Running on Empty (10 page)

At his locker the next morning, talking to Pete and Seth, Ethan glanced at his watch for the tenth time. It was only minutes until first bell, and Allie always got to school long before that. He was having a hard job not telling anyone else his news before he shared it with her.

Finally she appeared at the end of the hall and headed toward them. He waved to her and was surprised when she didn’t respond. He was even more surprised to see her turn into their homeroom instead of coming over to chat with the guys and, more important, to give him a kiss.

Pete seemed surprised, too. “Something wrong?” he asked.

“Beats me,” replied Ethan. “Later, guys,” he said, then headed into homeroom. Moore-or-Less was putting up yet another godawful print she’d probably bought in New York, this one with watches stretched like putty over tree branches, and he swallowed a snicker as he wove through his classmates toward Allie’s seat.

“Where were you last night?” he asked when he reached her.

“Hello to you, too,” she replied. She was organizing her books for first class, but there was no mistaking the edge in her voice.

“Sorry, babe,” said Ethan, bending down to kiss her, but she pulled away and his lips met air. “Hey,” he said softly, “you wanna tell me what’s wrong?”

She looked up at him. “You sure you can spare the time?”

He sighed. “I called you three times last night. Why didn’t you pick up?”

“Last night? That was, what—the nineteenth?”

Ethan felt himself growing annoyed. “All day,” he said.

“I certainly don’t know why I’d be hanging around waiting for you to call me on the
nineteenth
,” said Allie, and he could see something more than annoyance in her eyes.

And suddenly he knew. November nineteenth. “Jeez, Al, I’m sorry.”

Turning away, she asked, “Sorry you couldn’t be bothered to call me until after ten? Or sorry you forgot it was our anniversary?”

He couldn’t believe he’d been so stupid. Allie had dropped a couple hints a few days ago, but he’d been too caught up in his own shit to realize what she’d been getting at. If he’d been paying attention to the dates rather than just the circles on his schedule, he might have remembered they’d gone out for the first time exactly six months ago last night.

Allie Fontaine hadn’t been the warmest person when she’d arrived at John C. Miles last May. Having transferred in from another district during the final weeks of the school year, she’d kept to herself, speaking whenever someone spoke to her but never starting a conversation. Despite this, there was something about her that drew him to her, something more than just her physical beauty, which made his pulse race just sitting beside her in class. It was the way she gave all her attention to whoever might be talking: teacher, student, even one of the school secretaries on the PA. It was like everything was important to her, like she didn’t want to miss a thing. During the week that followed, he’d found himself wondering what it would be like to be the focus of all that attention.

When he finally worked up the nerve to ask her out, he took her to see an early show at the Oxford Theatre and, afterwards, to Irene’s Ice Cream Emporium, which was spur-of-the-moment on his part because he didn’t want the evening to end. Ethan
had dated lots of girls since junior high and had gone steady for a while in grade ten, but Allie was nothing at all like those others. She didn’t pretend to be something she wasn’t, didn’t put on an act you knew would falter around the fourth date. And neither had he. That very first evening with her at Irene’s, he found himself telling her things he’d never once mentioned to those other girls, and Allie had seemed just as open in the things she’d shared with him. He knew it sounded corny, but it was like he’d been waiting for Allie Fontaine all his life.

Sitting across from him in the booth at Irene’s, Allie had remarked how the number of flavours handwritten on the board above the freezer—
Irene’s Top 19
—matched that day’s date on the photocopied calendar pages that served as placemats. Ethan had teased her gently about being a number nerd, but afterwards he wondered if maybe that had been some kind of sign, if maybe they’d been meant to be there together that night. He’d thought of that coincidence many times later as he passed the ice cream shop, thought of that nineteenth day and how, even after only a few hours together, he’d known she was the one for him.

But he hadn’t gone by Irene’s since he’d begun working at The Chow Down.

“I’m sorry for both, Al. Really.”

Her next words lacked the hard edges of her first. “I thought you were going to surprise me.” Turning to face him, she smiled sadly. “Well, you certainly did that.”

“Look,” he said, his voice husky, “I can’t feel worse than I already do. I’ll make it up to you, okay?”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, but he could still hear the hurt in her voice as she looked away.

