Howie opened the first bottle and it exploded with a BOOM like giant hands clapping. The blast threw him against the wall before he could yell, and blood poured out of his chest like he was a ruptured paint can. Another beautiful day in the life of Howie, he thought, as he fell to his knees. He hoped there really was a God so he could choke the bastard. The world grew wobbly, then faint, then black.

Then he was alive again, still sitting on the floor of the dry and dusty self-storage unit. It took him a few shaky minutes to figure out his death had been some kind of trick. No hole in his chest, no blood anywhere. It had hurt like hell, but he was already getting over that.

He checked the expensive watch he’d gotten a few days ago. Just looking at it made him feel better. It was one o’clock--at least an hour had passed in the time he’d spent “dead.” He felt a deep craving for sunlight, but there were no windows in the storage unit; the only light came from fluorescent lamps on the ceiling that buzzed like bees.

He’d kill Sam for this. Slowly and painfully.

There were five little white pear-shaped bottles left. They sat in front of him like tiny bowling pins. The big green bottle stood behind them. He scowled at it. It did not react.

He picked up another white bottle. It was just a ceramic jug, no bigger than the milk pitchers in those fancy restaurants where everyone wore tuxedos and sniffed at you if you couldn’t pronounce the stuff on the menu. He didn’t want to open it, but what choice did he have? He pulled the cork out and found himself in a collapsing mineshaft. Like the roof of a giant, closing mouth, the ceiling smashed down on his waist. Fiery pain shot up his spine and he screamed. Rocks rained down on him like fists from an angry mob, and he choked on dirt and dust until something enormous and heavy drove his head into the ground.

Then he was back in the self-storage unit, cowering against one of its walls. His watch said another hour had passed.

Four white bottles left.

Howie’s heart was still pounding. He couldn’t even imagine all the things he’d do when he finally got that green bottle in his hands. He was going to make them all sorry, that’s for sure. He’d make them pay.

Self-defense, that’s what it was. Plain and simple. Other people had more than they’d ever need and Howie never had enough and you couldn’t live without money, right? And these tourists, fat gasbags flashing big bills and talking about how much they could afford to lose. See, these people had come to Las Vegas expecting to lose money. Well, Howie had no problem helping them do just that, especially the idiots who crammed huge wallets into small back pockets so the wallets stuck up like they were begging to be taken.

Howie wasn’t dumb enough to work inside the casinos, not unless he had to. But if he had to, he had to! It was self-defense.

Howie wore a suit every day. A nice dark suit, like the big casino bosses wore. He wasn’t a bum; he straightened his tie every time he passed a mirror, and people still wrinkled their noses as he walked by, as if he hadn’t bathed in a month. Or when they told him he’d had too much to drink. He didn’t drag them outside and beat them in an alley, like he could have. Like that bartender who’d thrown him out of a bar so seedy you’d think they’d be happy to have any customers at all. Or that guy last week with his expensive Philippe Whatever watch, that Howie now had on his own wrist. Howie walked along the streets of downtown Las Vegas like a fenced dog pacing around a back yard, scratching at the gate, wanting out.

It was mid-October and the flabby, gawky tourists were still in T-shirts and shorts. Howie bet that just the ones he could see at that moment would probably lose a million dollars that day. Howie was going to get some of that money, yes he was. Everybody walked right by him like he was a pile of litter, and he sized them all up, looking for possibilities, when someone poked him on the shoulder.

“I’m not doin’ nothin’!” But it wasn’t a cop, it was some old man with a big tray jutting out from his stomach, like the kind women wore in old movies when they sold cigarettes at fancy clubs. The tray held row after row of shiny, polished rocks, like quartz or something, the kind he’d seen in gift shops.

The old man said, “Want to buy a lucky rock, mister?”

Howie’s jaw almost hit the ground. “Lucky rocks? Are you fuckin’ kidding?”

The man blinked emptily. “Why, no, mister--“

Howie wanted to smack the tray and send all those rocks flying, but why bother? The guy had to be sixty or something. He was wearing some old plaid shirt and faded jeans and he was so scrawny, buzzards should have been following him around. So Howie went easy on him. “I need all the luck I can get, pal. But I’m not buyin’ your rocks, okay?”

