1 Chapter 1

Benjamin pushed the door to his small apartment open and lugged five bags of groceries to the counter of his kitchenette. When he had put the weekly shopping away he removed two lottery tickets from his wallet, kissed them for luck, and placed them carefully beneath the statuette of Buddha that sat by the fruit bowl at the end of the counter. One coupon contained the twelve sets of six numbers he played every week and the other was a Slikpik, a set of computer generated numbers. This way, he surmised, he’d have all bases covered.

As it was Friday, Benjamin set about doing his laundry. He always did his laundry on Friday. First groceries then laundry. Saturday morning was cleaning-the-apartment time and then he had the rest of the weekend to do whatever he wanted, which never amounted to much. During the long summer months he usually headed to the beach. It was only a half-hour drive from where he lived and he could while away his time reading, swimming, or sunbaking while listening to music on his iPod. In the winter, his solitary existence would really hit home. He slept a lot, watched a mountain of DVDs, and went for the occasional walk, weather permitting, not for exercise, but to keep from going stir-crazy.

For dinner, he made a simple salad and heated some frozen, pre-cooked chicken kievs, which he ate while watching a re-run of Roseanneon television. Afterwards, he did the dishes. He never went to bed without doing the dishes. Since he left home, more than fifteen years ago, he’d never gone to bed with dirty dishes in the sink because dirty dishes were one thing he couldn’t face first thing in the morning.

He watched part one of The Hobbiton DVD for the third time, drifting in and out of sleep during the second half, and when the movie had finished, he brushed his teeth and went to bed. It was eleven-thirty. He was asleep within minutes.

Saturday was not a hot day. It was mid-spring and while the temperatures hovered in the high twenties, the scorching heat of summer was still two or three months away. Nevertheless, with his laundry and cleaning taken care of, Benjamin was anxious to get out and about. He decided to take a drive to the beach. The waters of the Indian Ocean would still be too chilly for a dip, but the idea of the fresh sea air in his nostrils and the warm sun on his face was a lure too great to ignore.

As he laid eyes on the deep blue of the ocean for the first time since the previous summer, he felt his body release all the stress it had accumulated over the winter months and an indescribable sense of peace settled over him. At the water’s edge, small waves crashed onto the sand, splashing his legs and the hems of his cargo shorts. A middle-aged couple walked by, hand in hand. They were chatting and laughing, and every now and again they looked lovingly into each other’s eyes. The woman smiled at him as they passed each other and he returned a flimsy half-smile before averting his eyes.

He suddenly felt very lonely.

* * * *

That evening he turned on the television to catch the Lotto numbers while he made dinner. His notepad and pencil were right beside the chopping board; the white paper spotted with red capsicum juice. When it came time for the draw, he waited until half the numbers had been selected before he started to jot them down. After he’d recorded the final number, he pushed the notepad and pencil to one side and continued preparing his salad.

He ate dinner watching Funniest Home Videosbefore doing the dishes and cleaning up the kitchen. When everything was as it should be, he collected his notepad and pencil, retrieved his Lotto tickets from beneath the statuette of Buddha then walked across to the couch and sat down. At first he was just circling the odd number here and there. Six lines down on the coupon containing his regular numbers he discovered he had the first three winning numbers, but nothing more. This heart-quickening occurrence had happened many times in the past. In fact, once he’d had the first four numbers. He’d won a small prize, enough to keep him interested, but he couldn’t help feeling a little disappointed.

He arrived at the bottom of the coupon without a prize and started on his Slikpik. By now he was only half-concentrating. He’d always figured that if he was going to win anything, he’d win on his regular numbers. After all, isn’t that what everyone said? If you played your numbers often enough, they’d come up sooner or later.

It was a strange sensation, knowing he’d won before actually circling the numbers. Since he’d already checked sixteen games, the six winning numbers were firmly fixed in his brain. He only had to glance at the fifth line on his Slikpik to know he had them. But what his mind found difficult to comprehend, the rest of his body certainly didn’t. He could feel a great ball of excitement whirling and growing in his stomach. His heartbeat quickened. So did his breathing. Regardless of what he already knew, he had to physically circle the numbers. To make it real. With a trembling hand he ringed each number with pencil then held the ticket up to examine it more closely. To make doubly certain he hadn’t made a terrible mistake, he picked up the notepad and checked the circled numbers on his ticket against the numbers written on the lined paper.