The bell rang and everyone began moving toward their seats. Ethan had no choice but to do the same. When he turned to sit down, he found on his desk a small gift-wrapped box, the tag bearing his name in Allie’s beautiful cursive. Regret stabbed
him again. He glanced over at her, but she was rummaging through her purse, making a point not to look in his direction.

A secretary’s voice came over the PA reading the morning announcements, but her words were just meaningless sounds filling the room as he stared at the box. He didn’t have to open it to know what was inside. He recognized the store name, Fond Memories, on the gift wrap—it was a small antique shop on Barrington. He and Allie had walked by just after it opened in August, and she’d dragged him—complaining—inside to look around. Allie had seen nothing much that interested her, but Ethan had found an old silver belt buckle bearing the original Mustang logo and “1964” engraved beneath it, commemorating the first year Ford had produced the car. He’d felt like such a geek admiring it—who would wear a silver buckle as big as your fist?—but there was something about it that appealed to him, made him ask the store owner to take it out of the case so he could see it up close. When he turned it over and saw the price tag, though, he handed it back. He’d been saving to buy his own Mustang, and he couldn’t afford to spend so much on something he really didn’t need.

And now it sat carefully boxed and wrapped on the desk in front of him.

This was so like Allie. Observant, thoughtful, generous, she was exactly the kind of person to have saved her money, gone back to the shop on her own and bought the expensive buckle, then secreted it away until the time was perfect. Until the nineteenth.

And not only had Ethan forgotten to get her anything, including the Ragged Ending CD he’d intended to pick up, he hadn’t even gotten around to calling her until after ten o’clock. Happy anniversary, all right. He picked up the box and, looking across the aisle again, he caught Allie’s eye.
Thank you
, he mouthed while the school secretary listed the cafeteria specials, and this time she didn’t look away.

“So what’s your big news?” Allie asked him at recess. She was holding the note he’d passed her in physics class right after Beaker had returned another round of tests, and he was glad she wasn’t pissed anymore. He could tell she was still a little hurt, but at least she wasn’t mad. “Did you ace it?” she asked.

Ethan flushed. “Not exactly.” That, of course, was an understatement. At least he’d passed, which was more than he could say for Pete. “I’m taking you to Carruthers for dinner tonight,” he said. “I made a reservation when Moore-or-Less let me leave English class.”

Allie’s eyes lit up. “Carruthers? Ethan, that’s the most expensive place in the
city
.” She frowned. “I don’t want you spending money on me because you feel guilty.”

“You haven’t heard my news,” he said.

“Wasn’t that it?”

Ethan pulled out his wallet. Opening it, he fanned a thick wad of bills inside, some of them fifties.

Allie’s eyes were sudden saucers. A couple of students passing by in the hallway eyeballed the money and whistled.

Ethan returned the wallet to his jeans. “Nine hundred bucks,” he said.

She gaped at him. “You shouldn’t be carrying that much on you, Ethan.”

“I was planning on taking a chunk to the bank during my free period.”

“But where did you—”

“I won it.”

“How?”

He told her about Boots McLaughlin leaving him another lottery ticket and how he checked it on the way home from work. Grinning sheepishly, he said, “Almost threw it away. I’m sure glad I didn’t.”

“So how’d you get the money? Ticket sellers can get into serious trouble cashing them for people under age.”

“Got somebody to do it for me.”

“Who?”

“A guy I served at The Chow Down.”

Allie’s eyes grew wide again. “You asked a customer to break the law for you?”

Ethan shrugged. “He didn’t do me any favour, Al. I paid him a hundred bucks.”

A bell warned they had three minutes to get to their next class. Lockers on both sides of Ethan and Allie swung open, books either flew in or flew out, metal doors clanged shut once more, and locks threaded through hasps and clicked into place, their combination dials spun for good measure. Everything and everyone around them was in motion, but Allie appeared frozen to the spot, her only movement a slow shake of her head.

“What?” he asked.

“Ethan, I’m happy for you. Really. It’s just …”

“Just what?”

She shrugged. “It’s nothing.” She put her hand on his arm. “You’re sure about Carruthers? We can go somewhere cheaper. Like Irene’s.”

