"What?"  Her nod had attracted Angie's attention, and the redhead's exclamation made several people look in their direction.

"Eight," Westin said.  She had an expression on her face Chance had never seen before - angelic, happy, and altogether stupid and nonsensical.  He frowned at her, then looked at Angie, who'd picked up the orange scrap of paper from the counter.  Angie nodded, then slipped the lottery ticket back under Westin's hand, backing away.

Chance felt the inexplicable urge to back away, too.  Not from his friend, but from the prospect of all that money.  Of the sheer luck it took to be the winner of a lottery that had people lined up around the block.  He still had a smarting, fresh recollection of how messed-up his life had become after the Unihacker deposited $2 million in his bank account without his knowledge.

Westin started to laugh.

"Westin," Chance said warningly, but she just put her head into her hands.  Her shoulders shook as though she was sobbing.  "Audrey," he said, more softly, thinking it would get her attention.  He lay a gentle hand against her back, and she raised her head and looked at him, tears of laughter squeezing from her blue eyes.

"I can quit my job. I can buy a boat. I can see Europe.  I can buy $500 dollar shoes."

"Westin. You're hysterical. Calm down."

"Has a right to be hysterical, don't you think?" Angie said practically, and he looked at her.  "Let her enjoy it."  She put a glass of ice water down on the counter for them and headed away again.

Chance looked at Westin. Maybe Angie was right.

"I can...I can..." Westin looked at him.  "Oh my God, Chance, I won.  I won.  What am I going to do?"

"You're going to take care of this."  He plucked the ticket from the counter and tucked it into the pocket of Westin's coat.  "And you're going to get a good night's sleep, and then tomorrow I guess you're going to go to the lottery office and claim your prize."  There was a hard knot growing in his stomach. He didn't want this to be real, he slowly realized.  This was going to change their lives forever. All of their lives - not just Westin's.  If she was different, his life would be different too.

"You look like you're thinking deep thoughts," Westin said, frowning at him.  She looked at him and started to brush his hair back from his forehead.  Chance looked at her, surprised, and she dropped her hand quickly, like she'd been burned.

"I'm a deep guy," he said, and not without sarcasm.  "Westin...are you sure this is what you want?"

She nodded, suddenly looking like a scared little girl.  A scared, stubborn little girl.  She put her hand into her pocket and he knew she was feeling the ticket, convincing herself it was still there.  She pulled it out and looked at it, reading the fine print on the back. "Got a pen?"

Chance patted down the pockets of his brown coat and came up with a battered ballpoint.  Someone had been chewing on it - not him.  He wondered where it had come from.  Westin didn't notice as she took it from him and scrawled her name on the back of the ticket.  He looked at her curiously.  "It says sign it for safety," she shrugged.  "Now no one else can claim it, even if you lose it."

"Me lose it?"  His eyebrows shot up, then went back down.  Things did have a tendency of happening, he couldn't deny that.  Things like this.

Westin was having the exact same thought.  "Chance..." she said.

"Don't say it," he warned quickly.

"You gave me the last number.  You bought the ticket," she said, despite his protests.

"Westin--"

"This is actually yours."  She held it out to him.

Chance held up his hands in a gesture of refusal. He looked at the orange ticket as if he were almost afraid of it. "Westin, in case you forgot, I turned down an offer of full time employment. And I almost got killed over two million. What would I do with three hundred million dollars?"

"Well, for one thing, you wouldn't mooch off of me quite so often," she retorted.

Again, he shook his head, still refusing to touch the offered prizewinner. "Sorry."

With a deep sigh, Westin drew her hand back and tucked the ticket into her purse. "Well, you can't say I didn't try." She stood. "Come on, let's go."

"Where are we going?" Chance rose from his seat to follow her, his tone curious.

"Down to the Examiner. I want to get a photocopy of this thing." A smile touched her maroon-painted lips. "I might want it for a keepsake someday."

"Have fun!" Angie called after them as they disappeared through the door. Chance turned back in the opening to flash her a lopsided smile.

After the door closed behind them, a knowing look came over the redhead's face. "Have fun," she repeated in a murmur.

"All right, one last time." Westin glared at the photocopier, her eyes burning with unexpressed frustration. "If the damned thing doesn't print this time..." She chose not to finish the threat, but if the copier had possessed any sentience, it would have been just as frightened by the ominous tone of her voice.

