Anton Pike had stale Wheaties for breakfast, and then he was hit by a bus, and then he died, and none of those was the worst thing to happen to him that day. The worst was the girl in the bear hat and her lucky numbers; but that is getting ahead of things.

At first, Anton did not know that he was dead. He looked at the body and he didn't recognize it. A thrill of pity and relief rippled through him. When the bus horn had blared, he had been sure he was done for, but it seemed that some other poor sucker had caught the cross-town express in the grill instead. He probably would have gone on in happy ignorance of his fate for some time if not for the pink pocket square.

That just seemed like too much of a coincidence. Both he and the man who lay twisted and squashed, half-beneath the bus and half-beside it, had worn silvery gray suits? Sure. But both of them in silvery gray suits, and black shoes with tassels, and pink pocket squares? No.

At last, Anton could no longer deny that the hand trapped under the front wheel bore his own square-cut fingernails. He realized that he could not hear or smell anything, or feel the morning drizzle, and he sat down on the curb and thought about all things he had wanted to do. He had wanted eggs for breakfast. Other things, too. Coffee, for instance. Or for his assistant to do something right for once.

After a while, young men in uniforms arrived and took his body, and the bus drove away, and the tape and cones and police cars disappeared from the street. The great gears of the city groaned back into motion, and before it was even afternoon, no evidence of the accident remained.

The busses were running again. Each time one slid by, Anton imagined how he might have saved himself, might have jumped back at the last moment, had he only been less distracted. Damn that Daniel.

"Lucky numbers!"

It was the first sound Anton had heard in he didn't know how long. A young girl in a knit cap stood in front of him. He hadn't seen her approach. She held out a handful of paper slips. Round ears, pink on the inside, poked up from her cap.

"What?" Anton asked.

"Lucky numbers!" she said again, and snapped her gum. "Want one?"

Anton stared at the slips of paper. A wind stumbled down the street. The papers rustled. It seemed like a sign. "How much?"

The girl shrugged. "Depends. Anyway, you pay later. You want one or not?"

"Sure," Anton said. He thought he would get to pick his own slip, but the girl jerked her hand away and shook her head when he reached for one. She turned her back, then spun back to face him, and opened a hand that now held only one slip.

"Ta-da!" she said, and pushed it into his hand.

The paper was thin and grayish, just cheap newsprint, and unevenly torn. It was blank, except for a small number eight written in red sharpie on each end. The ink had gone through to the other side of the paper. The spots looked like blood.

"Amateur hour," Anton said to himself.

When he looked up again, the girl was already a block away. "Hey!" Anton called after her.

She turned. "Yeah?"

"How do I find you again?"

She smiled like a waitress hoping for a big tip. "Don't worry about it!"

"Well," he said. "How do I know if I win?"

"Don't worry about it!" The girl shouted back over her shoulder as she skipped away. She disappeared around a corner. Anton thought he heard a faint echo of "Lucky numbers!" after that, but he couldn't be sure.

Eight, he recalled, was the number of the crosstown bus.

Anton decided to take a walk.

He found that the city's hills no longer daunted him as they once had. He felt lighter. He wondered if he could fly. As an experiment, he climbed a fire escape up to the roof of a four-story building and jumped off. He flapped his arms on the way down, but he still fell.

He went into a café. He watched a young woman in pajama-bottoms order something, sit down, and flip open a laptop. He didn't feel anything. He might have been watching a pigeon, for all that the planes of her face or the swell and swoop of her body moved him. He left a few minutes later.

He thought about going to visit Donna or the kids, but it had been years since he'd seen them and he didn't know where any of them lived anymore. He wondered what they would say when they heard. Good riddance, or I never even got to say goodbye? He couldn't guess.

In the end, he went to the office. He was too solid to ghost through the door, but not solid enough to work the keypad, so he had to lurk out front until someone opened it and follow them in. He played the same trick with the elevator, and then again at the door to the law firm itself, up on the fourteenth floor. He passed the fat receptionist and went down the hall to his office. The door stood open; a police officer inside was going through Anton's desk while Daniel loitered in the corner, arms crossed on his chest.

Anton couldn't remember why he had come. He was about to leave when a gong sounded with a tone so deep and loud that it rolled through him like he was the ocean and it a breaking wave. He gasped at a sudden pain in his hand. He had been clutching the slip of paper with the number eight on it all of this time, and now it had sparked into flame, all on its own, and burned to ash, leaving an angry red streak on his palm.

After hours of silence, the thrum of the air conditioner was like the roar of a crowd. Anton shook, overwhelmed by a sudden rush of sound, of cold and weight and the cloying odor of Daniel's cologne. He ran out into the hall.

"Did he give any indication that he might harm himself?" the police officer said. Anton turned around. She was a woman. He hadn't noticed until that moment. He stepped back into the doorway.

"No," Daniel said. "Mr Pike? Never. He didn't have the heart to kill himself. Much as we all might have wished it."

The officer raised her eyebrows. "Not the best working relationship, then?"

"He was a bastard. I know I shouldn't speak ill of the dead, but—"

"Where were you, again, at the time of the accident?"

"I told you. I was here, I was on the phone with him." Daniel shuddered and his voice broke a little. "I heard the whole thing."

"What were you talking about?"

"He was yelling at me. I ordered the wrong sandwiches for a client meeting. Mortal sin, right?" He laughed, alone. "God, I could really use a coffee."

The officer nodded. She was actually quite attractive, despite the girth that the belt and holster added to her waist.

"Oh, here they are," Daniel said. He brushed by Anton, then returned with a tray of coffees that he put down on the edge of Anton's desk.

The aroma! Without meaning to, Anton felt himself drawn forward, grasping. His fingers skated off of the surface of the cups. He grabbed for one with both hands, frantic—but Daniel lifted it away and Anton could not hang on.

Anton howled and turned all of his concentration, all of his mind and his strength, to tipping over the coffee that remained on the tray. The cap would pop off. He would lap it up from the floor. He could almost taste it, the deep burned bitterness of the dark roast, the heat, the rush of energy and life it would bring. Almost.

He put both of his hands on the cup and pushed. It didn't move. He howled again. He climbed up onto the desk and stepped down on the little lip of the tray that poked out over the edge. It wobbled.

He jumped. It wobbled more. The cup moved. The police officer looked down at it, frowning.

He jumped again. The tray and the cup fell.

The lid cracked open and a glorious darkness flooded across Anton's white carpet. He got down on his knees and put his nose to the spill, savoring the moment of his victory.

He ground his lips, his teeth, his tongue into the wet stain, hard, then harder. But he tasted nothing. Nothing at all.

"Hey!" It was the girl again, the one in the bear hat.She poked her head into his office, like a co-worker grabbing him for a meeting.

Anton glared up at her from the floor. "You? What do you want? My number burned up. It hurt!"

"Congratulations!" she said.

"What? What for?"

"You're a winner!" she said. And she was gone.