As I expected, I was rather disappointed by the lottery’s offices.  Where I was hoping to find guilded gold and platinum, I found typical corporate off-white.  Of course, when you’ve only picked up $100, you don’t even have to come in to the main office, you can pick up your cash from any of the convenience stores that sell lottery tickets. But I’d never won anything before, so I was going to milk the experience for all it was worth . . .
 

      The smiling receptionist, who was probably hoping to meet a million dollar Mr. Right through her job and wouldn’t have given me the time of day if it wasn’t her job, gave me hearty congratulations and my hundred dollars, out of the petty cash.  I felt bad for wasting her time.
 

     As I was leaving the building I was instantly accosted by a panhandler who must have figured that anyone leaving the lottery’s offices would have money to spare.  I was feeling generous, so I tossed him a fiver.  What the hell, share the wealth I figured.  I’m going to assume that the grandfatherly old man was thinking the same thing when he decided to vomit on my shoes--it’d probably cost $20 just to get the stench out.  I should have known better than to give him such a surprise, but I guess no good deed goes unpunished.
 

    I had a couple of hours before I had to go to work, so I thought I’d check out the fair they were holding in the park this week.  I don’t usually take taxis, but I thought I’d treat myself to the good life.  When the ride was over I ended up paying $30 for a ride that probably wasn’t more than a few miles.
 

     After spending about a half hour walking around the park and paying $5 for a soda I was feeling pretty confident that the fair was a bust.  It was just as I was thinking about leaving that I felt a tug on my pant leg.  I looked down to find a small girl with tears streaming down her cheeks.
 

     “Hey mister,” she began as I began to feel myself turn into a total chump, “can you help me find my Daddy?”
 

     Now I’m not a heartless bastard, but my first instinct was to just walk away--she’d probably find her father soon enough on her own, or someone who wasn’t suddenly feeling late for work could help her out, or the next person she asked could be a child abusing pedophile who’d dump her body in the river after using her up.
 

     “Sure I’ll help,” I heard myself saying as I mentally made plans to get “Bleeding Heart” tattooed across my forehead. “What’s your daddy look like?”  Needless  to say her description was less than helpful; I believe tall, old and “like Daddy” sums up her detailed description of her father pretty well.  We probably looked for him a half hour before I started focusing on looking for a cop.  I had a horrible sneaky suspicion that her father didn’t want to be found and in any event I still had to go home to change before I went to work.
 

     The problem with looking for a cop is that as soon as you start looking for a cop they become impossible to find.  So here I was, wit ha weepy 5 year old--or 10 year old--or whatever she was, a desperate need to split, and nobody to pass her off on.  Hell, I don’t even like kids.  So I went to the desperation plan, the bad plan.  I asked her, “Where do you live?”
 

     She handed me a card with an address across town on it. 
 

     “And is anyone home?” I asked.
 

     “Mommy,” she said.
 

     It was the answer I wanted to hear, so I could follow through with my bad plan.  I hailed a taxi, and we both headed for home.  Even thought I hadn’t done anything, I was fairly certain that if the family was to suddenly find us I could reasonably expect to end up with an abduction charge, and a couple years in jail for my trouble.  I figured, though, that we could just whiz across town and I could get back to my place and then to work in plenty of time.  It was a pretty good plan, with the unfortunate complication that we ended up sitting through two hours of rush hour traffic.  Retrospectively, I suppose we were even lucky to get a taxi, of course I was soon wishing that we’d been so unlucky.
 

     It was a half hour past when I was supposed to be at work when we got to the apartment where she lived and I was liberated of $70 cab fare.  (And they say the highwayman is dead.)
 

     It was a fancy apartment building and I had to ring up to her apartment.  (It turns out she was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Phillips.) 
 

     “Yes?” came a distraught woman’s voice over the intercom speaker.
 

     “Mrs. Phillips?” I said hoping she didn’t have the police standing by to apprehend her daughter’s abductor, “I believe I’ve got your daughter .”
 

     “Don’t move!  I’ll be right down!” came the response.
 

     The little girl seemed a little happier now; she’d stopped crying over an hour ago, but started up again on hearing her mother’s voice (I never did understand women.) I could see the elevator inside the locked glass doors slowly descending from on high.  Soon a middle aged rich woman with streaked mascara was rushing from the elevator towards us. 
     “Mommy!” exclaimed the girl as the woman flung open the door and grabbed her up.
 
     “Get away from her, you monster!” the mother shrieked at me as she rushed back to the safety of her glass tower. 
     I suppose it was a reasonable thing to say if an unemployed man who reeked of alcoholic vomit showed up on your doorstep with your daughter.
 

     As she was carried away over her mother’s shoulder to the elevator I could make out the words, “thank you, mister,” on the little girl’s lips.
 

     It’s wonderful being rich.  I just hope it doesn’t go to my head.