The rock seller was studying Howie very carefully. Then the ends of his mouth crawled partway up his face, like he was trying to smile but the muscles he needed for that had atrophied long ago. “Is your life really that bad, mister?”

Howie rolled his eyes so hard he almost fell over backwards. “You have no idea. Where’d you get those rocks, out of your head? What’s your name?”

“Sam.”

“Sam, I’m Howie. Let me tell you about my life.” Howie put an arm around Sam’s shoulder and told him how he’d been laid off at the engine parts plant three years ago when some fat rich executive came in, told eight hundred people they were useless, and made a million dollar bonus. “Why can’t I find a job firing people, huh?” Howie shouted at some nobody wearing thick geek glasses and a tennis visor: “Hey you! You’re fired!” Then he laughed. “See? I can do that. So why don’t I get the big money?” He picked at a scab on his stubbled chin.

“I see,” Sam said. Life flowed into Sam’s face, like he was a vampire who fed off unhappiness instead of blood.

“No you don’t, no you don’t.” Howie sighed the sigh of the damned. “I work my ass off for twenty years and for what? Nothing, that’s what. That bastard who canned us, his rich parents probably sent him to Harvard, you know, so he waved his degree around and they gave him a million bucks to fire people, but I wasn’t lucky enough for that life. Life is all luck as it turns out, which it took me forty-five years to figure out, you know? If I had rich parents, you think I’d be here? I’d be on the cover of Fortune magazine. I’d live on my yacht, just like those Ivy League guys.” He patted, and clung to, Sam’s shoulder. He let Sam lead him through the crowds, to the nearest casino restaurant, and buy him lunch.

While eating, Howie noticed that Sam was fingering a gold locket on a chain around his neck. “What’s that?”

“Oh,” Sam said. “Well it’s never fair to compare war wounds, you know. But...”

Sam opened the gold, heart-shaped locket. There was a little picture inside, some smiling brunette.

“Huh,” Howie said.

Sam let him take a good look. The woman wasn’t anything special, and neither was the locket. “This was my wife,” Sam said. “She died a few years ago.”

Sam looked at him intently while he said that. Howie had no idea what he was supposed to do about it, so he said, “Sorry. Shit happens to everybody, I guess.”

But really, it happened a lot more to him.

Sam tucked his locket back under his shirt. “You know the rocks on my tray don’t really bring luck.”

“Yeah, I figured.”

Sam dug into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a tiny chip of stone the size of a nickel. “But this will,” he said, and offered it.

Howie took the sharp little stone. It was red with silver streaks. “What’s this?”

Sam leaned close and spoke very quietly, drug-dealer-in-public quietly. “It’s magic. Get it wet, and for the next couple of hours, you’ll have good luck.”

Howie handed it back. “Bullshit.”

Sam gave Howie an ornery, I-know-better-than-you look. “It won’t hurt you to carry a wet rock around for a while. But imagine how stupid you’ll feel if it does what I say it does, and you don’t try it.”

Howie supposed that was true, though he hated when people looked at him like that. “Why you giving it away then?”

“I’ve got more where that came from.”

Howie laughed. “Yeah?”

The wrinkles in Sam’s face deepened right before Howie’s eyes. “Yeah.” Sam took his tray of colorful stones and put a fifty on the table. “Pay the bill and keep the change.”

Howie watched him leave. “Nutcase,” he said. But he took the fifty, and the red rock. After thinking for a minute, Howie he dipped the rock into his refilled water glass and pocketed it. Then he made sure no one was looking, and left without paying the bill.

He considered saving the fifty, but somehow he found himself at a craps table again, putting all of it on eight the hard way. The shooter, an ugly blonde, fumbled the dice across the table, and Howie won four hundred fifty dollars.

Two hours later, he had twenty thousand.

Inside the storage unit, four white bottles remained. He moaned a bit, complained, then took one and pulled the cork out. His legs caught fire. He screamed as the flames ate through his pant legs and crawled up to his waist. Drop and roll, he thought, and threw himself to the floor, which was now slick with oil. The whole world burned as oily smoke slipped down his throat and into his eyes, blinding him. He felt like his skin was being peeled off his body. A long time ago he’d grabbed the handle of a hot cast iron pan and oh, that had hurt, but not like this, nothing like this. He couldn’t even scream anymore. His face melted.

