Million Dollar Harry

By Robert Segarra

Harry has finally hit the big time. For years he dreamed of winning a lottery jackpot, and now at last it seems his dream has come true. Many dream this day will come true for them, but unfortunately, for most it never will. One would think that Harry's life from here on out would be a breeze, but it's not. Harry could not be more miserable. His dilemma - his jackpot amounts to only one million dollars, and the minute he even considers spending a single dollar - that dollar that will no longer leave him a millionaire, Harry panics. Instead Harry goes on a quest to try and figure out a way around this. On the way he meets many colorful characters, and re-discovers the home he has lived in all his life, and himself in the process.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Robert Segarra
• Release date: Feb 21, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370573691

Robert Segarra

ROBERT SEGARRA is a New York artist, writer, and musician with many writing, art and illustrated pieces to his credit. Originally published in the summer of 2007 "STILL WAITING FOR THE SUN" details the difficult life of an unmotivated woman as she receives a very bizarre inheritance that just may change her life if she has the courage to accept it. The book has been re-edited and republished as of 2016. Other books include, "MILLION DOLLAR HARRY," "EVER DARK," TEMPORARY ANGELS" and "GODS & WEREWOLVES." The long poem, "HEAVEN" was published in 2016. Some of his other book projects are "CROW HILL & OTHER POEMS" and the illustrated children's books, "IF TIGER COULD TALK" - and the holiday favorite - "THE CHRISTMAS MOUSE." About a dozen of his screenplays have been produced as films and have aired on television, and screened at film salons and festivals. There are many other projects in the works as well. His poetry has won awards. His artwork has been favorably reviewed in USA Today, and in other publications. And, he has designed artwork, posters, flyers, and clothing logos for such institutions as The Easter Seals Society of New York. Over the years, his paintings have been a part of several New York City art exhibitions, a number of which have ended up in private collections. He writes, records and produces music as the one-man band, "BILLY J BRYAN & THE AX GRINDERS." The music can be found online at CD Baby, iTunes, Amazon and many fine e-tailers. And the music can be heard online, live and archived, at various Internet radio stations, such as EGH Radio, Wig-Wam Radio, Rocker's Dive Radio, Open The Door Radio, Lonesome Oak Radio, Howard's Power Pop Stew, Take-Two Radio, KSCR, Spotify and many others sites and stations.

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MILLION DOLLAR HARRY

MILLION DOLLAR HARRY

by

ROBERT SEGARRA

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

2001 Robert Segarra

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any

form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including

photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage

or retrieval system, without the express permission in writing

from the publisher or author.

Cover photography by Robert Segarra

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents

either are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously,

and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events,

or locales is entirely coincidental.

Smashwords Edition

Printed in USA

i

Once upon a time there lived a merry band of fellows in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

- September 2000

CHAPTER 1

A Not So Rude Awakening

He had laid in bed awake for many hours already nervously staring up at the ceiling and out the window even as wave after wave of near insurmountable sleep swept over him. Each time that his heavy lids experienced a fresh attack of weariness, anxiety, his already long unwelcome companion of many, many years easily fought it off.

Harry had gone to bed a working stiff and had awakened a millionaire. If he wasn’t presently delusional, or hallucinating from lack of sleep, this was something he had always dreamed of. Winning the lottery was something that he and many people like him counted on more surely than they counted on social security, a lifelong savings account, or stock investments for their financial security when their retirement eventually rolled around - and here at last he believed it had finally become a reality. Saturday night he was ordinary Harry Volvoy, and today, Sunday morning, he was a very rich man indeed. The previous Thursday he had been awakened by a pleasant dream in which he prophetically fantasized that he had become the richest Nuyorican in the world. But that was just a dream - now he was wide awake.

The early morning Sunday sun streamed through the window, guiltily beckoning to Harry that he should rise. But he could not. A malaise had begun to set in. Harry was experiencing an affliction unlike any he had felt since his high school days, when his lack of direction in life had really first begun. The rays of light beamed into his bedroom, dust busily gliding in and out on its glowing columns like commuters on a train platform. Harry lay frozen on his bed watching the dust for just possibly the ten millionth time in his existence. He could not for the life of him figure out what he should do next. He switched off the muted television set.

