The Numbers Were an Address, Not a Ticket

For seven nights the dream was just numbers: a woman's voice, patient, slightly amused, repeating 'seven, thirty-one, four' over black. No pictures. Waking, the sequence sat in my head all day like a splinter.

I did the obvious, embarrassing thing. Lottery tickets with every arrangement of 7, 31 and 4 the formats would allow. Two weeks of them. Total winnings: one free ticket, which lost.

I decided my subconscious was noise, and I needed the lesson, because life at that point was noise too — I had been laid off in the spring and was driving to interviews for jobs I did not want.

Coming home from one of those, my fuel light came on in an unfamiliar suburb, and the engine died on a quiet commercial street before I found a station. I coasted to the kerb, swore, looked up, and the building beside me wore its address in iron numbers: 731, and the corner sign said 4th Street. I sat there with my hands on the wheel laughing in a way that worried even me.