Then it was gone. He shouted and swore. When he no longer tasted his burned tongue with every breath, he looked at his watch. This time two hours had passed.

Three bottles left. He kicked them around the room for a while, cursing as each one bounced off the concrete walls. He’d set Sam on fire, see how he liked it! He’d never done anything to deserve this. No one deserved this.

One of the white bottles rolled into his foot, then stopped. Howie wiped the wetness from under his eyes, braced himself, and pulled at the cork as if he were sawing off his own foot, to get out of a bear trap.

Rats shot out of the walls like fuzzy torpedoes. He raced around the storage unit, trying to throw them off, but they dug in tight with their claws and teeth. Soon they’d torn so much meat out of his legs that he couldn’t stand. They pulled at everything inside him. He remained conscious, in agony, as they ate his liver, his intestines, his stomach, and finally, his heart.

When he could open his eyes again, the two remaining white bottles glistened like they were mocking him. The green bottle dared him to keep going.

The day after turning fifty dollars into twenty thousand, Howie cornered Sam, who was coming out of Circus Circus with his big tray of fake rocks. Sam was so bright and cheerful, Howie’s couldn’t restrain his anger, and shoved Sam against the casino’s wall. “It worked, then it stopped! I lost it all!”

One of the Circus Circus security guards rushed towards them. Sam waved him off. “I told you it only lasted two hours. C’mon, I’ll buy you lunch again.”

“Two hours, I’m supposed to know that? I was winning! You owe me a lot more than lunch, pal!” Howie followed Sam past tables of Caribbean Stud players to the lunch buffet.

Sam grabbed a tray and told Howie to get whatever he wanted. Howie never passed up a free meal, and loaded the tray. After Sam paid for them both, they sat at a booth. Sam said, “The rock stopped working because you used up all the magic. I warned--“

“Magic!” Howie chewed prime rib. “I’m supposed to believe that?”

“Well how did you think it worked, Howie? Unfortunately, the small ones don’t last very long.” Sam’s eyes faded. “But you know, I just might have one more on me...”

Howie’s sense of danger clicked on. Sam was acting like a dealer, trying to hook him on free samples. “Where’d you get these rocks, anyway?”

Sam shrugged. “I heard legends. Did research. When you want something badly enough, you start looking in some pretty strange places.”

Howie swallowed and wiped his mouth on his hand. “Huh.”

“You can get anything this world has to offer if you’re willing to pay the price, Howie.”

“Sure, if you’re rich.”

Sam’s gaze hardened to gun-barrel intensity. “I’m not talking about money. I mean a high price, Howie.”

Sam didn’t look like a soft old grandfather anymore. The muscles in his face were as taut as a coiled viper. Howie knew the smart thing would be to leave, and forget about these “magic” rocks. It had probably just been coincidence, anyway. He started mumbling excuses to leave.

Sam said, “You’d think that over a whole lifetime, everyone would get their fair share of luck, but they don’t,” Sam said.

Howie nodded, his eyes on the exit. “Yeah.”

“Everyone has bad days, but you’re supposed to have good days too, right?”

“Sure.”

“Of course, that’s not how it works,” Sam added. “Luck should be evenly distributed, and it isn’t.”

Howie didn’t answer. It was like Sam was speaking everything Howie had always believed, but had never known how to say.

Sam continued. “What bothers me is, the luckiest people didn’t do anything to deserve it.”

“They sure didn’t,” Howie said, leaning forward a bit.

“And others,” Sam said, still staring into Howie’s eyes, “are stuck with all the bad luck. And did they do anything to deserve that?”

“No,” Howie said, his mind slowly opening. “Nobody deserves bad luck.”

“So what’s wrong if the unlucky people borrow someone else’s good luck for a while? See, that’s what these rocks do, Howie. They balance things out a bit, that’s all. They make life more fair.”

All resistance to the idea of magic rocks left Howie so fast, he could almost hear it bang the door on the way out.

“Ever been to Detroit?” Sam asked.

Howie’s mind couldn’t connect. “Huh? I used to live there! Don’t change the subject. Your rock cost me twenty grand last night and I want it back.”

