As I often do, I stopped on my way home from work at the corner store to pick up my usual bag o' health: beer, cigarettes, potato chips. (Sometimes jerky! People have told me for years that someday my metabolism would crap out, and I'd bloat up into something horrid, but I still hover at 150 pounds. Yay, my body is too poisoned and torpid to change!) The owner is a ridiculously garrulous man who has taken to greeting me loudly: "HELLO!" he screamed a while ago. "IT IS ABOUT TIME!" Hey, he loves me! I think, He counts the minutes between visits! Then someone else walked in. "HELLO!" he screamed again. "YOU ARE LIKE A ROBOT EVERY DAY!" Okay, he doesn't love me, I thought. He's just hilarious. Which is also great. He either really loves his job or merely puts up a really convincing front of enjoying the living shit out of greeting people into his ramshackle shop.

You know these places. They're sort of a hybrid of a normal grocery store and a flea market. Next to a couple lonely cans of Cream of Mushroom soup, you might find, say, a tin of shoe polish and some playing cards. Just in case, you know, a hungry grifter wandered in with scuffed loafers and a desperate need to round out a casserole recipe. Places like this have four dollar bottles of off-brand Italian dressing right next to a bin of incredibly cheap tube socks. And inevitably up front is a Lucite display case filled with complicated lighters, cigar guillotines, and butterfly knives.

Today I picked up my bunch of crap, and went to the counter, and I knew I was in trouble. There was a middle-aged lady in front of me, and she was buying lottery tickets. Lots of lottery tickets, some of the light cardboard stock ones under the counter, and some of the other ones that require keyboard entry on the giant machine by the register. Not knowing the strange incantations of all things lottery, I was instantly bored and also instantly wishing a bowel obstruction upon the woman. But she was fireproof in the way of people who do not care that they are making others wait, and she delivered a simply incredible stream of gibberish at My Great Counter Guy, who I must say handled everything with speed and aplomb. Even better, he recited her every request back to her in a harried voice, and in his haste, his accent became utterly impenetrable. So I bowed my head a little and just let the sound collage wash over me. While I had no idea what the fuck she was saying, his repetitions achieved a sort of tone poem feel.

"Okay, and now give me a dollar Lotto." (This was the only phrase I recognized from her.)

"DOLL LARDO!" the counterman sang. I shuffled my feet happily at the euphony of this.

She then examined the scratch tickets. "Three of the [unintelligible], two of the [unintelligible], and . . . one [unintelligible]."

"DIAZEPAM FUNGO BLOT WINDOW CREAM!" he howled ecstatically. He threw me an "I'm sorry, but what can I do?" glance over her shoulder, and I grinned. I could stand there for days listening to this performance.

This went on for some time, and the woman finally seemed to wrap things up. "Okay, and one of those poodle naps," she said, or something. Counterman confirmed: "BOODLEPAPS!" I desperately wanted to see what either "poodle naps" or "boodlepaps" could possibly translate to, but the sad ticket was lost in the wild sheaf of paper that had accumulated in front of the woman. She began clawing the tickets into no discernable order, and the shop guy tallied her damage: Fifty bucks.

She slid him a crisp fifty. I stared at this. Fifty bucks. Now, I'm all for people wasting their money on whatever the fuck they want--I did, after all, just get back from Vegas--but Jesus Christ. Fifty bucks on goddamn lottery tickets. I know for a good fact that my chances at the blackjack tables are a sight better than hers; hell, I know that the wife's chances at the roulette table are better than the lottery. It all of a sudden bummed me out, the whole spectacle.

She began to leave, still wrestling with the wad of unruly tickets, and the counterman said--a line I've heard before--"NO SMOKES?" He pointed amiably at the cigarette display behind him. The woman looked pained. "I don't smoke," she coldly replied, and went out the door.

I walked up to the counter, and the fellow rang up my items. "LARDO? MAYBE ICE CREEP?" He pointed to the Lotto machine and a freezer case, happily trying to upsell me. "No thanks," I said, "but I could use some Camel Lights." He plucked them out of the display case. "YEAH!" he screamed.

"Yeah," I said, "hit me."