. Lisa was twenty-something and already had tattoos she regretted. She worked the counter at Bobby’s, so I figured she must have seen the Redeemer walking by at some point. Maybe Chris was a foot-long meatball man.
She munched her watermelon Bubblicious, another frequent purchase, and toyed with the pitbull bobblehead on the counter. Terry had won it by popping balloons with darts at the fair.
“Little guy with a coat?” she asked.
“Yeah, and the Oakleys,” I said. She squinted in concentration.
“I don’t think so.”
I was surprised Lisa never noticed the Redeemer. We shot the shit all the time about the weirdos who hung around the strip mall. Most of them had nicknames. There was the dirtbike kid, Metallikyle. Dixon Butts, the “hustler” who wore a Goodwill suit and paid for everything with change. Brother Manson, who had a glass eye that saw through your soul and who would quote John 3:16 to you instead of saying, “hello.” How had Lisa not noticed the coolest motherfucker on the planet?
Terry started bringing in articles he printed out on his son’s computer, stories about Lotto fraud, fake tickets. He spent an entire afternoon trying to get ahold of someone at the California State Lottery Office before erupting in curses and beseeching the baby Jesus.
“Do you know the odds of getting a single winner that pays cash like that? Not just a buck or two or a free ticket? One in two-hundred,” Terry bitched, sweat running down his wrinkled forehead. I was pretty sure he’d made that up and could see he was ripe for a riling.
“He’s probably just some foreign business man who made a bunch of money on nail salons or something,” I told him. Foreigners were always a good way to get Terry cooking. “He’s probably spending more on those things than he’s making.” Terry took a deep, patient breath in as his face reddened.
“Well, then why doesn’t he buy them here?” he asked, pointing his thick finger down at the rubber mats we stood on. “And if those tickets aren’t shady, why is he the only one who brings them in?”
“I dunno,” I said. “I don’t think he likes you, T. You’re pretty rude to him.” Terry burst from his stool and started waving his gorilla mitts around.
“Fuck that motherfucker! If he thinks –”
Mission accomplished. It was easy getting Terry worked up, and it was hilarious. I don’t know why he cared so much anyhow. It’s not like it changed the size of his paycheck. Let the Redeemer fleece the state, I say. Fuck ‘em.
Personally, I think the Redeemer was on the up-and-up. The man was a winner. We had a bunch of scratch junky regulars. You know the ones, the people who stood there drooling on the glass and took a half-hour picking out their tickets while you waited to buy a single Gatorade. Half those fuckers didn’t even scratch the whole ticket. They knew where the barcodes were, would scratch off just enough to scan them, and then keep buying tickets with whatever they won. If they won, of course.
That’s why I think Chris was legit. He always played the game and his scratches were clean as fuck – perfect little circles around the Chinese Zodiac symbols on the tickets. I liked to imagine him in a mansion somewhere, sitting on a little throne with his duster draped over the sides, delicately scratching off his tickets with a gold coin, unaffected by the winners or losers. The Redeemer knew the wins were coming. That's why he was so cool.
The final showdown came on a beautiful Saturday in August. I remember thinking how perfect it was. 10 a.m., second cup of coffee in, I was really buzzing. It was warm enough already for the bikini top girls to be hanging around the strip mall, coming in to fill their coolers with ice and beer on their way to the lake. The faded white lines on the crumbly asphalt outside seemed to be filling with good vibe vehicles only; people hitting Herb’s Herbs for sacks of Indica, getting their Bobby’s to go on their way to enjoy the sunshine. Everyone came into the Fix with a smile. I even sold one of those Rhino dick pills to a pimply kid with a shit-eating grin while the banana-scented fumes of his sunscreen assaulted my nostrils. It was gonna be a good weekend.
I especially remember it being perfect because, despite the beautiful women, hot coffee, and sunny weather, Terry was already on one. Everything pissed him off. That early and he already had sweat leaking down his face. His dog shit on the rug before he left the house, his kid was flunking out of school, the doctor told him his cholesterol was too high, and the goddamn bikini girls never closed the coolers all the way. I was beseeching the baby Jesus on Terry’s behalf before I’d finished my first cup of dark roast.
And then, there he was. The Redeemer came floating across the parking lot with his duster flapping out behind him like a fuckin Vietnamese Undertaker. He was coming to slap those tickets down and get his money. I could have sworn I saw him walking away from a Cadillac and I think Terry saw it, too, and that was just too much. The Redeemer was rubbing it in now. What was next? All the bikini girls climbing in the back of his car?
The chime of the door was like the clock tower striking noon at the O.K. Corral. Terry stood up slowly from his stool, sauntered forward, and rested his pink polo belly against the counter. The Redeemer took his place across the glass over our scratchers. He reached into his duster like he was wearing a shoulder holster and drew his stack. A gust of wind blew in on another chime and Terry’s pitbull bobbled ominously on the counter in front of Chris. He didn’t even look at T as he placed two fingers in the shape of an upside-down peace sign on his pile and slid it smoothly across the glass.
The heat was one-sided at first. It was just another day for the Redeemer, getting his money. If he noticed the bad vibes coming off Terry he certainly didn't show it. Terry looked down at the stack of tickets, the glittering Chinese dragon mocking him from the top of the pile, the precision circles around the zodiac animals too clean to have been made by a mortal man. I could feel T boiling from my stool at the other end of the counter. He cleared his throat.