Sam nodded like he was tired of the conversation. “I’ll make you a deal, Howie.” He pulled a red and silver stone out of his pocket. This one was as big as an Oreo cookie--the double-stuffed kind. “I give you this and we call it even.”

Howie reached for it, then stopped. He wondered how many of those rocks Sam really had, and where he kept them. It would depend on whether he lived in Vegas, or was just visiting. “That doesn’t make up for the money I lost.”

“Oh, but it will,” Sam said. His teeth shone as he smiled. “This one will last two days.”

Howie’s whole body tightened. “Days?”

“The best luck in the world, for forty-eight hours.”

Howie thought about that, but not for long. He took the rock. “If this doesn’t work, I’ll find you.”

“Remember to get it wet,” Sam said.

Howie’d forgotten that. His glass was empty, so he got in the beverage line and soaked the rock under a Diet Coke dispenser. Then he remembered he didn’t have any money to gamble with. He headed back to Sam and stepped on something. He lifted his shoe, and two $500 casino chips looked up at him like big, beautiful eyes.

Magic rocks, Howie thought. Who would have imagined?

For the next forty-eight hours, Howie played any game he wanted and usually won. He went from casino to casino, stuffing thousand-dollar bills into his pockets, making huge deposits into casino safety boxes. Sure he lost sometimes--everyone loses sometimes--but mostly he won, and won, and won.

He started drinking, and why not? Vegas had the best of everything and that included booze. And meals, and women. Casinos lined up to let him stay for free in penthouse suites and women followed him back to his room like he could make them a movie star. On the third day he kept winning, and he was sure Sam had been wrong about how long that rock would last. Okay, he might run into a bad streak now and then, but so what? He’d win the next time, or the time after that. Howie raked in the chips and gave them back when he had to, and kept drinking.

That winning feeling never left. He had millions of dollars left, and went back to get more from the casino’s safety deposit boxes. The casino people kept saying “How are you doing, sir?” He hadn’t been called “sir” in so long he’d forgotten what it felt like. They gave him a new suit, custom-tailored the same day, on the house. He’d finally discovered the secret to life and success. He was finally just as good as everybody else.

He kept playing and drinking and now that winning feeling was slipping away, but he still won sometimes, and who cared how much you lost as long as you still won sometimes? The dice came up right and the pit boss shoved another hundred grand at him, just like that. A couple more of those and he’d be back to normal. He drank and played and drank and ate and drank and slept and the women weren’t hanging around as much now, and the casino people weren’t acting so nice anymore, but at least they kept letting him drink. He looked at his stack of chips at one point a day or so later and that was all there was, just that one stack.

One little stack.

He asked the pit boss where all his chips had gone. He went back to his safety deposit box but that was empty, too. Where’d all his money go?

Well, he’d just have to win it back. He stumbled confidently over to the roulette wheel and bet everything he had left on number 30, because he knew it would come up 30.

It came up 3. He should have said 3. He’d meant to say 3. He walked around the roulette table to explain that he’d meant to say 3, and then two large men were showing him how nice it was outside, but it wasn’t nice outside at all, not at all; his head hurt and it was too bright and he sat on the ground and cried and not one fucking person gave a rat’s ass; they walked by him like he was garbage. How had this happened?

He didn’t even know what day it was. He went into a parking lot and threw up. A bit later, when his head hurt less, he remembered Sam. Sam had lots of magic rocks.

Howie flew down the streets of downtown Vegas like a heat-seeking missile, dodging tourists when he could, shoving them aside when he couldn’t. Sam was hawking his two-dollar rocks outside Bally’s. Howie grabbed him by his shirt. “This time,” Howie said, “you’re giving me all the rocks, you cheating little shit!”

Sam’s smile was brighter than all the lights on all the signs in Vegas, combined. “Well of course, Howie.”

Howie’s head throbbed so he quit looking out the window as Sam drove to parts of Vegas no one cared about, where all the office-supply stores and schools were. They parked at a big self-storage company on the edge of the suburbs. Rows of garages, all gated and locked, stood as if awaiting inspection.

“How much were you up before you started losing, Howie?”

Howie grumbled in his new suit.

Sam’s voice was light and hopeful. “You know, if you’d quit when you were ahead...”

