Read Online Thomas Prescott Superpack by Nick Pirog - Free Book Online Page B

bookstore. Spill it bro.”
    I told her the story and she hung on every word. When I recounted Alex’s dinner invitation for later that evening, Lacy started choking. I had to run and get her a glass of water. After she drank the glass and exhausted a coughing fit, she said, “You have to go.”
    That was all I needed to hear. Lacy’s vote officially bumped it to fifty-fifty. Lacy went back to the kitchen sink—Baxter was in the dead pug’s float—and I asked her if she had a dime. She yelled over her shoulder, “If I had a dime for every time someone asked me for a dime, I’d have a dime.”
    I guess that was a no, because no dimes came hurling my way. I walked to a wooden ledge separating the kitchen from the living room. Sitting on the ledge was an ivory colored ceramic vase, circa 1935—left over by the Farth’s—that had become a refuge for Lacy’s and my change.
    I wasn’t overly superstitious, but I did have a couple quirks and quacks that might fall into the category. After two minutes, I finally stumbled on a dime made the year I was born.
    I flipped the coin and revealed—tails. See.
    Lacy asked, “What’s the verdict?”
    I laughed at my own stupidity and said, “I’m not sure. I didn’t assign heads or tails to either of the outcomes.”
    I primed the coin, assigning one outcome to heads and one to tails. Lacy interrupted my train of thought, “Wait. You can’t assign the outcomes yourself. You need an unbiased third party to assign the outcomes. Like me for instance.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you’re a retard and you always pick tails. So you’re going to assign the outcome you want to tails, even if it’s subconsciously.” She turned around, smiling, “Going was tails? It was, wasn’t it?”
    Oh. Ohhhhhh.
    I’d allocated Going to Alex’s for Dinner to tails. This was not a good sign. “All right, you tell me what’s what.”
    She thought for a second and said, “Flip for it.”
    I was confused. This was starting to be a common trend, “What?”
    “Give me the dime.” I handed her the dime and she said, “If it’s heads then Going to Alex’s for Dinner will be heads. If it’s tails then Going to Alex’s for Dinner will be tails.”
    This was like Abbot and Costello meets Benny and Joon. “So what’s Not Going to Alex’s for Dinner ?”
    “It’s whatever Going to Alex’s for Dinner isn’t.”
    I was under the impression flipping a coin to make a decision was meant to simplify the decision, not complicate it. “Whatever.”
    She flipped the coin, then Brailled the top of the coin with her right index finger. “Heads. So Going to Alex’s for Dinner is heads. Actually, if you wanted to be entirely unbiased, you would flip a coin to see which one of the outcomes you would flip a coin to see what heads and tails would be for the final flip.”
    I felt a migraine coming on and grabbed the coin out of Lacy’s hand. “So let me get this straight, Going to Alex’s for Dinner is heads and Not Going to Alex’s for Dinner is tails.”
    “Right.”
    I flipped the coin and for the first time in my life, I found myself praying for heads.
     
    Tails. Best two out of three. Tails. Best three out of five. Tails. Best four out of seven. Tails. I’m telling you it’s always tails. To be honest, I was starting to get the heebie-jeebies, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had tails four times in a row. I kept flipping and things started to even out. And after about ten minutes, heads finally inched out tails in the best thirty-three out of sixty-five division.
     
    After stopping by a liquor store, I turned the navigational system on, foolishly opting for the voice command option. The woman’s voice came on and asked for my destination. The bitchy undertones of the woman’s voice sounded vaguely familiar but I still couldn’t place the voice. The woman repeated the command and there was no mistaking it, Hillary Rodham Clinton was yelling at me from the dash.
    I opened