Everyone who had ever worked for a living dreamed this day would come, and for most it never did, but for Harry Volvoy, it had. Years of playing the lottery, the same numbers each time, week after week, month after month, and year after year, had finally paid off.

Where he grew up, everybody played the lottery. It was considered the only real ticket to a better life for many in his socio-economic category. Men and women would line up outside the stationery and liquor stores early every morning just to get a chance to get their lotto tickets, and their Scratch and Win game cards. They would spend twenty dollars just to win back five or six, and most times they wouldn’t win back anything at all. And when they didn’t win, the hopeful merely figured there was always tomorrow, and tomorrow might yield better results. This was especially true of those who were eternal dreamers. They would convince themselves that their time had not yet arrived, but that it soon would. And that was what kept everyone going for another day - that, and a dollar.

It was a pathetic sight to see a welfare mother putting her last bit of cash down on a game of chance, or a retiree, in mid-month, spending his last dollar, full knowing that his next social security check was still weeks away. But all of this wasn’t something that was uncommon where Harry was raised. Most people worked for a living, and working for a living didn’t get you much. It usually made your boss rich, enabling him to live a life lived to the fullest, while his workers struggled merely to survive. Making the rent, paying hospital, gas, electric, and grocery bills were worries of the working people, not of the rich. The worries of the rich were things that the poor would welcome with open arms, for they knew that with those worries came all the benefits that being rich entailed. While those worries of the poor were concepts that the wealthy soon lost all ability to fathom. It was easy to forget the struggles of the past when your stomach was full at night, and you lived in a nice house, in a good section of town. But for the poor and working classes, their worries oftentimes kept them awake long after everyone else was sound asleep and resting.

And it was in this atmosphere that Harry had chosen his numbers very carefully, selecting only those that held special meaning. This he did in secret. And in the beginning, whenever anyone at the packaging plant where he worked ever mentioned that they’d chosen their own numbers, Harry would pay attention, and if for whatever reason they seemed in the least bit similar to his, he would stop and change his, convinced that he couldn’t possibly win with that stale over-used combination. He would convince himself the old numbers had become tainted. But changing numbers soon became a thing of the past once Harry came upon a new system. As soon as he’d decided he would use the lottery to change his life, Harry finally, and almost scientifically, at least to him, chose one set of numbers, basing them on numerology and his astrological forecast, never spoke of them to anyone, and never again discussed ever playing the lottery with any of his co-workers. He carefully guarded his specially selected digits, and wouldn’t let a single person see them. He wanted to win with his chosen numbers, and wanted no one else to ride on his coat tails. While in the past he may have been lax in letting others in on his desire to win the lottery, he now kept these thoughts and feelings well hidden.

In time few remembered that he had even played the lottery with them in company pools, or on his own.

The fewer that know, the better, he thought to himself, then when I win I won’t have to share the jackpot with anyone else. I’ve worked too hard for this.

He had a ritual that he kept, faithfully going through the same motions every week, purchasing a two dollar ticket in order to double the chances of his winning, immediately stashing it in his wallet for safe keeping. Harry always bought his ticket at the same store in Park Slope, on the north corner of seventh avenue and ninth street. He called it his inconvenience store, because although he wished for the lottery to change his life, at times he still had his doubts. Harry’s life was awash in doubt, and always had been. And now, even with the amazing developments of this past evening, Harry saw nothing but more doubt and uncertainty in his future.

In any case, the store was on his special corner. (Harry, as anyone should be able to discern by now, was superstitious to a fault!) The store had been there ever since he was a youngster, and Harry had always felt a unique bond to this area of the Slope. Even back then he had always imagined a day somewhere off in the future when he would come into money, and the first thing he thought he would do was buy a house here in the elite area of the neighborhood. He dreamed of buying one of the many brownstones that line the street just below the park, and there he would live out the rest of his life in tranquility and luxury, the envy of all who set eyes on him.

