Running on Empty (17 page)

And now Allie and Pete.

“What didn’t Allie tell me?” asked Ethan. He was surprised to hear his voice sound so normal. Not at all like the tractor-trailer that churned in his chest right now.

Pete didn’t look up, just kept staring at the concrete. “It wasn’t her fault, man. It was all me.”

“What—didn’t—Allie—tell—me?” Ethan repeated. Hearing the question a second time didn’t make it more real. Nothing about this moment was real. A “zero winnings” message flashed in his brain.

“I kissed her, Ethan.”

Ethan saw his knuckles connect with Pete’s face before he knew he’d made a fist. Pete staggered backward, blood already beginning to flow from his nose. But he said nothing, made no move to raise his own fists.

“You kissed Allie,” said Ethan. He might just as well have said
You dissed Allie
or
You pissed Allie
. Neither of those would have made less sense.

Pete nodded, the blood now dripping onto his jacket. He spat, drops of blood flecking the concrete, then wiped at his nose with the back of his hand, smearing red to his wrist. “It just happened, Ethan. I didn’t plan it. I would
never
have planned—”

“
What happened?
” Ethan’s words were a guttural growl.

Pete wiped at his nose again, took another breath. “We were working on that profile assignment, leaning over one of the monitors in the library. She’d just thought of this great idea about how we could frame the whole thing, and she looked up to tell me. And I couldn’t stop myself. I kissed her.”

“You kissed Allie.” Repeating it was perhaps the only thing that kept Ethan from swinging again. Forming words with his lips gave his brain and his body something else to do. Some small thing that kept him from forming fists with his hands and lashing out, drawing more blood. There was too much of that already. Pete wiped at his nose with the back of his other hand now and then the sleeve of his jacket.

“I’ve had a thing for Allie from the moment I first saw her,” continued Pete, “but I never did anything about it. I wouldn’t. I knew how you felt about her, man.”

“But you
kissed
her.”

“I never meant for it to happen, Ethan. It just did.”

“And Allie—?” Ethan couldn’t finish the question, couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

He didn’t have to. “She was real upset. She started apologizing
for maybe giving me the wrong impression. But she hadn’t. I told her so, told her it was just me. All me.”

Ethan looked down at his hand, saw two of his knuckles were bleeding where they must have grazed Pete’s teeth. “She didn’t tell me.”

“You said you haven’t seen her.”

“She didn’t call.”

“She’s got some things on her mind—”

“No shit.”

Pete shook his head. “Not that. Other things.”

Ethan raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean, ‘other things’? She’s been telling you stuff? Personal stuff?” The anger he’d felt earlier threatened to erupt again.

“You were busy at the diner and with that project you’re working on. She hadn’t seen much of you lately.”

“And you just happened to be around to listen,” said Ethan, his voice a razor. “Convenient.”

“That’s not how it was at all, Eth—”

“You must’ve just been
waiting
for something like this, huh?” Ethan snarled. “Your timing was perfect. And here I said you didn’t have options. You
make
your options, don’t you, buddy?”

Pete reached out and gripped Ethan’s shoulder. “It wasn’t like that—”

Ethan flung Pete’s hand aside. “Stay away from me,” he breathed. “And stay away from Allie, too.”

“Ethan!”

But Ethan ignored him. He was running before he reached the street.

“How much can you give me for it?”

The woman behind the counter at Delta’s Estate Jewellers and Pawnshop looked again at the object in her hand. “Seventy-five.”

“She paid over
two hundred
for it!”

“Look, kid, it’s a specialty item. Not a lot ‘a people around here are gonna wear a buckle like this. Maybe in Alberta, all those cowboys.” She shrugged. “Hundred. Take it or leave it.”

Ethan took it.

His smashed laptop still on the floor of his room, Ethan sat at the computer in his old man’s study staring at the “zero winnings” message blinking on the screen. It had taken him less than five minutes to lose the money he’d gotten at the pawnshop. In fact, the timer at the bottom of the screen read four minutes and thirteen seconds. He’d lost every hand, doubling each successive bet so he was down seventy-five dollars after the first four. The Martingale system called for a fifth bet of eighty bucks, but he only had twenty-five left in his account. Brains, balls, and bankrolls. Why did it always come down to the third?

He bet the twenty-five, then drew a jack of diamonds after his three of hearts and nine of spades.

Sitting there at his old man’s double-pedestal desk, he heard himself make a sound, something between a sigh and a sob.

