for many years, bill bailey had bored his acquaintances and coworkers by ridiculing and inveighing against the lotteries which have become such a prominent institution in the modern world.
one morning, sipping his paper cup of black coffee at mcdonalds before heading up to his soul-crushing (his own term) job at the z———— corporation, he could not help but notice the headline on the morning news that one of the megalotteries had reached a sum of four billion dollars. the brief article pointed out that even after taxes, and the reduction of the total if taken as a lump sum, a lucky single winner would still have over a billion dollars “cash”.
a billion dollars cash! that might almost make it worth it, he mused.
but he put the thought from his mind. he had long since made himself aware, and made his awareness known to anyone who cared to listen, or was forced by circumstances to listen to him, of the perils of winning lotteries.
but a billion cash!
he finished his coffee and the last crumbs of his egg mcmuffin, put his phone in his pocket and headed out of the mcdonalds to the building half a block away to ascend to the 45th floor for his daily soul crushing.
chuck chan and dave dooley were in the office before him. both were unashamedly avid lottery players.
i am surprised to see you guys here so early, bill observed casually.
oh? and why is that? chuck asked innocently.
i thought you would be waiting in line at 7-11 to buy your big game tickets.
oh, there are no lines for those things any more. you can buy them so many places - including online - that there are no lines any more.
oh, bill replied. i did not know that.
he left chuck and dave and walked thoughtfully to his work space.
he had been considering buying a ticket, but had been held back by the thought that his fellows would find out that he did and taunt him mercilessly about his hypocrisy .
but four billion dollars! even accounting for taxes and inflation, that was not nothing!
but if he could find some little mom and pop store or bodega where he could slip in and out quietly. and buy a ticket…
he thought he knew just the place, on a little back street about two blocks behind the financial district, wedged in between a couple of loading docks…
at lunch time, he wandered over there. as he always went to lunch by himself, nobody took any notice, and he purchased two tickets without incident and placed them carefully in his wallet.
well, you can just guess what happened next.
*
holding the only winning ticket in the “four billion dollar” lottery, bill bailey found himself in a quandary.
sure, he wanted the “four billion” (actually closer to one billion) dollars - there were a lot of fun things he could think to do with it - but how the guys would laugh at him!
he had to figure out a way to get someone to cash the ticket for him without
a) the person simply cashing the ticket in for themselves. - and maybe killing him, bill, in the process.
or
b) cashing it in for him for whatever price agreed on but then telling the world about it - maybe writing a best selling book about it.
maybe the best thing would be to just cash the ticket and suffer the world’s ridicule and abuse. after all, that was probably what 99.9 percent of the people in the world would do. but he was not 99.9 percent of the world - he was himself, a fragile, sensitive soul who could not bear criticism or ridicule.
but who made fun of other people every chance he got - the classic guy who could dish it out but could not take it.
even if he built himself a castle in florida or the bermuda triangle , he knew the servants and the delivery people would always be laughing at him.
in the end, he decided to do what he always did.
he went to see the gypsy.
he just gave her the ticket. he knew she would just take it and cash it and keep her mouth shut about how she got it.
and she did.
bill went back to his day to day routine, as if it had never happened.
*
a week later, a story appeared on the front page of the gazette:
exclusive! security camera shows picture of original purchaser of winning four billion dollar ticket!
and there bill was, for all the world to see.
you can run but you can’t hide.
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