Contents
Chapter Ten
Overview
In Seattle, Lucky tries to call Gloria at Devereaux Camp but cannot speak. Fearing exposure and needing safety for her winning ticket, she travels toward Fresno to approach Priscilla’s Place under an alias. She cleverly hides the ticket in a storage unit’s smoke detector and encodes the access code inside Les Misérables.
Summary
Outside Seattle’s Greyhound station, Lucky, newly bleached and disguised, calls Devereaux Camp and asks for Gloria but freezes, then hangs up. Anxious about police and exposure, she leaves a café, steadies herself with the thought of her concealed lottery ticket, and takes solace in a used bookstore by buying Les Misérables instead of stealing it.
On the bus, Lucky decides to head to Fresno, inventing the alias and backstory of “Jean,” a down-on-her-luck screenwriter from Los Angeles. She plans to seek refuge at Priscilla’s Place without revealing her true identity, fearing Priscilla may have been alerted by John.
Realizing a shelter intake might include a search, Lucky refuses to risk carrying the ticket. At a storage facility, using Sarah Armstrong IDs, she rents a five-by-five locker, pays cash, and gathers throwaway boxes to appear legitimate.
Inside the locker, Lucky hides the folded ticket inside the smoke detector’s caged cover. She then encodes the locker’s access code as a faux shopping list on a receipt and conceals that receipt by slicing open the inside cover of Les Misérables, taping it back down.
With the ticket secured and the code hidden in the book she carries, Lucky locks the unit, notes the access details, and sets out on foot for Priscilla’s Place to begin her approach under the new persona.
Who Appears
- LuckyProtagonist; fails to speak to Gloria, adopts alias “Jean,” and hides her winning ticket via a storage locker scheme.
- Gloria (Devereaux Camp)The woman Lucky calls in New York; answers, but Lucky cannot speak and disconnects.
- Storage facility clerkYoung employee who rents Lucky a locker without scrutiny, enabling her plan to stash the ticket.