Norm lucked out went he bought the lottery ticket. He'd been on his way to a burn barrel Friday beers and bought the lottery ticket on a whim. Normally Norm knew his luck to be bad, order or of a certain kind. He lived alone in a run down studio apartment by himself. The rent was high, and he regretted money spent at the bar that staved off loneliness. He liked to play the jukebox. Sometimes he got lucky with some woman, but he was in his early 50s now and was much more uncaring about making promises he couldn't keep.
Sometimes it was the woman, and sometimes it was her family, set of friends, the day of the week, or just geography. Mostly he had his habits and wasn't going to much change.
His was just a regular life of regular achievements at regular things. He'd drifted to carpentry even though he had no particular aptitude for it, but succeeded in being reliable and easy enough to get along with.
It was really out of the blue that he won so much money. 37 million dollars is a lot of money for someone whose rarely had more than 3 grand at a time and mostly is used to just getting by. He remembered buying the ticket with a bit of awe at how normal the place had been, Carla behind the counter backed by the country grill of grease food productions on the edge of edibility. Some cans had dust on them in the shelving. There were cheap plastic toys, and the worst of brands of ice cream in the cooler. The expensive freelance ATM, and the Video Poker games were back in the window end corner. Scratch offs and the Lottery Ticket machine were there at Check out. Carla had big breasts and was all business with a tow truck driver husband who looked like some dufus parody of the swoop over hairdo redneck impossible to invent.
Norm was not immune to moments of lust. The flawed cashier women of quick mart country stores wisped in the mind of his pickup travels. They all wore rings and he never hardly said much.
End locations and orbits changed.
"Hey, I bought a lottery ticket last Friday. When do they draw the numbers?" He'd asked Jerry on Monday.
Jerry said they picked them on Sundays and published them in the papers on Mondays. They joked during the week, about what Norm might do with his winnings.
Norm said he was going to buy a boat, and an airplane and a motorcycle and a car, and a bar for a strip club, and an RV, and some gold, and a camp.
Soon as the check was in the bank, that's what he did.
Then he died.
