She was sixty-three and had never gambled, and she went because Doris's husband had died in October and somebody had to sit with her on the bus. She fed a twenty into a machine called Buffalo Gold because she liked the noise it made. On the ninth spin the screen went gold and the whole row turned to look at her, and she laughed out loud.

Four hundred and twelve dollars. She bought lunch for the bus and told the story twice on the ride home, and her daughter-in-law laughed in the right places. She went back the next month with Doris, and the month after that by herself, on a Tuesday, because Tuesdays were quiet. Eleven years later she could still describe the sound exactly.