One perfectly manicured finger came down on the print button. For a few seconds, nothing happened. Then the copier began to make a faint jingling sound that grew gradually louder. Suddenly, the small change receptacle halfway down the body of the copier began to fill with nickels.

The flow was slow at first, but quickly picked up speed, so that within seconds the space had overflowed and the coins had begun to spill out onto the floor.

"What the hell?" Audrey exclaimed. She turned towards the door, a note of something that was either panic or excitement tinting her voice.

"CHANCE!" she shouted.

The photographer appeared in the doorway a heartbeat later, his chin still dripping with water from the drinking fountain in the hall. He found his ex-girlfriend crouched beside the machine, her hands pressed to the change slot, trying to stem the flow of coins.

"How do I stop it?" she asked almost frantically.

"You don't," he said, staring at the coins spilling onto the floor around Audrey's shoes.  He grabbed the empty blue recycling bin from its spot next to the copier and shoved it under the slot where the nickels continued to spill out.  After another minute or so, the flow lessened and finally stopped.

Chance bent down to toss nickels by the handful into the bucket.

"Why did this happen?" Audrey asked, looking at the copy she'd made of the lottery ticket and then down at Chance, gathering the spilled change.

"Probably just over-full," he said evenly.  "Looks like it hadn't been emptied in a couple hundred years."  He sneezed.  "Or dusted."  Chance rubbed his itchy nose with the back of his hand and sat back, his task complete.  "Wonder if there's any rare antique coins in there."

"The bank's gonna expect me to roll them all," Audrey complained. Chance shot her a look. "What?"

"It's not your money, Westin," he said.

"You're right. It belongs to the Examiner."  Besides, what did she need a bucket full of nickels for?  She had a scrap of paper worth three hundred million bucks. Just thinking the words made her knees go weak.  She also knew it wouldn't have occurred to her not to keep the coins if Chance hadn't been there, and she wondered what that said about her, deep down inside.

"You want to hit a jackpot, go to Vegas," Chance said as she picked up the heavy plastic bucket and set it on top of the copy machine.

"I'm putting it back," she informed him, a little sharply.  Then his words clicked in her mind.  "Know what I've always wanted to do?" she asked, a smile beginning to stretch across her face.

That smile alone was enough to tell Chance he wasn't going to like what came next.  He didn't say anything.

'"I've always wanted to play high-stakes poker."

"You stink at poker," he pointed out.

"Spoilsport."  She stuck her tongue out at him.  "I want to go."

"Westin, are you sure this is a good idea?" Chance looked antsy.  "You haven't had time to think about this, it takes time to get used to -"  He trailed off.  There was no point.  He could see her mind was made up.  "Okay." He said.  "Let's go claim the money."

"The lottery office won't be open at this hour, will it?" Audrey asked.

"You never know." Chance started down the hall toward the elevator, coat flapping lightly against his ankles. Westin raced after him, feeling strangely giddy.  She glanced back and saw the cleaning woman walk over to the copy machine and try to put the blue bucket back in its place.

"Look." Audrey poked Chance, getting his attention.  The cleaning woman looked inside the bucket to see what was so heavy, and then did a double-take.  The elevator arrived and Chance drew Audrey inside. "I wonder if she'll do the right thing," Audrey wondered as Chance pressed the button and the doors closed.

Lottery Office

"You're lucky I was here," said the surprised lottery clerk after the unlocked the front door of the office and let Chance and Audrey inside.  "I'm supposed to be going on vacation tomorrow and I left my passport in my desk."  The clerk looked at them, an earnest smile on her face.  "Though I guess you're already lucky or you wouldn't be here. How much did you win?"  She stretched her hand out to take the orange ticket.

For a second Audrey didn't want to give it up.  "The whole thing," she said softly, then handed it over.

"The - " The clerk began, then stopped, looking at the ticket.  She slid it into a slot in a large machine on the desk and stared at the monitor for several long seconds.  So long that Audrey began to think she'd transposed one of the numbers, that she hadn't won anything at all.

"Well," the clerk said finally.  "Congratualtions. It looks like you're our newest lottery millionaire."  She smiled, collecting some forms from her desk. "What are you going to do with the money?" she asked pleasantly.

"I'm going to Vegas," Audrey replied, and Chance groaned.