Running on Empty (6 page)

“Can I help it if I’m choosy?”

“There’s choosy and then there’s celibate.” Ethan stuck a finger in his mouth, flicked at something on his tongue.

“Let’s get
your
life straightened out and then we’ll worry about mine, okay?” said Pete, offering Ethan what remained of the joint.

Ethan shook his head. “I’m good.”

The October air made them both tug their jackets around them. Ethan hadn’t had time to grab something warmer, but his jacket was the least of his worries. What troubled him more were his shoes. After catching the Metro Transit, he’d walked the block and a half from the stop to Pete’s, where he’d ranted about his old man for a good half-hour. Then the two of them had walked to Subway, bought Steak & Cheese footlongs with Cokes, and ridden the bus down to the Arm. After all that activity, Ethan’s feet felt like someone had poured acid over them, and despite the cool of the evening, he’d taken his shoes and socks off revealing blisters that had formed, broken, re-formed, and then broken again. He wasn’t looking forward to cramming his
feet back into those christly wingtips. The joint had taken the edge off, but he knew it would be an interesting walk back to the bus stop.

Pete took a final toke then tossed the burning remnant into the waves. “You think it’s safe?” he asked.

“To go out with Hailey?”

Pete pointed at the dark expanse before them. “The harbour.”

“How’d we get from dating to that?” asked Ethan, looking at his friend more closely. “You fried?”

Pete’s face creased in a foolish grin. “Sorry, man. I goof on good weed.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Then, “What’d you mean about ‘safe’?” asked Ethan.

Pete nodded toward the Arm. “All those millions they spent cleaning it up. They say the bacteria level’s okay now, but would
you
swim in it?”

“Tonight?”

Pete elbowed him. “In the
summer
, fool.”

Ethan considered. “There’s still plenty of bacteria. They allow so many parts per million, right? There’ll always be shit out there.” He yawned and looked at his watch. “I should be heading back. Work tomorrow.” When he’d finally run out of steam ragging on his old man, Ethan had told Pete about his nightmare afternoon at The Chow Down and the schedule Lil had given him.

“So when do you actually start
making
money at that place?”

Ethan gave his buddy a palms-up
Who knows?
and began pulling his socks back on, his face contorting with each tug. Then came the shoes and a string of profanities.

“Whoa, you
eat
with that mouth?”

Ethan told Pete what he could do with his own mouth—and exactly what parts of his anatomy might benefit from the experience—as the two gathered their things and headed up the street to the bus stop.

“What’s Allie doing tonight?” asked Pete.

Ethan shrugged. “I was supposed to call her when I got cleaned up after work, but then this thing with my old man set me off.” He pulled out his cell and pressed the power key. “I turned this off at work”—he didn’t bother mentioning that Ike had threatened to heave it into the alley behind the kitchen if he didn’t—”and forgot to turn it back on.” As the screen powered up, both he and Pete could see that Allie had left two messages. Ethan speed-dialed her, but the call went immediately to her voice mail. “Busy,” he said, pressing End and returning the phone to his pocket.

“You aren’t leaving her a message?”

Ethan looked at him. “Why all the questions?”

It was Pete’s turn to shrug. “Just thought she might be wondering where you are.”

“Where I am,” muttered Ethan, “is
walking
when you and I should be tooling in the Cobra.” Despite his buzz from the weed, he was limping again, which only made him more pissed at his old man.

“Yeah, about that,” said Pete. “I saw Filthy driving it this morning on Robie.”

Ethan halted. “That’s
so
not an image I need in my head right now, okay?”

Pete smiled sympathetically. “Sorry, man. Try that one instead.” He gestured toward the water behind them, its dark surface twinkling with lights reflected from buildings on the other side of the Arm. “Cool, huh?”

It
was
cool, but Ethan’s earlier comment echoed in his head:
There’ll always be shit out there
.

And even all those parts per million wouldn’t add up to the shit he knew he’d be in when he saw his old man again.

“Some of us weren’t sure we’d see you again,” said Lil as Ethan came through the door of The Chow Down the next day. “Hey, Ike!” she called toward the kitchen. “You owe me five bucks!”

