Even in the most uneventful lives a certain amount of routine is welcome. For Tom, a thirty-seven-year-old gas station attendant, and his girlfriend Dotty, twenty-six years old and a hotel laundress, the welcome routine is buying a lottery ticket every payday and listening to the winning numbers announced on television at six-fifty-five every Saturday evening. It does not matter if the jackpot is one million or one hundred million dollars; Tom and Dotty always play and they always listen to the six winning numbers announced on television every Saturday evening.
And each Saturday, after Tom and Dotty learn that they have lost once again, they sit or stand silently, more discouraged than upset because they realize the odds against them are astronomical, then put on their jackets, count the bills in their wallet and purse, and step outside their rented mobile home, leaving the porch light on, to Toms battered Ford pickup. Tom opens the door for Dotty and she reaches over and unlocks his door. He drives three blocks to a Seven-Eleven and buys a pack of Camels. From the Seven-Eleven it is a leisurely twenty-minute drive to the Roadrunner.
Standing alone on Highway 29, the Roadrunner is a square adobe building with a corrugated-iron roof and a long porch. A gravel parking lot surrounds the building; beyond the parking lot, desert. Tom and Dotty enjoy their weekly drive to the Roadrunner. It is a time to muse upon the improvements in their lives that being millionaires would make, and to reflect on the small pleasures in their lives: the beauty of the desert at dusk, drinking beer and dancing and being with friends Saturday nights, and sleeping in Sunday mornings.
This Saturday evening is especially pleasant: It is mid-October and the western sky is a red haze and the air is cool and fresh. Tom is raising a cigarette to his lips and Dotty is looking out the window to her right when they hear a loud thud and the pickup shudders. "Jesus Christ!" Tom gasps as he drops the cigarette onto his lap, grabs the steering wheel with both hands, and brakes hard. Dotty, too alarmed to speak, braces herself and looks straight ahead. The cigarette rolls off his lap and onto the floor mat. A cloud of dust kicked up by the sudden stop envelops the pickup. After Tom parks off the asphalt, in sand and scrub, he flings open his door. Dotty also exits the cab. They gape at the seven-pound piece of satellite that, smoking and red hot, has welded itself to the floor of the pickup's bed.
"Now what are the chances of that?" asks Tom, more to himself than to Dotty.
She does not answer.
In the randomness of life, they have at last won a lottery.