I had to pick up Mom’s prescription and was further taxed with burning the extra fifty dollars she had pressed into my hand on two lottery tickets. Just two? What the fuck, I remember when the two-dollar ticket debuted, and I thought that was excessive. Whatever, it’s her disposable income, and as long as she can still afford her insulin, sending it straight down the shitter on lottery tickets wasn’t any of my business.
Rite Aid has one of those tall boxy lottery machines, like a soda machine only it dispenses lottery tickets. Sad world. It never bugged me too much to use the machine when she asked, but I always felt like a scumbag when she wanted me to cash in her winners. That involved other humans and if small talk emerged I always acted as though I knew as much about the New York Lottery as a Martian, and was sure to explain I was only there on someone else’s coin.
I planned to buy her tickets first, while my hands were free, but there was a woman standing in front of the lottery machine scratching a ticket, and I really couldn’t be bothered. Woman was practically dancing with the big goddamn metal box, her body swaying in time to the rhythm of her scratch. Fuck it, the insulin was a single pen, it’d fit right in my pocket. I’d come back for her lottery tickets, hands every bit as free, after visiting the pharmacy.
When I returned, to my surprise, the woman was still standing there; still scratching there.