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Dave said he was lucky. I called it fate. Whatever name you gave it the results were the same; people kept giving him gifts - incredible gifts.
Dave was working as a writer for a magazine. He was interviewing a man who worked in Las Vegas arranging parties for business executives.
He was an interesting guy, said Dave. He had an advanced degree in Art History from a famous school; spoke several languages. He had lived on an island in the Caribbean and painted, ran a bar.
Vegas is always surreal, said Dave. Of course it’s artificial, everyone knows that, but the paradox of it is that the fake is a genuine thing. You experience it, you live it. It’s all real.
The story ended up being killed by the magazine. Dave had interviewed the guy for weeks and followed him around Vegas for two months.
He didn’t like the work he was doing, said Dave; he had lost everything during a hurricane that hit the islands and in a way those winds blew him all the way to Las Vegas and a new life he didn’t like at all.
Dave went back to San Francisco and started working on another story for the magazine. Then, one day he came home and found a large package waiting for him.
It was a big flat box, he said, leaning on the front door. There was an envelope taped to the box. I pulled it off and I opened it. It was from him.
He was in Tahiti. He had painted a portrait of this executive. The guy loved it and bought it and the next thing he knows he’s receiving requests for portraits. He made a small fortune and packed his few bags and blew out of town as fast as he could.
He took the package inside and opened it. It was a large oil painting of Dave leaning against his car just outside the Wonderly Hotel on the Vegas Strip.
That was where he was living, said Dave. I interviewed him there several times.
I told Dave it fit; that it was fate, the way he always received gifts from people.
He laughed and said that was not the end of the story.
There was another note, he said, it was taped to the top of the frame and it said: Look at the back.
That was all it said.
What was on the back, I said.
A round trip ticket to Tahiti, said Dave.
We both laughed and while I said it was fate and Dave said it was luck, what mattered was that it was real, and once again, Dave was at the right place at the right time to receive a gift.
