Why Go Home When the Unicorn Isn't Ready?

She babysits her grandchildren on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays. Her daughter works third shift and when she leaves at eleven, someone needs to watch the three girls until their father gets home from his job at the supermarket around eleven thirty. Her son-in-law is up for a promotion, and nobody wants him to jeopardize that, because it’ll mean that they can finally move into that house in Port Ryan with the in-law apartment that she can move into. Her neighborhood, and the street where she raised her daughter and two sons, has rapidly been taken over by upscale condos and her rent has been steadily increasing over the years. While some of her friends cringe at the idea of living with their children, she wants to spend as much time with her grandchild as possible.

When her son-in-law arrives, he gives her a hug and asks if any of the girls tried to stay up and watch reruns of “Friends” with their grandma. She tells him that didn’t happen, but all three of the girls woke up as soon as they heard their mother leave, and when they ran into the living room and jumped on the couch, she was tickled. She loved that she, as their grandmother, was the one who could let them get away with things. They watched their favorite episode--the one where Ross wears leather pants--and when they heard a car pull up outside, they ran to their beds, and she laughed, because while she had only been a so-so mother, she knew she was killing it as a grandmother, and her granddaughters risking a lecture from their father just to spend time with her was unspeakably gratifying.

“Have a good night, Ma,” her son-in-law says, happy that he’s taken her on as his second mother, especially after his own passed away the previous winter, “Drive safe.”

Out in front of the house, her unicorn is chewing on a piece of an old toaster. She lets it finish before mounting it. The journey home is about four miles away, but on the back of the majestic creature, she would be back at her apartment within minutes. For some reason, spending stolen time with the girls has rejuvenated her. She also feels that Thursdays were the new Fridays now that she was semi-retired and only worked a few days a week at the nursing home. She whispers something in the unicorn’s ear, and it grunts before taking off in a southern direction.

The casino is nearly two hours away, but she arrives within ten minutes. The valet asks if she wants him to park the unicorn, but nobody in their right minds goes to a casino without a lucky creature by their side. She pulls a few quarters out of her pocket and feeds them to the unicorn. It burps when it swallows the last coin, and then they’re ready to go.

At one of the tables, a woman is petting a phoenix, and its flames singe the top of the cards. The dealer wants to complain, but the woman has already lost a small fortune, so what’s a few cards in the grand scheme of things? The pit boss has a poltergeist in his pocket, but most of the creatures around the tables and at the slot machines are tangible. She walks her unicorn over to one of the slot machines with Rachel from “Friends” on it. They really did have a slot machine for everything these days. A man next to her has a miniature three-headed dog on his lap while he slips doubloons into a slot machine that was Anna Karenina themed.

The unicorn doesn’t like the Rachel machine. It pulls her over to a machine that seems rather bland in nature. Nothing but blue polka dots and a woman in a long white dress holding a purse overflowing with olive-colored dollars. She sits down at the machine and when an angel of death approaches and asks if she’d like a drink made of forgotten souls, she orders a Diet Coke instead. Once left alone, she plays with the money she has and some of the money she doesn’t, while she assures herself that if she wasn’t going to get lucky tonight, the unicorn would have insisted on taking her home. When she drops her last farthing into the slot, the machine begins to shake. A crack opens up and a small woman emerges from the machine. She’s not a tinier version of the woman painted on the machine, but she is striking. She’s wearing a one-piece bathing suit that looks like it’s from the 1930’s and she’s wearing a rather fabulous hat with a wide brim.

In her hands, she holds a check. Without a word, she holds out the check. The unicorn grabs it between its teeth, and that’s the cue. As the tiny woman makes her way back into the machine, the gambler buttons up her coat and hops onto the unicorn. She won’t check to see how much the check is for until she gets home, but she has a feeling it’s for a sizable amount of money. On the way out, a man approaches her, and the unicorn kicks him into a nearby trash receptacle. Once they’re outside the casino, she pulls the check from the unicorn’s mouth and tries not to fall off when she sees the number and all those zeroes after it. She clears her throat, and whispers in the unicorn’s ear. Rather than race home, the unicorn does what for a magical hoven creature, would be considered a trot, but still gets her to a diner on the state line within seconds.

The unicorn always did love eggs and bacon and a slice of pie in the middle of the night. She decided she could go for a good cup of coffee and some toast. They go inside and grab a booth at the back. The waitress is a centaur, and after she takes their order, she compliments the unicorn’s coloring. The darling is nearly two hundred, but you’d never know it. She takes good care of it, and when the food arrives, she lets the unicorn try a little bit of her coffee even though it’ll keep him up all night. She was in a good mood, and she didn’t see the point in following any rules. People like her didn’t get lucky very often, and the children of people like her didn’t get lucky very often, and, if luck did show up, it tended to show up for generations after that. That would be fine with her, but the check in her pocket meant she could be the hero for a change. Praise should go to the unicorn, but unicorns have no interest in praise. Only in pie and toasters.

Goodness knows, there are plenty of those to go around.