When he was a child, his family regularly walked up ninth street on their way to Prospect Park. Harry’s father, a proud and angry man, and well aware of the wealth that existed in this part of Park Slope, had a difficult time navigating the few blocks it took to get there. He was painfully reminded of his station in life nearly every day of his life through one interaction or another, and this fact made things tough for the intense, high-strung and somewhat principled man. He was working class, whether he liked to admit it or not. How could he not remember this? Everything he did and everything he saw told him in no uncertain terms that there were wealthy people, and there were working class people, and people looked down on other people for this and for all sorts of other reasons, and that was just the way it was. He did what he could to even out the playing field for his family, even refusing to let his children learn Spanish, the native tongue of the Volvoy clan, encouraging them instead to always to work hard and to try and get better educations, so that they could lift themselves out of their lower class status. His theory and logic behind not letting the children learn Spanish was that others would never be able to discriminate against them on the basis of language, since the only accent they’d have would be identical to that of every other American they’d ever come into contact with. But he soon found that there was always something that people could single you out for. He began to realize that he was fighting a losing battle, but he still couldn’t allow himself to give up the fight. In the meantime, he continued to be a very bitter man.

On many family walks through the area he would secretly admire the homes that stood on these beautiful tree-lined streets. But when the homeowners were present, Harry’s dad never let on that he had even noticed any of the architecture, front gardens, gas lamps, stoops or porches that decorated the homes - details that a moment before he may have commented on. Instead, he stared straight ahead, with only the gates to the park seemingly in his sight. He would never acknowledge that he had even noticed or had been charmed by their property. He resented the situation, the class differences in Brooklyn, and indeed in America, that kept populations separate, and peoples oppressed. He knew many refused to acknowledge their existence, but he was certain that they did exist. And it was these very same class distinctions and social orders, he believed, that were more significant than racial divisions. These were the dividing lines that could never be crossed. This was what Harry’s dad, and many others believed. In this world, some would be forever wanting for the bare necessities, while others didn’t even have to wonder where the money for day-to-day living, let alone luxuries, were going to come from. That was just the way it was.

In good weather, Mr. and Mrs. Volvoy would take their brood of children up to the park, for Prospect Park was the great equalizer, and the only area in the neighborhood where the class distinctions between the haves and the have-nots were more or less leveled off. Of course the picnic baskets of the more financially blessed could always out-do those of the middle and working class, but that wasn’t important. What was important was the fact that the wealthy had to sit under the same sun, on the same grass, and among the same squirrels, birds, and flowers, as the rest of humanity. The poorer families even went so far as to arrive at the park early, much earlier, in fact, than the more well-to-do, in order to take up the best spots, leaving nothing but those areas in direct sunlight for the fashionably late arriving richer families. Little Harry cared nothing for these strategies, in fact, he didn’t despise the rich; he wanted to be one of them. And to make matters worse, he could never understand why he wasn’t allowed to play with their kids. As far as he could see, the other kids were just fine, and they usually had newer and better skateboards and other things to play with. These strange rules regarding who the young boy could and couldn’t associate with confused Harry, and caused him to question his parents about their behavior. Their responses only served to leave him even more confused than ever.

In any case, Harry’s time had finally arrived. Harry was now thirty-eight years old, and officially one of them. He was officially one of those people whom his dad had despised, and to whom he had often referred to as the enemy.

Would he now not like me, too? Harry pondered, then giggled after very little thought, Who gives a shit? I’m rich! He can kiss my ass if that’s the way he feels about it!

Very carefully that fateful morning, Harry pulled out the ticket in question, and read and re-read the numbers over and over again, stopping every once in a while to catch his breath and begin again in order to determine whether he had made a mistake and was not rich, or on the other hand, that he hadn’t made a mistake, in which case he would confirm that he was in actuality a very rich man. Perhaps he had made an error, and was off by a number or two, he thought.