The cook stuck his head out through the swinging door, spied Ethan, scowled, and disappeared again.

“I’m not feeling the love,” said Ethan.

“Oh, don’t mind him. Ike’s a sweetheart when you get to know him.” Taking chairs down off tables, she nodded at Ethan’s feet. “Where’re your dancin’ shoes, darlin’?”

Ethan grinned. Although still tender, his feet felt better than yesterday thanks to the cream he’d put on them last night and again this morning. Not to mention the cross-trainers he was wearing. They’d cost him close to three hundred bucks at The Running Room, but at the time he’d only been thinking about how great they looked. Moulded specifically to Ethan’s feet, the shoes now cushioned them perfectly without chafing the blistered parts. “Like them?” he asked Lil.

She whistled. “Honey, they’re a thing ‘a beauty.”

Then he noticed the shoes on her own feet—no-name athletic wear she’d probably bought at Zellers for fifteen bucks—and felt awkward. “So,” he said, quickly changing the subject, “what do you need me to do?”

“For one, keep wearin’ those tight jeans you got on. I got lots ‘a comments about you from the girls yesterday.”

Ethan tried not to shudder. “The girls” were four old women,
obviously regulars, who had come in just before the end of his shift. None of them looked under sixty, he doubted any of them still had their own teeth, and he was pretty sure one of them was wearing a wig—a dirt-cheap job with straw-thick “hair” and an obvious seam on one side. But they’d been nice to him, asked him all sorts of questions, and ignored the fact that he dropped their napkins, sloshed a coffee on their table, and mixed up two of their four orders. “What’d they say about me?”

“That’s just between us girls,” Lil winked, reaching into the pocket of her apron. “But they left you this,” she said, and handed him some cash.

“Hey!” Ethan exclaimed as he took the four fives. “That’s the best tip I got all day!”

“After you left,” said Lil, “the girls were askin’ me how your first day went, ‘n’ I happened to tell ‘em how you’d ended up owin’ more’n you earned. A few minutes later, they come up ‘n’ give me the fives and told me to make sure I gave you the money. Said they all knew what it was like to have rough first days.” Lil reached out and, much to Ethan’s surprise, plucked the bills from his hand. “Now you’re all paid up. You’re startin’ with a clean slate this mornin’.”

Ethan sighed. “Easy come, easy go, huh?”

Lil studied him for a moment, glanced down at the money in her hand, then looked at him again. Returning the cash to her apron, she continued, “Just so you know, Ethan, twenty bucks is a whole lot ‘a money for those four. One of ‘em barely gets by on her widow’s allowance and the other three earn minimum wage cleanin’ rooms over at the Marriott.”

Ethan’s eyes widened. “Kind of old to be working, aren’t they?”

“People gotta eat and make their rent no matter how old they are.”

Ethan felt his face redden.

“Just so you know, okay?” she repeated.

Ethan nodded.

“Now, we got tables to get ready, darlin’, so move those sweet jeans ‘a yours.”

As he helped her hoist off the remaining chairs, Ethan could tell it was going to be another long day, but he was actually looking forward to the work. It would help keep his mind off the bomb his old man had dumped on him that morning.

His second day wasn’t worse than his first. He dropped only one meal—and that was because the plate was extra hot when he grabbed it—though he screwed up at least as many orders as before. As Lil had warned him, Sunday was The Chow Down’s busiest day of the week when the weather was good, and no sooner did one group leave than another horde took their place. He didn’t even have time to wipe off the tables before the next bunch sat down, so he mentioned to Lil that a “Please Wait to Be Seated” sign might be a good thing. Lil had just laughed. “Darlin’, customers been seatin’ themselves in this place for years. If I put up a sign like that, you’d hear ‘em hootin’ clear over to Pier 21.” So Ethan had wiped around flabby arms and beer bellies, welcoming everyone through clenched teeth as he laid out paper placemats and filled customers in on the day’s special, which made him think of Allie.