He leaned forward, resting his head on its cool, glass-topped surface, his mind moving through moments of the last few weeks. He’d gambled away all of his cash and lost his job. He’d stolen money from his sister. His girlfriend had made out with his best friend, for Christ’s sake. Everything was ruined. He felt broken inside, like the tree a windstorm had brought down in the yard behind their house in Herring Cove. He slammed his fist on the desk, scattering papers and envelopes onto the gleaming oak floor. He cursed as he bent down to collect them, the words piling up in the silence, then sat up, rolled the plush leather office chair backward, and got to his feet. That’s when he saw them: pieces of torn newsprint in the wastebasket by the desk, a cardinal sin in their
Waste not, want not
household. Even as a child, his father had been anal about recycling—”When you have next to nothing, you find uses for what others throw away,” he was fond of saying—yet Mr. Perfect had broken his own rule. Ethan forced himself to grin, trying to fill up that hollowness for a moment, trying hard to feel something besides empty. It didn’t work.

Most of the papers in his hands were unopened mail. On top of the pile was an envelope addressed to his father, bearing the emblem of a financial institution that Ethan had overheard the investment adviser talking about. The envelope was thick, and through the paper beneath his fingers Ethan thought he could feel the raised numbers of a bank card. Or a credit card.

Sudden hope kindled itself inside that emptiness as an idea sparked in his head, thoughts flashing like wildfire through his brain, but then common sense gripped him. He laid the papers and the mail on the desk, boxed their edges to neaten the pile, then turned to the computer and cleared the Web browser’s history, deleting the sites he had visited. One site, really: MyDigitalVegas.com.

He left the study. Glancing at his watch, he saw Raye wouldn’t
be home for at least another hour. No, he realized, longer than that. Today was Thursday, the day she took guitar lessons from Winnipeg Joe. Ethan was relieved. More time to consider what to do about Juanita. Funny, he thought, how easy it was to focus on a ceramic pig. Better than letting his mind wander to Allie. And Pete.

Although he hadn’t eaten since the night before, he wasn’t hungry. But he found himself thirsty and went to the kitchen to draw himself a glass of water from the fridge dispenser. Manufacturers didn’t sell refrigerators bigger than the model his old man had purchased unless they were custom built, and Ethan often wondered why his father hadn’t chosen to have one made to order—something else Jack could have complained about when it didn’t turn out the way he expected. Like his son.

Standing in front of the stainless-steel door, Ethan thought again of the tree that had blown down behind their house in Herring Cove, thought about the storm that had snapped it off and brought it crashing within a few metres of the power lines.

He thought about how in the space of a few weeks his life had been turned upside down by another kind of storm, and he let his mind travel back to its beginnings—the night he’d clipped the corner of the garage with the Volvo.

No, that wasn’t right. It was the morning
after
that when everything really went to shit, the moment when his old man decided Ethan should pay for the damages out of his own money, the fifty-three hundred bucks that would have bought him the car he’d wanted for more than half his life. He thought about the physics of that moment—he’d been the tree, his father the unstoppable force that brought him crashing to earth. But it was all for the greater good, right? In the service of those goddamn life lessons handed down by a grandmother he’d never even known.

Every action has a consequence
.

Ethan thought of the number of times he’d clicked the Hit Me button on MyDigitalVegas.com. Yeah, every action had a consequence, all right.

A person is invariably defined by his ability to meet his obligations
.

Ethan thought again about all the money he’d lost, especially the money he’d taken from Raye. His kid sister, the only member of his family who gave a damn about him, and look what he’d done to her.

Make every obstacle an opportunity
.

Ethan thought about the money that had repaired the Volvo and the corner of the garage.
His
money. He’d worked hard to save it, and his old man had taken all of it and more. He thought again about the three obstacles to success with the Martingale system—brains, balls, and bankrolls—and then again about that fifty-three hundred bucks. His father
owed
him that money. That was
his
bankroll.

Ethan swallowed the last of the water, left the glass on the counter, then returned to his old man’s study. Looking down at the desk, he picked up the thick envelope and again felt beneath his fingers the raised numbers of the plastic card inside.
Make every obstacle an opportunity
. Without hesitating, he tore it open and pulled out several pages, and glued to one of them was a credit card with a sticker bearing another valuable life lesson:
Just call to activate
.

“This is gettin’ to be a tradition,” said Hornsby. “You, me, and crappy diners.”

Sitting across from him at The Lobster Pot, a hole-in-the-wall in the city’s north end that wasn’t much bigger than its namesake, Ethan didn’t even try to fake a smile. He’d spent an hour outside the waterfront casino and then walked a four-block radius around The Chow Down for nearly two more, hoping he’d spy Hornsby somewhere, but he hadn’t. It was Hornsby who’d spotted
him
, pulling his rusted Echo over to the curb and asking if he wanted a lift. Ethan had nearly sobbed with relief.

