The Wager.

                                              The Wager.


The coffee in his cup had grown cold again and, no matter how long he stared at it, the cell phone just wouldn’t ring.  He had been sitting in the booth at the diner all day.  The waitress had stopped filling his cup several hours ago, no doubt hoping to encourage him to leave and free up the table.  He just couldn’t go home and disappoint his wife again - another day of interviews, still no job.  It was five thirty PM and two days before Christmas.  He had to face it, if they hadn’t called by now they weren’t going to.

He pulled out his wallet and dropped the smaller bills on the table and stood to shrug into his coat.  It was brutally cold outside, another reason he was procrastinating.  It was going to be an unpleasant walk to the bus station.  As he pulled his gloves from his pocket the envelope from the mortgage company fell to the floor.  They had started the foreclosure process.  He had intercepted the notice before his wife had seen it.  No need to spoil her Christmas, she would find out soon enough.

The biting wind nearly knocked him over when he stepped out onto the sidewalk.  He crammed his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders, ducked his head and began to soldier his way towards the station.  The hairs in his nostrils froze stiff and the wind blew tears from his eyes to stream down the sides of his face where they froze into tiny icicles before falling into the grey slush.  As he rounded the last corner before the station he heard a low, rattling, cough.

Glancing to his right he saw two pairs of feet, clad in worn out shoes, protruding from a doorway.  His gaze followed the attached legs to find two people, a man and a woman, huddled together against the cold.  They were dressed in multiple layers of ragged shirts, sweaters, and other mismatched articles.  The man was coughing - it was a wet, gurgling, very ill sounding cough.

“Can you spare any change, sir?” the woman asked.  “We’re trying to get something warm to eat.”

The man with the cough seemed oblivious to the conversation.

“Aren’t there any shelters you can go to?” he asked her, appalled at their condition.

“All the close ones are full, they tell us.  And the others are too far for us to walk.”

“Oh.  Well…” 

He began to dig in his pockets and found about thirty five cents in change.  He thought about giving it to her and hurrying on to the bus, but that wouldn’t even buy a cup of coffee.  He pulled out his wallet and checked it; all the small bills had been spent at the diner.  The only thing left was a twenty.  It was the last cash he was likely to see for a while, and he’d never given that much to a panhandler before.

The cold sliced through his clothes as he thought and he realized that twenty dollars wasn’t going to change his life one way or the other; it wouldn’t bring his mortgage up to date, it wouldn’t buy his wife the diamond necklace he saw in the window today and desperately wished he could afford.  But, it might keep the old man alive another day. He removed the bill and folded it into a tight rectangle.

“Here.” He placed the twenty into her outstretched hand.  “Find someplace to get him out of this wind.”  He turned quickly and jogged to the station without waiting for her reply, certain that he was being an idiot and concerned that he might even miss his bus.

When he had disappeared into the swirling flurries the woman glanced slyly at her companion, who had miraculously stopped coughing.  He shook his head slightly and they both rose from the pavement, standing much taller and straighter than one would have guessed a minute ago.  Several commuters hurried past them, apparently oblivious to their presence.

“Seems I’ve won again,” she said smugly, her voice ringing like church bells.  “They truly are good at heart you see.”

“Luck is all it was,” he replied, his voice deep and menacing. “You could try a thousand more of them and not find another.  Most, at best, would step over an unfortunate without even noticing, they are that self absorbed.”

“Those are the ones YOU see.  This was a fair test, completely random, now pay me.”

Their appearances had begun to change now.  She was growing more terrifyingly beautiful by the second, long silver hair and flowing white robes, while he grew darker and taller still, with angular features and glowing red eyes.  The Demon snapped its fingers and a small white pearl of pure Good appeared in its hand.  It pained and weakened it to do so; its wrath was barely contained.

“One day I will have the pleasure of watching you create a drop of darkest Evil, and you will know my pain.”

“Perhaps, fallen one, but not today.  Today, thanks to you, I may bestow a gift to someone deserving.  Do you wish to try again next year?”

“Of course,” he growled, as he thrust the pearl into her hand. “Your luck cannot last forever.”  His form shifted and became a cloud of fine black soot that vanished on the next gust of wind to settle, unnoticed, into the murky sludge on the street.

The Angel held the pearl before her eyes and smiled radiantly.  The tightly folded twenty dollar bill materialized in her other hand and she carefully wrapped it around the pearl.  As she exhaled gently upon it, it was engulfed in bright silver light.  When the light faded the pearl and the bill were gone.

In a dark crowded bus, in the coat pocket of a tired, discouraged, unemployed commuter, a cell phone began to ring.