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Chances Are

Every day after watching the soaps, Tina Rocker goes to her Yearbook and looks and Chance's picture. She has been in love with him since junior high in Teaneck, New Jersey when an illness caused her to leave school because of a 1950's epidemic which gave her curvature of the spine, after being put in an iron lung.

Chance Mechanic has married a couple of times though it's only 20 years later now, early in '71. He has no children and has done odd jobs, as he calls it.

One night Tina felt braver than a schoolgirl and located Chance's phone number and called him.

"You may not remember me…"

Out of fright and shame she hangs up the phone.

One of her girlfriends, Doreen, invited Tina to the shrine because she believed Tina's back could be healed.

As Tina with her crutch and in her white communion dress took some holy water, she asked the Virgin to heal her and that she be allowed to marry Chance.

"I heard her talk to me, Doreen."

"Who, dear?"

"The Virgin."

"Yes?"

"She told me I was going to get my Chance."

Afterwards, Tina started calling Chance every day she could, but it was a woman who always answered.

"Damn her, Doreen. One day I told her about Chance and she started to laugh at me and said Chance was not interested. Then she changed her phone number."

Tina started sending Chance mass cards, crucifixes, Fatima prophesies, and they always came back to her unopened.

One day she wrote to Chance about her secret infatuation and a letter came back in a woman's hand.

"Oh, that ratty woman. I've got a mind to kill her…"

It became an obsession for Tina to drive by Chance's house, and finally with a tiny shotgun she purchased she went there and shot the woman. Tina became frightened and went up to her confessor but decided she couldn't speak.

The newspapers reported that Charlotte Mechanic, the former Chance Mechanic, now an exotic dancer, was murdered.

Tina went to her Yearbook and ripped out Chance's picture.


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