The Winners Circle by Christopher Klim Page B

I’m sorry. I think it’s dumb luck.”
    “ Fine,” Dick interrupted. “Jerry’s a pragmatist.”
    “ No, I don’t think I can take it to a higher plane like that. I’m not sure I was ever heading there.” Jerry tried to think where he’d been heading before the lottery. All roads passed through Chelsea, so he shut that part of his brain again, even though it refused to stay closed.
    Dick perked up, pencil in hand. “Jerry’s just brought up an interesting point.”
    “ What’s that?” Jerry waited for Dick’s next nugget of wisdom.
    “ We haven’t examined the pre-lottery emotion. We seem to be dwelling on the after effects. Perhaps if we put them into comparison. Jerry?”
    Jerry massaged the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger. Dick was trying to run a can opener around Jerry’s head again. Jerry wanted no part of it.
    Dick scribbled on the paper. “Do you acknowledge the impact that receiving an enormous check had on your life?”
    “ I’m still the same person.”
    “ Who is that?”
    “ Jerry Nearing. Born in Chesterfield, New Jersey.”
    “ Really?”
    “ I wake up in the same bed every morning, the bed I was in before the lottery.”
    “ Do you feel that makes you the same person?”
    Jerry stopped talking. He wasn’t the same. He knew that. He drifted from sunrise to sunset. He didn’t work. He no longer cooked elaborate gourmet meals, opting for frozen dinners and takeout sandwiches. For the first time, he failed to live his life. He looked ahead to a time when he might restore things as they were, and every scenario involved Chelsea, at least a reasonable facsimile of her. The Chelsea in his dreams still smiled with that odd lip and strapped her arms across his chest at night. She reorganized his sock drawer on a whim. She curled up beside him after a successful meal and recounted the minutia of her day in gentle sweeping tones. He used to believe he was dreaming about better times then, when in fact he was living life to the fullest.
    “ Jerry?” Dick leaned forward in the chair.
    Jerry glanced at the door.
    “ Jerry?” Dick called. “Are you with us?”
     
     
     
     
     
    He was angry, as angry as he ever recalled in the past. The entire trip back from the JCC, Jerry cursed and muttered to himself. He tore up his driveway with the Ford, the gravel shooting from his wheels. He left the keys in the ignition and stomped inside the house.
    Unsure of his target, he spun his sights around the room. His brain hummed, electric, a wonderful mind-numbing rage. He wanted to tear down a wall.
    He sprinted upstairs and threw open the bedroom closet. Chelsea’s abandoned shoes were scattered about the baseboards like discarded betting stubs at a horse track. He gathered them into his arms and tossed them through the window. They plunged down upon the damp evening lawn. A pair of high heels pierced the soil and stuck in the air.
    Chelsea’s old clothes hung in odd bunches beside his flannel shirts. He ripped them down. The wire hangers stretched and sprung like bows, shooting into the rear of the closet, recoiling toward his feet. He scooped up a shirt he’d bought for Christmas and a dress she’d found on their honeymoon, and he snatched the framed photo off the bureau. The bulk of it took flight after her shoes. He caught a glimpse of her bright white teeth in the moonlight, as the photo crash-landed and shattered in the dirt.
    Jerry stood by the windowsill, shaking, sweating inappropriately for the season and time of day. His hands ached and tensed, and his head screamed for the blood of something that he couldn’t quite make out. He saw the safe in the back of the closet.
    The five hundred pound, fireproof, waterproof safe had a double lock and was bolted to the floor. Two months ago, Jerry installed it and filled the top shelf with fifty thousand dollars. ‘Fun money,’ he called it, but he wasn’t having fun, so most of the cash remained inside.
    He fisted the