Howie looked down and away. “Don’t give me advice, Sam.”

“I’m just saying. You had it all, and--”

Howie grabbed Sam’s arm and leaned into him. “I said shut up! I’m not stupid, okay? The rock stopped working!”

“Okay,” Sam said.

Howie let go and stared at some point between Sam and the ground. “I know people,” he muttered. “People you don’t want to meet. You’d better not fuck with me.”

“Okay,” Sam said.

Sam led him to storage unit #52, a ten-by-ten concrete shed that could have been a bomb shelter. Was he being set up? There wasn’t anybody nearby except him and Sam, but there were some folks in the distance. It was broad daylight, too, maybe ten-thirty. He’d been up all night, he realized. Last night’s dinner gurgled in his stomach. He needed a drink.

Sam unlocked and opened the iron gate, then unlatched and lifted the garage door behind it. That door revealed a small room with a bare, cement floor, stone walls, and fluorescent lights. The room was empty except for seven ceramic bottles on the floor: six white, one green, all corked shut.

“Is this a joke?” Howie asked.

Sam’s eyes said no.

“Where’s the rocks?”

“In the green bottle,” Sam said. He was playing with the locket around his neck again.

Howie looked at the bottles. The green one was big, big enough to hold a hundred of those rocks. Maybe two hundred.

While Howie considered, Sam walked towards the bottles. Howie growled like a starving dog and pulled Sam back, then shoved him out of the shed. Howie raced to his bottles and knelt in front of them. Then he heard the door to the storage unit close and latch behind him.

Howie pulled at the door. Then he pounded on it. “Let me out!” He heard the outer gate close, and the lock click. “You fucker! I’ll--“

“Got you!” Sam shouted.

The victory in Sam’s yell raked Howie like claws. “Let me out!”

“Let yourself out, Howie! Use the green bottle! It does everything! It gave me those two lucky rocks; it gave me you! Two years, I’ve been looking for you! Two years, you coward!”

Howie’s head hurt again, and the room wouldn’t stay still. “What are you talking about?”

“You didn’t even recognize her!”

“Who? You’re a dead man, Sam! I know people in this town! I’m a dangerous man!”

“You’re a moron, Howie. All this time, I thought you were some criminal genius! Well, the joke’s on me.”

Howie’s blood raced to his head. Hate kept his hangover away. “Open the bottles, Howie!”

“Fuck you!”

Sam’s voice lightened. “You’ll never get out if you don’t open the green bottle, Howie. It’ll give you anything this world has to offer--but you have to pay the price. You have to open all the white bottles first.”

“No!”

“Then starve to death, Howie. That’s almost as good.”

Sam’s voice faded away. “Sam?” Howie hit the door. He banged louder and shouted for help. Why didn’t anyone hear him?

He yelled for at least an hour. Nothing. It was like there was no one in the whole world, except him...and the bottles.

Howie drifted over to the green bottle and picked it up. Its weight surprised him. It was quivering like the hood of a running car.

He pulled at its cork. It wouldn’t come out. He threw it onto the cement floor, and it bounced. He threw it harder, and it bounced harder. Soon he was slamming it against the stone walls. It wouldn’t even crack.

Howie sat on the floor of the hot, stuffy storage unit. Rage swirled in his head, making him nauseous.

An hour later, he was still locked in the storage unit. He had a white bottle in his thick, sweaty hands.

Just two white bottles left now. Just two. But could he stand dying two more times? Each death had been worse than the one before--much worse.

But the green bottle! If it could do half of what Sam said, then Howie knew he’d never be unhappy again. Why was he moaning and groaning when the solution to all his problems sat right in front of him? Sam had said it best: you could get anything you wanted if you just paid the price. That’s all Sam wanted, right?

Just two more. Howie opened one.

He was outside, late at night. It was warm and sticky, like summertime. He was on the sidewalk of a long, wide suburban street. His body felt wrong. He looked down without meaning to.

He was a woman!

He looked up again, still without meaning to. He called out in a female voice: “Ashley?” He searched up and down the dark street. The streetlights were either out or broken, and there was hardly any starlight. He brushed his delicate hands on his dress, which was fancy and felt like silk or something.

