The ticket was a birthday thing, the kind of small, throwaway gesture that people make when they do not know what else to give someone. My coworker Dana had pressed it into my hand in the break room with a card and a cupcake and the cheerful disclaimer that she never won anything on these but maybe I would.
I scratched it in my car during lunch. I looked at the numbers for a long time before I accepted what they said. Then I drove back inside and sat at my desk for the rest of the afternoon not doing any actual work, the ticket in my pocket, running the numbers again in my head like someone who expects them to change.
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