He draped an arm over her shoulder. “I was a jerk for forgetting our anniversary. I
want
to do this, okay?”

She looked up at him, her eyes like dark mirrors, and he wondered what was wrong, wondered why she wasn’t more excited for him. After all, it was nine hundred bucks, right? Who didn’t get excited over something like that? He got the impression that there was something still between them, something more she wanted to say, but then she smiled. “What should I wear?”

Carruthers was every bit as expensive as they’d heard it was. And it had a waiting list for reservations a month long. Fortunately for Ethan, he’d remembered Raye telling him that Jazz’s sister, Sapphire, worked there, and he’d mentioned her name when he’d called that morning to book a table. It was as if the stars had aligned in his favour, because Sapphire didn’t have classes that morning and was at the restaurant setting up for lunch. “Raye’s brother?” she’d asked when she’d come to the phone. “Your sister’s cool. I’ll get you a table.” And she had.

Looking at the menu now, Ethan didn’t see a single appetizer under twenty-five bucks and many of the entrees ran three figures, but the restaurant’s decor more than matched the prices. According to the server who seated them, the floor was Italian marble, the gleaming cypress tables were imported from Africa, and three of the dining room’s four walls were hand-painted by well-known Maritime artists, so each was its own unique, vibrant canvas. A fourteen-foot-high burnished copper ceiling dazzled with soft light from exquisite crystal chandeliers, but the most spectacular feature was the fourth wall: a single floor-to-ceiling expanse of glass overlooking the harbour. Although the glass at nighttime mirrored the dining area where they sat, beyond their reflections they could see lights from boats and buildings across the harbour winking on the water’s surface, and a nearly full moon hung just above the horizon.
If the food’s
even half as good as the atmosphere
, thought Ethan,
dinner’ll be worth whatever it costs me
.

Allie seemed to think otherwise. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered, and Ethan almost grinned at the awe in her voice, “but I don’t feel good about you spending so much money.”

He reached across the table and enfolded her right hand in his. “Just enjoy it, okay? Happy anniversary.”

“But—”

“Allie,” he said, “I was there, remember? I know how much this cost you.” He pointed with his other hand toward the buckle he was wearing, the polished silver gleaming in the candlelight.

“It wasn’t about the money,” she said softly. “I just wanted something to show you how much you mean to me.”

He smiled at her, his heart suddenly full, and more than anything he wanted to stand up, take her in his arms, and kiss her, but he could see their server returning with their water, so he just squeezed her hand again. “That’s what this is for, okay? So just enjoy it.”

They did. After eating amazing salmon appetizers, she had the lamb while he enjoyed a thick steak prepared exactly the way he liked it—just a shade above blue. Their server, a young man with the kind of smile you saw in “after” photos in dental magazines, told him it was Kobe beef, which came from cows massaged daily to improve the quality of the meat. That detail amused both of them, and Ethan briefly wondered what Ike would think of it. He was pretty sure he knew, though—he could almost hear the cook’s familiar snarl.

The server seemed to anticipate their every need, appearing from nowhere whenever water glasses needed refilling or plates needed whisking away. Ethan imagined some of his Chow Down regulars eating there, and he caught himself grinning at the image of “the girls” grilling this guy for personal information.

And then, of course, he was thinking about Boots and how they’d ended up at Carruthers in the first place.

It wasn’t until dessert arrived—crème brûlée for her and amaretto cheesecake for him—that Allie mentioned the lottery ticket. “So,” she said, her spoon making tiny indentations in the crème brûlée, “you said you got one of your customers to cash the ticket for you?”

Ethan allowed a forkful of the incredible cheesecake to melt on his tongue before telling her he’d run into the guy outside the convenience store where, moments before, a scanner had identified the ticket in his hand as a winner to the tune of $1,008.62. “His name’s Hornsby. I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going, just staring at the ticket as I left the store. I walked right into him.”

Allie spooned some of the crème brûlée into her mouth, and he saw her eyes close in that way they did whenever something truly delighted her. Like their first evening at Irene’s Ice Cream Emporium when she’d sampled cranberry coffee, which was still her favourite. So he was surprised when she laid the spoon down now, dabbed at her lips with her napkin, then neatly folded it and placed it on the table beside her water glass.