“Yeah, I'm gonna need to see some ID, bro,” Terry told him. T had never used the word, “bro”, before and you could tell. Terry’s request didn't register with Chris at first, he was already leaning on his elbow, gazing around at the store. When T didn't start scanning, the Redeemer stood back straight. His head cocked ever so slightly to the side.
“Excuse me?” he answered. I'd never heard his voice before. It was deep, perfect English. No accent or anything. Made me wonder if I was racist for expecting one.
Terry shifted onto his right foot, hooking a thumb on his belt loop. I could see his jaw working like he’d been ripping lines of blow all morning.
“I said… I'm gonna need to see some ID.”
The pause was emphasized. The Redeemer let the moment breathe. He reached up to his face slowly, gripping the Oakleys lightly with two fingers and delicately slid them off. He held the frames between his long fingers in front of his stomach. I half expected lighting bolts to rip Terry a new asshole but Chris looked unaffected. God, that motherfucker was cool. He didn't look the least bit upset. He just stared at Terry, waiting for him to make the next move. I pretended like Terry and I hadn’t just spent weeks talking about Chris.
“It’s all good, T,” I said, trying to cut the tension. “This guy comes in all the time.”
Terry tried to rip me a new asshole with the look he shot me. The Redeemer’s eyes stayed locked on T.
“I know,” Terry said through clenched teeth. The sweat came in thicker streams as he looked back to Chris. His cheeks turned the color of Atlantic Salmon. “But I’ve never seen these kinds of tickets before in my life and California state law says we can ID anyone who is purchasing or redeeming lotto tickets.”
The Redeemer didn't give a fuck. He just kept staring. Terry was taking deep, loud breaths through his nose. The sweat was pouring from his face now, his head was a tomato, about to explode. My eyes shot back and forth between them. Shit was getting real. Terry was blinking fast. It was like all the clocks in the world stopped.
Then, Terry’s torso hitched. His lips tightened like he was fighting off projectile vomit. I saw his hands start to tremble. I could see pressure building up in his body like a tea kettle. A sudden cough shot out of him, blowing apart his lips in a raspberry. He put the back of one hand against his mouth and shifted back on his heels. He placed the other hand down on the counter in front of him to steady himself. The Redeemer had won the staredown, no doubt about it. He just stood there patiently, watching Terry desperately try to keep a coughing fit at bay. I don’t think he even blinked.
Terry’s eyes widened and his hand shot down from his mouth to the center of his chest. His fingers dug into his polo while his other hand gripped the edge of the counter hard, the veins in his forearm bulging from the strain. His face was turning purple and the fat drops of sweat falling off him turned his polo polka dot. It looked like he was trying to breathe but couldn’t get his lungs to do the job. I got up from my stool, thinking I’d have to catch the big fucker if he toppled over. His mouth widened in a silent scream as I walked toward him.
Terry’s spine stiffened all at once like he’d been electrocuted, his eyes jammed close in a grimace of pain, and then his head jerked downward violently. A cannon blast of a sneeze rang off the racks of candy and plastic jars of beef sticks. The sound silenced the room and everyone in the Fix turned to look at Terry. It sounded like one of his lungs splattered onto the floor. His eyes were watering like his dog just died. When he lifted his burgundy head, there was a thick, yellow glob of nose butter in the center of his polo.
“Gesundheit,” The Redeemer said in his Johnny Cash baritone. Terry stood there breathing heavily, wiping the sweat and tears from his face with a bandana he kept in his back pocket. His shoulders lifted and fell like a grizzly bear fighting off the effects of anesthesia.
Chris stood there, watching Terry for a few moments, and then slid his Oakley's back on. He gently picked up his dragons, slipped them back into the inside pocket of his duster, and floated out to the parking lot. I saw him give a little two-fingered salute to some of the bikini top girls hanging out by the back of their truck and they giggled. He climbed in that Caddy and pulled out of the parking lot, smooth and slow.
We never saw the Redeemer again.
Later that day, after cursing his allergies and running home to change polos, Terry puffed his chest out, saying how he was right all along and now Chris knew better than to try and pull that shit in his store. He rambled on and on and all I could do was smile and nod. Maybe he'd been right about the Redeemer all along.
A week to the day later, same time, 10 a.m., a pretty little Asian woman came into the store and walked up to T at the register. She reached in her purse and I saw a glittering Chinese dragon emerge on top of a pile of tickets. Terry blinked down at the stack as she held it out for him to scan. They were all cash winners. Terry asked for ID and the woman took out her wallet and showed him, smiling all the while. The bell on the lotto machine as Terry scanned those dragons that day is a sound I’ll never forget. It sang differently, louder and brighter, and every swipe caused a new bead of rage sweat to slide down Terry’s face. It was hard not to laugh but I cut T some slack. He’d been beaten, fair and square. He didn’t need further humiliation.
After that, the dragons kept coming in and we kept paying them out. Each time, they were brought in by a different pretty asian lady and every single one of them had ID. Out they went the same way Chris used to, around the corner of Bobby’s. I liked to imagine the Redeemer parked back there, shiny Caddy full of beautiful women, throwing those dragons around like confetti.
Terry never said another word about it.
The Redeemer always wins.
A massive thank you to
for her editing, feedback, and encouragement.
Captivating writing. "I even sold one of those Rhino dick pills to a pimply kid with a shit-eating grin while the banana-scented fumes of his sunscreen assaulted my nostrils" is my favorite sentence of the week.
literally devoured this. little dead end jobs can have some of the most interesting stories come from them