The day was cloudy threatening rain when Jack Collins finished work at the accounting firm and walked home. It wasn't far, and Jack liked to stop off on Fridays, which it was, for a beer or wine at Lottie's Cafe. He'd never met Lottie, never bother to ask how that was, it was a nice quiet cafe serving mostly bar food, and beer and wine and some mixed drinks. He sat at the bar, the barman was named Joe, and asked "The usual?".
Jack had a taste for wine, he was on a white wine kick of late, so he said "Sure, Joe. One glass only, please."
Joe poured from a bottle kept chilled the house chardonnay which was acceptable, something from Sonoma Coast.
"Anything new in your life?" Joe asked.
"Eh, you know, work, then the weekend."
"You go flying much?" Joe knew Jack had a private pilot's license.
"Usually enough to stay current, nothing really exciting."
"What do you need to stay current?"
"Well, a certain number of landings every few months and a health exam every two years. I'd like to fly more cross country, but then the weather is a factor. A day like today would shut me down, I can't fly in clouds."
"Huh. I never thought about it much. The wife and I fly on Delta once or twice a year to see the kids, but obviously that is quite different."
Another customer showed up and Jack was left to his chard, and the TV, which was showing the winning lottery numbers. Jack paid some attention because he had been throwing a fiver at the lottery once a week just for fun, same numbers, 1, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 and 17. He had won $11 some time back, but overall he knew it was good money after bad. He was an accountant after all with the firm of Dewey, Cheatham, and Howe, as he and his friends quietly called his firm (which really was Hoskins and Billings, which was almost as funny).
The hyper cheerful young thing on the TV pulled off the little balls for the various lottery types, three balls, then four, then five. Supposedly the proceeds funded some college scholarship or something. It was basically a regressive tax on folks, Jack thought, the poorer people played it because they had little hope elsewise. Jack played because, well, he needed a little something in his life to wall off some boredom. He learned to fly as part of that. He wasn't married, didn't have a girlfriend at the moment, lived in a rented one bedroom near work in midtown Atlanta. If he thought about life as a concept, it didn't last long, it was overall depressing.