I’ll still win something! he said out loud. Maybe not the first prize, but second or third, surely!

And try as he might to find some kind of error in the way he was reading the ticket, he could not. To save his life, Harry could not remember what he was supposed to do next. He had played out the scenario many, many times in his head in the past, and always he knew what he would do. But now here he was with the winning ticket, and he couldn’t decide whether to claim his prize, go in to work on Monday morning as if nothing had ever happened, or go back to sleep and re-awaken and see if indeed this was just a dream after all.

One by one the hours ticked away, and at four in the afternoon, Harry was still in his pajamas not even having had breakfast. But of two things at least, Harry was now certain; the first was that beyond a shadow of a doubt, he was absolutely positive that his ticket contained all the winning numbers, and he was, in fact, the winner of the lottery jackpot. And the second should have been more obvious, and with time it did become more obvious, and that was that he dreaded his job, and could think of no greater good that he could do for himself but to no longer work at the packaging company where he had already spent too many years of his life. He had gotten the job through a friend, and traveled the seven or so miles every day into Queens wishing he didn’t have to. Both the area and the actual work place had grown to become repulsive to Harry, but in his depression over the situation he could not get himself to look for other work.

He liked that his job expected very little of him and also allowed him the opportunity to engage in extensive hours of reading - his favorite and only real pastime. But on the other hand, he didn’t like that he was under-challenged and working well below his capabilities. Often he would become embarrassed when in a social situation someone would ask him what he did for a living. He wasn’t the bookkeeper; he wasn’t the office manager; and he wasn’t the chief operations officer. In fact, in his mind, Harry wasn’t anyone of importance at the packaging plant. He was in-charge of carton inventory, which meant that whenever a particular type of box ran low in stock, he would have to let the production manager know so that the company could meet its supply demand. It was a job that a kid straight out of high school could do, and Harry hated it. It paid the bills, and allowed him to go home and escape into his world of fantasies, but more and more, his job was making him miserable. Harry could clearly remember his first day of training with the guy who was moving up to Production Assistant. This didn’t seem like much of a promotion to Harry, but he guessed that making boxes and packages had to be more important than just counting them.

Dis is mosely a desk job, fifty year-old Joey Salerno explained, you’ll push a pen ninedy puhcent o’duh toime. Bud evry once in a whi-yul, as a mattah of qualidy gontrol, ya haff-ta haul owt da sampuls an’ templits four puduction. Dey ain’t dat heavy, but dey do weigh aboud forty-fi pounz aw so, an’ if ya deecided dat it wuz a thursdee or fridee an you din’t wanna lug aroun doze heavy tings, nobahdy would blame ya. Harry wondered what the reasoning behind this way of thinking might have been, but he didn’t have long to wait for an explanation.

Cuz I know if id wuz me, an duh weekend wuz comin’ up, I wouldn’t wanna pull a groin muscle or nuthin’, ya know what I mean? Id’s not good to get hoit why-yul ya might be gettin’ lucky or suttin’.

It was because of conversations and interactions like this that Harry began playing the lottery. And it was also because of the way things were that he was now wealthy. Just like in the fantastic stories that he so often read, he was now in a position to change his life. No more would he have to drag himself out of bed and across town to play with boxes, and deal with people who didn’t share any of his interests. No more would he have to laugh at the jokes his arrogant, and obnoxious supervisor made, or compliment the company’s owner for wearing a tie only a clown would wear, all in order to stay on good terms with his co-workers. And never again would he have to eat his bag lunch alone, amid the dust, dirt and aromas that the production people always churned out when making the cartons. Theirs was a memory and a smell Harry knew he would not soon forget, yet he was very willing to give it a try. And hopefully he would be able to replace his dislike for these paper products with the newfound friendship fate had forged with the green paper of this country’s currency.

Chapter 2

Coming To The Realization

Amazingly Harry finally began to drift off. After many hours, and many broken dreams, Harry could feel sleep coming on. Outside, Carlito and his Brooklyn Boys were treating the neighbors to a serenade of congas, guitars and