After she had watched yet another pay-per-view basketball game with him last month, Allie had made Ethan suffer through a program on the Food Network about high-end restaurants. Boring as hell, but he’d learned that one of the first skills servers in fancy places mastered was something called “romancing the food,” which involved describing for customers in vivid detail any item on the menu—how a particular cut of meat
was prepared, how the ingredients of a sauce complemented an entree, stuff like that. There was, of course, no romancing of food at The Chow Down. “Today’s special is Wieners With Sauerkraut,” he told each new group and was surprised at the number of people who ordered it. He had trouble just looking at it when he carried it out of the kitchen holding his breath because it smelled a lot like ripe compost.

On the plus side, learning how to ring in the orders wasn’t nearly as bad as he thought it would be, mostly because the owner, the elusive Mr. Anwar, had installed a touch-activated computer, similar to an iPad, that fast-tracked the process. During Lil’s demonstration of the system that morning, Ethan figured out a couple of shortcuts she hadn’t known about herself. “Cute butt and brains, too,” she’d said.

As the day wore on, he found himself wondering whether “the girls” would return, but they didn’t. Instead he had taxi drivers and truckers on their breaks, clerks and cashiers who worked at the shops down on the waterfront, and family after family who seemed to eat whenever the mood struck them. And then there were the weird ones: a man in a too-big trench coat that he kept buttoned up to his neck like he was hiding explosives strapped to his chest; a woman who hummed to herself, rocked back and forth, and kept slipping food into her purse; and a long-haired guy with fully inked arms that reminded Ethan of snakeskin. For some reason, that last one creeped him out most of all. There was something snakelike about his eyes, too. Cold, like he was studying everyone who came through the door, calculating striking distance. Ethan thought he could feel those eyes following him whenever he came out of the kitchen, but he knew that was just his imagination working overtime. Still, it was a relief when the guy finally left.

Many of the customers who came in greeted Lil by name, calling to her from across the diner as Ethan was seating them.

Few bothered asking him
his
name even though he hadn’t yet gotten his tag, but he liked the anonymity. It wasn’t like he’d be bragging to people about working there.

During his half-hour lunch, which he finally got at two in the afternoon, Ethan sat on the back step in the alley behind the kitchen revelling in the simple feeling of not standing on his feet. He could go hard on a basketball court for a long time, but he’d never known his legs to be as tired as they were now. At least he didn’t have more blisters.

Lil had told him he could ask Ike to make him something for his lunch, but Ethan had served—and cleaned up after—so much food that putting any in his mouth was about the last thing he wanted to do. Besides, he wouldn’t have had the nerve to ask Ike anyway. During a brief lull that morning when Ethan hadn’t been rushing out of the kitchen, he’d found himself studying a tat on the back of the guy’s neck. Ethan couldn’t see it all—part of it extended down inside his T-shirt—but the part he
could
see showed a heart with the word
Mike
inside it, which Ethan found more than a little surprising. He’d been standing there grinning to himself when Ike suddenly swung around and barked, “Wha’
choo
lookin’ at, dipshit?” Which was when Ethan had grabbed the too-hot plate. The tirade that followed the loss of a Linguine With Mushrooms and the plate it was on still echoed in Ethan’s ear. There wasn’t much to see out here in the alley, since it bordered a three-storey brick building. According to Lil, the place had been a lot of things over the years, including a box factory and a brothel, and it was now being converted into condominiums—expensive ones, judging by the big sign out front. He’d overheard a customer asking Lil about it, and she’d told the guy she wasn’t the least bit surprised. “Too many young people are headin’ out west for jobs,” she’d sighed. “Pretty soon Halifax won’t be much more’n a summer home for retirees.

When I win the lottery, sweetie, the only things I’ll invest my money in around here is pharmacies and funeral homes.”

Taking a long swallow of a root beer he’d grabbed from the fridge, Ethan leaned back against the top step and studied the brick building. Since most of the structures in this area had been destroyed in 1917 during the Halifax Explosion, this one must have been built sometime after that. Not
long
after that though, Ethan thought, since the exterior was in pretty rough shape. He briefly wondered why the owner hadn’t just torn it down and started fresh, which probably had more to do with city bylaws than preserving historic property. His old man had done some legal work for an architectural firm, and Ethan had heard him tell Jillian over dinner one night how builders often had more leeway when renovating than with brand-new construction. Sooner or later, Ethan thought, everything came down to loopholes, something his old man was an expert on.