He passed on Hornsby’s offer of a burger or fries—”My treat,” Hornsby had said, but food was the last thing Ethan wanted. Instead, he launched into an explanation of everything that had happened online. Hearing himself say it out loud, he felt even more like a loser than when he’d finally turned off his old man’s computer that second time. At least he hadn’t thrown it across the room.

“So, can you help me?” he asked, leaning forward in the booth. He hated that he sounded so desperate. But the truth was he’d never felt more desperate in his life.

Hornsby took a long swallow of his iced tea—
Who drinks iced tea in December?
wondered Ethan—and sat back against the red vinyl upholstery, scarred from years of zippers, sharp corners on purses and packages, and the odd knife or fork used for things other than eating. “Lemme get this straight. You maxed out the card in less than an hour?”

Ethan nodded. “Fifteen hundred. And five hundred more before that, money I took from my sister.” He didn’t bother mentioning the hundred he’d gotten for the buckle. What was the point? “I’ve gotta come up with two thousand quick.”

Hornsby shrugged. “Why not just come clean to your old man? Guy livin’ in Cathedral Estates could probably cover a couple thou’ easy.”

Ethan shook his head. He had actually considered it. Adding up the damage that day, he knew he was in over his head. He couldn’t continue on the course he’d taken, couldn’t keep thinking he could pull a miracle out of his ass.

But the idea of telling his old man what he’d done made him want to puke. The morning in the kitchen after Ethan had hit the garage would pale in comparison with the production his old man would make when he heard about the money Ethan had gambled away. It would be a two-act play—first, the
Shocked And Appalled
portion of the program, which included lots of yelling, then the
What Did I Ever Do To Deserve This
suffering-martyr routine Jack loved so much. Ethan could see his father now, arms folded, head shaking sadly, as if he couldn’t believe that the person in front of him had actually sprung from his loins. And Ethan could only imagine the aftermath—not just the punishment he’d hand down but also what he’d make Ethan do to repay the cash. Car washes on Seminary Lane? A paper route? Something that would teach him the value of an honest day’s work. Christ!

Ethan shook his head. “Going to my father isn’t an option.” He looked down at the table, saw that someone had scratched “LR luvs DP” in the faded laminate. For a moment he wondered who LR and DP were, wondered if they’d been able to make it work, keep it together. Nothing lasts forever, though. Just look at him and Allie.

He raised his eyes. “There’s nobody else I can go to,” he said. “Can you help me?”

Hornsby stared at him for a long moment. “Depends.”

“On what?”

“On whether you’re willin’ to take some risks.”

The last time Hornsby had asked him that question, Ethan couldn’t have imagined how badly things would turn out. But they couldn’t get much worse than this, right? “What have I got to lose?” he said.

It turned out that Ethan had a lot more to lose than he thought. They’d left The Lobster Pot to sit in Hornsby’s shitbox of a car and, hearing him outline his plan for getting the cash, Ethan felt his lower jaw loosen and had to put conscious effort into keeping his mouth closed. He couldn’t get out of his head what Lil had said about Hornsby that first day he saw him:
I’d steer clear ‘a the guy if I was you
. And hadn’t Ike told him much the same thing? Along with
That guy’s bad news
. If Ethan had ever needed proof of that, he certainly had it now.

“I can’t do it,” said Ethan.

Hornsby leaned back in the seat, his left arm propped on the door frame. “There’s lots ‘a things we
think
we can’t do,” he said. “You’d be surprised how easy it is.”

Ethan shook his head. “Not this.”

“Thought you said you had no other options.”

“There has to be another way.”

“There’s always another way.”

Ethan’s heart lifted. “Tell me.”

The smirk around Hornsby’s mouth was evident even before he began to speak. “You get yourself a big bag and start walkin’ the 101 pickin’ up bottles ‘n’ cans. Shouldn’t take more’n a few
hundred trips to an Enviro Depot to score what you need. Good luck with that, okay?”

Ethan turned to look out the passenger-side window, anger boiling away his disappointment. “Funny,” he muttered, gripping the worn armrest.

“Look, kid,” said the man, and there was no mistaking the boredom in his voice now, “you got yourself into this. You wanna get out of it quick or slow, that’s up to you.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a card, handing it to Ethan. “You change your mind, call me. Now get the hell outta my car.” He turned the key and the Echo sputtered to life.

A moment later, Ethan stood on the sidewalk watching helplessly as Hornsby drove off. He glanced down at the card in his hand. There was only a number printed on it, obviously a cellphone. No name, no address, nothing but the number.

In the second it took him to read it, Ethan realized what he had to do. What other choice did he have?

He would tell his old man everything.