“You don’t like it?” he asked.

“It’s fantastic.”

“But you’re not finishing it.”

She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have let you talk me into ordering dessert,” she chided him softly. “I know when I’ve had enough.”

He looked at her and smiled—her self-control was just one more thing he loved about her—but that didn’t stop him from putting another forkful of cheesecake into his mouth. Unlike Allie, he would eat until the food was gone, self-control be damned.

Oddly, she didn’t return his smile. Studying her face in the soft candlelight, he felt as though something had just happened, had just passed between them, but he wasn’t sure what it was. “Allie—” he began, but she’d spoken at the same time. “Sorry, what’d you say?” he asked.

She said nothing for a moment. Then, “How’d that Hornsby guy cash the lottery ticket for you? All the banks were closed when you ran into him, and ATMs don’t usually allow withdrawals that big.”

“He had the money on him.”

“He just happened to be carrying around a thousand dollars?”

“I think,” said Ethan, returning to his cheesecake, “he was carrying a lot more than that.”

“And that didn’t seem a little weird to you?”

Ethan felt the muscles in his jaw grow tense, but he didn’t want the evening to take a wrong turn. “The good news,” he explained, eating the last of his rich dessert, then leaning across the table for a spoonful of hers, “is that he had the money I needed. I had to get it from somebody. I couldn’t cash the ticket myself.”

Allie’s expression told him she was still hung up on something about Hornsby, but before she could say more, he continued, “When the guy saw how stunned I was, he asked what was up, so I told him about the scanner. He didn’t believe me at first, so I took him back into the store and showed him. He offered me eight hundred bucks on the spot for the ticket. I held out for nine.”

Allie turned toward that expansive wall of glass, and somehow he knew she wasn’t looking at the water or the lights or the moon beyond it. He felt her studying his reflection, watching his mirror image as he watched her. She turned to face him. “I have a problem with lottery tickets,” she said softly.

“Why?”

She ran the tips of her fingers across the folded napkin, slowly tracing and retracing a design on it that he didn’t recognize. “Do you remember me telling you how my parents moved to Halifax because of my dad’s job?”

Ethan nodded.

“That was the truth.” She continued tracing the design on the rich fabric. “But it wasn’t the whole truth.”

He blinked. “I thought your old man wanted to try something different, which is why he took that consulting job.”

She turned to the glass wall again, and he sensed her trying to find the words that would explain what had happened, as if she were getting it clear in her own head first. “He did want to try something different. But he didn’t really have a choice.”

Now Ethan was beginning to understand. “So he got fired from his other job?” he asked.

She frowned. “No. He was really good at it.”

Just then their server returned. “Was there a problem with the crème brûlée?” he asked, nodding at what was left in the dish.

Allie shook her head. “It was great. I’m just stuffed.”

Looking at Ethan’s empty plate, the server asked, “Will there be anything else, sir? More coffee?”

Ethan liked that he’d called him “sir.” The guy had just increased his tip by a few bucks. “Only the check, thanks.”

The server removed their dishes, skilfully balancing china, silverware, and crystal water goblets. After he’d left, Ethan turned to Allie. “So if your dad wasn’t fired, why’d he have to leave his job?”

When she began to speak, there was a sadness in her voice, like a shadow beneath each word. “You know those lottery pools you hear about? How people working at the same place all pay a certain amount of money each month to buy tickets?”

Ethan nodded.

“Dad was in charge of the lottery pool at his office. Ten people belonged to it, and they played the same numbers every week, along with Insta Piks when the prize got really big. Both the 6/49 and Lotto Max. Dad usually bought the tickets several draws in advance, but then I began noticing him stopping at kiosks or ducking into stores when we were going somewhere together. Lots of times. Then every time. He couldn’t seem to walk by one.” She hesitated, and Ethan could almost feel her forcing herself to go on. “Bethany noticed it, too.”

Their server returned and laid something on the table beside Ethan, a leather folder with a stylized C embossed in gold on the front. “I hope you return to Carruthers soon,” he said. “Have a good evening.”

“You, too,” said Ethan absently, ignoring the folder. He turned back to Allie. “Go on,” he said.

She shook her head. “Not here.” She bent down to get her purse on the floor beside her, then stood up.