Jack had been out somewhere with Jillian when Ethan had gotten home last night, which had postponed the blow-up he’d expected after their earlier confrontation. And, extra bonus, Jillian hadn’t stayed over. Ethan figured she went home to catch up on all the beauty-product infomercials she’d PVRed—it was a full-time job being on the cutting edge of cosmetics, right?—and he’d idly wondered if Moore-or-Less had any New York artwork honouring that kind of commitment.

His old man was in the kitchen when Ethan came down for breakfast and was visibly taken aback to see his son up so early. Ordinarily on a Sunday, Ethan didn’t drag himself out of bed much before noon. There had been a few awkward moments as Ethan pawed through the refrigerator for orange juice and eggs, and he was surprised his dad hadn’t launched into lecture mode already. But that was only the first of his surprises.

“About our talk last night,” Jack said.

Standing in front of the open refrigerator, Ethan sighed. “Look, I have to be somewhere in an hour. Can we make this quick?” He waited for his father’s usual opening volley.

“I want to apologize for losing my temper,” said Jack.

Ethan closed the refrigerator door and turned to him, astonished.

“I should never have shouted at you,” Jack continued. “And I shouldn’t have called you a smartass. I’m sorry.”

Ethan gaped at him. “Yeah, well … okay.”

“It’s not okay,” said Jack. “I let my anger get the better of me.”

Ethan wasn’t sure what was expected of him here. Was this supposed to be one of those moments like on daytime talk shows where family members buried the hatchet, embraced, and lived happily ever after—at least until the next commercial break? Was
he
supposed to apologize now, too? But he’d already said he was sorry for forging the note he’d given Moore-or-Less. What else was he supposed to apologize for? Criticizing his father for defending a prick? Walking out while his father was still screaming at him? Ethan wasn’t sorry for either of those things. It was safer not to say anything. He nodded.

A moment passed, during which Jack cleared his throat, got up from the table, and walked over to the window. Beyond the glass, Ethan could see the corner of the garage that a carpenter had repaired the day before, and now the siding was flawless again. Too bad. He’d grown used to seeing the damage. It was evidence to anyone passing by that life at 37 Seminary Lane was less than absolutely perfect, no matter what his father might like people to believe.

“Look, Ethan,” his father began, turning to face him, “I had a couple of visitors last night before you came home.”

So that explains it
, thought Ethan, remembering how he’d found it unusual to see his father sitting in the January room.

His mind ran through a number of possibilities. Moore-or-Less and the guidance counsellor, Mr. Rahib, were the most likely candidates. Although he couldn’t imagine teachers making house calls, it would explain his old man’s
Nothing Seems To Matter To You
speech. Maybe house calls from teachers were one of the perks of owning a McMansion in Cathedral Estates. If you could call that a perk.

Jack brushed at a non-existent piece of lint on his shirt, an action Ethan had seen him perform a hundred times and had always interpreted as preening but now realized was a way of buying time. “I’ve been asked to run for public office,” his father said, his face crinkling in a broad grin. “A few months ago, a committee was struck to review my work, my political affiliations, and my public persona, and last night two of the committee members officially asked me to represent their party in the provincial election next year.”

“That’s great,” Ethan said. Was it? He didn’t know.

And then, suddenly, he realized what was happening here. His father was asking him if it was okay to run for public office. His father was asking for his permission.

Ethan’s head reeled. But, as he thought about it in the silence that settled around them, he could understand why his old man would want to ask, would
need
to ask. How many YouTube clips had Ethan seen showing husbands and wives and sons and daughters of politicians caught in the public eye? He remembered a news story not long ago about the teenaged son of a government official who’d wrecked a vehicle that was leased by the province. It had been humiliating for the official, and for the son, too, whose accident wouldn’t have been newsworthy if it weren’t for his mother’s job.

For a moment, Ethan revelled in this new position. After having been told
No!
countless times, he would finally get to know what it felt like to have the power to do the same. Not that
he’d made up his mind—he’d have to think all this through—but he was going to enjoy watching his father squirm for a change.