Getting Lucky

Often times, when confronted with a sloppy drunk woman, I will do my damndest to find someone else for her to harass so I can go about my own business in the land of the coherent. Unfortunately, I work in retail, and, drunk or not, a customer is a customer. If you're really lucky, and you're working with someone you hate, passing the drunk customer off on them is one of the most satisfying, and hilarious, events of your day. If you're as unlucky as I am, you're trapped at the customer service desk, with no one around to bail you out of your situation. This is a story about when I got Lucky.

The after-work rush had finished, and the store died down so much that I felt comfortable sending my only cashier away to put away some returns, though we both knew she was, in actuality, flirting with one of the stock boys. I was up at the customer service desk, spraying it down with lemon pledge after a particularly filthy customer, when I hear this loud bang, followed by a drawn-out wail. I look up from my work and see a drunk woman slowly stumbling into the store, turn, and start hobbling toward me.

I heave a sigh, and remove the cleaning supplies from the counter. The woman throws herself down on the desk, her legs shaking beneath her weight like Bambi on ice, and, while struggling to point a finger at me, she lets out a delightful belch. It was about this moment that I noticed the dried vomit on the breast of her shirt, along with what looked like blood. She slurred what, to me, sounded like "...what's in a door..." but, moments later, when her husband sauntered in after her, she clarified that she had, indeed, "walked into the door," which explained the loud bang from earlier.

"This's my husband," she told me, as he tried to pry her off of the counter to lean on his shoulder. "But he's...not cute like you urr," she continued. I politely thanked her, and asked how I could help her. She then told me that she would date me if she weren't married, which, unless that was her subtle way of asking me to murder her husband and run off with her into the sunset, it was no answer to my query. I asked, once more, how I could help her, and she repeated that I was very cute, and that "[I] probably...got a girlfrien.'" I realize now that the easier answer would have been to say yes, simply in order to avoid the following, but it's just as likely that it would have opened some other can of worms where she started asking about my fictitious lover, then threatened to fight her so she and I could run off together. You know, once I murder her husband.

I said, "no, I'm single," to which she replied, "no, you're...cute! I'll would date you, you're lots cuter than my hubband." I thanked her, once again, and asked if there was anything else that she needed. "Yer, like...like really cute, an I think you should get a girlfriend. I can help you, I know...I know some real nice...real nice and pretty girls." It was at this point that the husband leaned forward, looking me directly in the eyes, and told me, "she's drunk." Wow. Thank you for the news flash. "...I'm aware," I mouthed, not wanting to anger the drunk woman who was now glaring down her husband. She pushed him away from her, saying "don't be like that, you...you're jealous." She turned to me to clarify that he was, in fact, jealous because he's not cute.

I gave her my best fake smile, and asked one final time if she needed anything. Her answer is something I have never forgotten: "...my name...is my...is my beer...is my cigs." I can't imagine the look on my own face when she said this, but if you've ever seen the montage of Don Draper asking "...what?" I have a feeling it was something like that. She must have had a moment of drunken brilliance, because she suddenly realized I had no idea what she wanted. "I need cigs," she said. I nodded, and asked her what brand she wanted. She tossed me her ID (a pilot's license) and told me that "it's the...name!"

Her name, her legal name, the name on her pilot's license, was Lucky. She had, as she would tell me, just flown in from Arizona for the weekend. The drunk girl, covered in vomit and blood, telling me that I was cuter than her husband, had just piloted an aircraft full of passengers, from the United States to Canada, and her name was Lucky. Either her name was ironic, or her parents had really low expectations of her, but I felt that it was her passengers on that flight that were lucky (to have landed safely, I mean).

I took this information all in, just nodding silently to myself as I considered my next move, and I smiled at her. Lucky, the pilot, had gotten drunk on Lucky, the beer, and she was hoping to smoke a Lucky, the cigarette. "I'm sorry, but I think Lucky's are only available in the US," I told her. She shook her head in disbelief, looked at her husband like I was an idiot, and then asked me where we were. I told her we were in Canada, which apparently surprised her, and she asked me, instead, for whatever the cheapest brand of cigarettes were.

Of course she wanted the cheapest brand. We completed our transaction, and her husband started dragging her out of the store, but not before she promised to "come back...and see [me] t'morrow!" Why do only drunk women find me attractive?

I had the good fortune of working the next morning, and she was one of the first customers to come in at the top of my shift. Her eyes were half-closed, and she was clutching her head with one hand, the other on her stomach. She was wearing the same vomit-covered shirt as the night before, but had the classiness to put a jacket over top of it. Her husband was nowhere in sight, so I imagine she had found some other cute boy to help her kill him and that her jacket was hiding the fact that her vomit-covered shirt was now blood red.

She did not appear to recognize me, and only said that she was in a hurry and needed painkillers fast. I sent her to the pharmacy, and only later realized that she probably had a flight to catch. Memorable though she was, I'm very glad not to have since gotten Lucky.