Ethan stood, too, reaching for the leather folder and opening it. Seeing the total on the bill inside, he raised his eyebrows, breathing in through clenched teeth as he mentally calculated the tip he’d have to leave. He took out his wallet, grateful that he hadn’t made it to the bank that day after all. If he had, he likely wouldn’t have kept enough cash. He counted out the bills and placed them in the folder before closing it, thinking of the number of hours he’d worked at The Chow Down to make in tips what he’d just left for their server. Then he turned and took a final look around him. He doubted he’d be returning to Carruthers any time soon.

Outside, he took Allie’s hand and they walked in silence. Clouds obscured the moon and there was a bite in the November air. He felt Allie shiver and he released her hand, draping his arm over her shoulder and drawing her close. When they
reached her mother’s parked Buick, which Allie had borrowed, Ethan knew she had a lot more to say. They continued down toward the harbour a block away, stopping when they reached the boardwalk that followed the water.

As they stood staring across the harbour at Dartmouth on the other side, he felt Allie lean into him. He held her even closer and waited for her to continue. Finally, she did.

“It was such a stupid thing, you know? People buy lottery tickets all the time. Dad did it even before he took over that office pool. Even Mom picked up a ticket now and then if the jackpot got ridiculous, like twenty or thirty million. Doesn’t everybody?”

Ethan nodded, his face moving against her hair. It smelled sweet and earthy, like peaches.

“The funny thing—” She shook her head. “No, nothing about it was funny.” A moment passed before she continued, “The
ironic
thing was the pool never won any money. Nothing big, I mean. Some free plays and, once in a while, a few dollars they just rolled over into more tickets. Mostly, though, they didn’t win anything, you know?”

They stared at the harbour some more, the breeze strengthening, roiling the water so that waves began to slap the piers beneath them.

“I don’t know who realized it was a problem first,” Allie continued. “Bethany, I think.” She paused. “Maybe Mom knew earlier but she didn’t say anything. To us, anyway.” She reached up and tugged Ethan’s arm around her further. He wrapped both arms about her and she turned into him, her face against his chest. When she resumed her story, Ethan had to strain to hear her words.

“One night, Dad was supposed to take Bethany and her friends to a movie, another one of those dumb werewolf flicks that had just opened, but he got delayed, and by the time they
reached the theatre, the line up was enormous. Completely sold out, so he ended up having to take them to one of those animated Disney films instead. Bethany was pissed.”

“Pretty hard on the guy, wasn’t she?”

“That’s what
I
thought,” Allie explained, “until I heard what had made them late. He’d stopped at a gas station and was paying with his credit card when a glitch put the registers off-line. Took a while to get everything up and running again.”

“Bethany and her friends would’ve been
more
pissed if they’d run out of gas and ended up walking,” offered Ethan.

“He wasn’t buying gas.”

“Lottery tickets?”

She nodded. “
Lots
of them. Bethany said the cashier offered to void all of them so they wouldn’t have to wait, but Dad wouldn’t let her. He said one of those tickets might be a winner and he couldn’t chance it.”

“He had a point.”

Allie raised her face so she could look him in the eyes. “He’d bought over two hundred dollars worth of tickets, Ethan.” She let that sink in before repeating, “Two hundred dollars worth.”

Ethan whistled under his breath.

She pressed her face against his chest again. “Turns out he’d been buying tickets like that for weeks. Maybe months. When Mom found out, she asked him to go for counselling.”

“Did he?”

“Not at first.” He felt her draw a breath, release it. “It was a bad time for us.”

Ethan thought about how Russ Fontaine seemed like such a righteous kind of guy, one of those family-first fathers. So
not
like Ethan’s old man. Surprising the things you didn’t know about a person, how a man could keep something that controlled
him—even
defined
him—hidden from everyone he was close to. “What happened?” he asked.

She drew another breath. “Mom finally threatened to leave him if he didn’t see someone.”

“And he did?”

She nodded, her face moving against him.

“So his counsellor told him he had to quit his job?”

“No. But he had to quit the lottery pool. When he asked if someone else could take it over, they wanted to know why. He could have lied, I guess, but he took his counsellor’s advice and told them the truth. It made things pretty awkward around the office.”