Free The Ultimate Good Luck by Richard Ford

square plastic box, the kind trout flies came in. Deats stood in front of the TV and watched the Mexican oddly. He had his porkpie pushed back and he squeezed the lid off the box with this thumbnail, knelt, and delicately turned the contents out onto Quinn’s chest. The Mexican had extremelythick fingernails, industrial fingernails, nails for turning screws. The man on the TV with the mustache was talking very fast in Spanish. He kept pointing to something off the screen and saying “grande.” He kept reaching for the wheel as if he was going to spin it, then stopping and saying something to the fat woman that made her wring her hands harder and grin and flick her eyebrows and rise up on her toes in anticipation. The camera showed her toes. Quinn’s heart began to whip up fast. “You don’t look so hot,” Deats said.
    He thought he was going to have a cramp. The muscles up and down his stomach began organizing themselves into a unit, waiting for the scorpion to hit him. Quinn heard the door close and footsteps on the patio, and he was alone on the floor. The rapid voices on the TV built up a wall of sound that was too run-on to get, and he couldn’t put a thought together, and for a moment he was terrified. He wanted to think a thought, but one wasn’t extractable. The scorpion was small and translucent, the color of nicotine. He couldn’t feel its weight, could only see it rise with his breath over his chest contour. Some of them would kill you and some of them were like wasp stings. He couldn’t get the markings you were supposed to remember. The ones in Arizona killed you. He thought about Arizona. It didn’t seem far away. There had once been a communication. Some were green, some were brown, he couldn’t quite distinguish. Some were green and some were brown. You were not to be stung by the wrong one, but he couldn’t remember which was wrong. His face was wet. The scorpion was rising and falling with his breath but hadn’t moved of its own will. Quinn was bridged on the heel of his hand and could tip one way or the other by turning his head and breathing, but that might be enough to make it sting, and he didn’t want it to sting. The TV was loud and the fat man still hadn’t spun the wheel and the fat woman was all the way on her toes as if she wanted to fly and not come down until the wheel hit her number. He wanted to see the screen, couldn’t keep his eyes off the emcee smiling and soaking up the situation, getting thestudio audience involved. It seemed to involve him more than it involved the woman who might win something, more than anybody else. The scorpion suddenly seemed to wake up. It moved an inch on his chest then stopped, its tail uncurled. The Mexican suddenly dealt the wheel a huge, knee-bending haul, and the wheel chattered, becoming a whir like a mirage on the tiny aqua screen showing numbers and chances in a vortex, and then slowing as the balance on the heel of his hand gradually sagged to the side so that his chest tipped toward the TV and the scorpion slid off onto the tiles before the wheel had even completely stopped.
    He bucked the floor and jerked off from the scorpion, which he couldn’t see now, but knew would come after him once it hit the tiles. He slid on his stomach and kicked his knees so he could achieve a sit. The scorpion hadn’t moved. It was almost invisible against the pale green tiles and gave no sign of intention. He pushed back to the wall and jigged his feet until the belt began to lariat around his ankles and he could get one foot free and force out the loop. The scorpion hadn’t moved. The television was louder than before. The woman had caught her number. Peso signs were flashing on the screen, and the mustachioed man was talking as fast as he could and pointing at the woman accusingly, the woman was looking out through the peso signs in a fur coat, hugging herself and turning around and around in the commotion. Quinn advanced on the scorpion, his hands