He heard a dog bark, and his head snapped forward. “Ashley?” He looked down the street and saw something glint but it couldn’t have been a car because it didn’t have headlights, and he wanted to find his dog, and maybe that had been Ashley barking? He crossed the street and heard brakes squeal like fingernails on a blackboard.

Something hit him hard and his light female body went flying. Now he was face down on the asphalt, in horrible pain; he could hardly move. He was bleeding. Some idiot was driving without headlights.

Someone got out of a car. “What the fuck?” somebody was saying. Howie looked out of his female eyes and saw himself standing in front of his female body.

“Oh no, oh no,” his male self was saying, clutching his face. “Oh why me. Why me?”

“Help,” Howie, female, said.

“What are you doing?” the male Howie said. “How stupid are you? It’s three in the morning! Oh, God, why me? Why me? Haven’t I got enough problems?” Male Howie walked in circles. He was crying.

“Help me,” Howie heard his female voice say again.

The faintest hint of sirens floated up from far away. “Oh God,” male Howie said. “It never ends.”

Howie, female, moved her head. His female self tried to say that she’d tell the police it was an accident, if he helped her. “I’ll...tell...”

“What?” male Howie said. “You’ll...it was an accident! You bitch! You want to put me in prison?”

“I...”

“You bitch! I can’t, I can’t!” Male Howie ran back to his car and got in. The sirens rose in the darkness. “Why me?” he was shouting. “I can’t go to prison. I can’t!”

Female Howie could feel her legs, just barely. She started to crawl.

“Oh no, oh no,” said the other Howie. “Don’t make me do this. Don’t make me!”

The sirens got louder.

The car came forward. It didn’t even try to avoid her. Enormous weight rumbled over her neck and something cracked.

Howie was his real self again, back in the storage unit. He leaped up and banged on the door. “Sam! Sam!”

“Yes?” Sam answered, like he’d been out there all along.

“It wasn’t my fault!”

“Oh?”

“It was her fault! She shouldn’t have been out there, so late at night!”

“And you should have?”

“She threatened me! It was self-defense! I don’t deserve this!”

“Deserve?” Sam’s voice was a thunderclap. “Do I deserve to lose my wife to a cheap hood like you? Does my wife deserve to get run over because she was outside, looking for our dog?” His voice settled. “’Deserve’ is a human idea, Howie. The universe has never heard of it.”

“But...”

“You want to know what’s really unfair, Howie? Our dog was sleeping in the garage the whole time. We just didn’t see her. She didn’t wake up when we called her. None of this was necessary. None of it.”

His voice was that of a man about to leave. Howie shouted, “Do you know what those bottles do?”

After a long moment, like the moment before a judge reads a verdict, Sam answered. “They’re doing what I told them to do. Everyone has to open white bottles to get the green one, Howie, and whoever owns the green one sets the price.”

Howie tore at the metal door, berserk. “I’m not opening that last bottle! Someone’ll let me out!”

“No one can hear you except me. I made sure of it. That green bottle...it’s really something.”

Howie collapsed on the floor, crying. “So you feel better now? Picking on me like everyone else does? You all happy now?”

Sam’s voice softened. “You know, it’s the strangest thing. I’m not happier. Louise is still dead. The green bottle can’t fix that, no matter how many white ones I open. I thought I’d be happy once I finally got you, but I’m not.”

“Then let me out!”

“Oh, Howie.” Even Sam’s wife, lying in the road, hadn’t sounded so helpless. “I can’t. I need this. You can’t understand how badly I need this, even if it doesn’t help. That’s what wrong with us, you know. The world isn’t fair, and we need it to be.”

“Sam!”

“Goodbye, you bastard. If anyone’s ever deserved anything, you deserve this.”

Howie threw his whole body against the door. “Sam!”

When Howie’s throat was hoarse and his stomach ached and his head felt like a knife had been stuck into it, and his arms were bruised and bloody from hitting the door, he stared at the two bottles, one white, one green.

He had no choice. He’d never had a choice. He’d been doomed the day he was born.

When Sam didn’t come back, when nothing saved him and he knew nothing could, Howie crawled forward and pulled the cork out of the last white bottle. Thousands of little white bottles just like it burst through the floor, burying the green one and rising up like a mountain, all the way to the ceiling.