by Don Aker
That evening, he studies blackjack, is surprised at the terminology of the game. Not ridiculous words, though, like coefficient, like GS450 and SLK350. Words that have meaning. Like soft hands—with aces that count as 11—and all other hands, hard hands. Terms like push, when the dealer’s hand is equal to the player’s, and doubling down, when the player still has two cards and doubles his stake, getting only one more card.
He learns when it makes sense to double down, when your two cards total 9 or 10 or 11. You always double down with 11, unless the dealer’s up card is an ace. Likewise with 10, unless the dealer’s up card is an ace or a face card or a 10. Doubling down with 9 is trickier—the dealer’s up card must be 3 or 4 or 5 or 6. Otherwise, you hit.
He learns when to split, learns about card counting, learns there is so much more to the game than he’d imagined. In some ways blackjack is like physics, unseen forces working in the background, the dealer a kind of gravity bringing everything back to centre. But blackjack is also not like physics. Because these forces he understands. There is a cool logic here that seems sensible, safe.
By ten-thirty that evening, he is ready to play again.
An hour later, his Total Winnings window reads $740.
At midnight, he has broken even.
He picks up Beating Blackjack: A Winner’s Primer again, turns the pages slowly.
He is tired the next night, yawns repeatedly into the screen. He fell asleep in English class, waking only when Allie prodded him, her face a question mark. “Up late studying,” he’d murmured, which wasn’t a lie.
But despite the yawning, he is ready. Large coffee, a Mars bar, and he’s good to go.
By three o’clock that morning, he has nothing left. Everything is gone.
“You did everything I said?” repeated Hornsby.
Ethan shrugged. “Almost everything.”
“Almost ain’t good enough, kid.”
Ethan looked at the condominiums next door. Although they were still under construction, a huge sign on the street announced three-quarters of them already sold. Apparently, almost was fine with some people. “I didn’t have enough money left after my last loss to double the next bet,” he said.
“Too bad.”
“That’s all you got? ‘Too bad’?”
Hornsby looked at him. “Whaddya expect me to do about it?”
“What about going back to the casino?”
“With what? You just told me you’re broke.”
Reddening, Ethan looked down at the cracked asphalt in the alley, where they’d met because Ethan didn’t want Lil seeing him with Hornsby in The Chow Down’s parking lot. Lil had told him the other day that the developer who was building the condos next door had contacted Mr. Anwar, the owner of the diner, and she and Ike had assumed it was about sharing the cost of resurfacing the alleyway. They were wrong. The developer had offered to buy the restaurant, which he wanted to turn into more condos, adding four more floors to the building. And much to Lil’s dismay, Anwar seemed to be considering it. No loyalty there.
Nor, apparently, was there any here. But Ethan asked anyway. “You think maybe you could carry me this one time? I could pay you back from your winnings.”
Hornsby snorted, the harsh sound bouncing off the brick walls. “Whaddya think I am, Goodwill? I don’t do charity, kid.” He turned to leave.
“You got me into this,” said Ethan, the tone in his voice both pleading and demanding, like some of the brats he served.
Hornsby stopped and slowly faced him. “I didn’t get you into nothin’. You came to me.” He spat the toothpick onto the asphalt. “What we got here is a problem with perspective. You think I’m your friend. I’m not.” He turned, throwing his final words over his shoulder. “You come up with some more cash, we’ll talk. Otherwise, get lost.”
His break over, Ethan could do nothing more than head back into the diner.
Standing at the sink, Ike looked up as Ethan came in the door. “I saw you out back talkin’ to Hornsby,” he said.
“I have to clear with you who I talk to now?” snapped Ethan. He’d never responded to Ike that way before, frustration undermining common sense, and he half expected Ike to roar at him.
Instead, the cook merely shrugged. “That guy’s trouble. If I was you—”
“Well, you’re not me, are you?” The anger surprised Ethan, but it felt good to give in to it, to let it go, to finally respond to the weeks of criticism and ridicule the cook had directed at him. “You’ve been riding me since the day I got here. What’s your problem, anyway?”
The cook’s face darkened. “I’ll tell you what my problem is, kid. You waltz in here like you’re God’s gift but you ain’t done a lick ‘a real work your whole life. I seen that piece ‘a paper you call a resumé. Lifeguard! Most ‘a the people who eat here? They might not be able to afford a place in fancy Cathedral Estates”—and here his voice thickened in a sneer—”but they damn well know what it’s like to do an honest day’s work. You come in here like you’re slummin’, doin’ us all a big favour just by showin’ up, then expectin’ the world to pat you on the back and say ‘Good job!’ You get outta this life what you put into it, and it seems to me you ain’t put in a thing. I know your old man’s supposed to be some big hotshot, but from where I’m standin’, looks like the best part ‘a your daddy ran down your mama’s leg.”
Ethan opened his mouth, but before he could say anything, Ike thundered on. “I actually thought I seen you improvin’ the past couple weeks, thought maybe there might be somethin’ there, maybe you might be worth a damn after all. But no. You wanna screw up your life hangin’ with the likes ‘a Hornsby, you go right ahead. No good’ll come of it, you can be damned sure ‘a that, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.” The cook turned away, thrusting his hands under the tap as if washing them of Ethan and whatever situation he’d gotten himself into. “Them that lie down with dogs,” he muttered, “get up with fleas.”
Ethan responded with the only words that came to mind—”Screw you! Screw the whole damn lot of you!”—and grabbed his jacket from the hook by the door. Instead of heading back out into the alley—he didn’t want to cross paths with that asshole Hornsby again—he shoved through the batwing doors into the dining area, storming past an open-mouthed Lil and five afternoon diners with forks paused in mid-air, and slammed out the exit. Not even grease could have saved that hinge as the impact drove the door back against the side of the building.
Chapter 24
“You’re home early.” Raye stood in the doorway of the family room, which Jillian hadn’t had a hand in decorating, so its oak floors and sand-coloured walls made it a warm, inviting space for the comfortable leather furniture Ethan sprawled on now.
“Mm.”
“I thought you were working this afternoon.”
“I was.” Ethan didn’t feel like talking. He’d called Allie’s cell several times, but it kept going straight to voice mail. Maybe her battery was dead. He’d stopped by her house, but no one was home. From there he’d gone to the library and then her dance studio, but another group—which looked to be for beginners and chronic klutzes—was being taught, so he’d left there, too. After that, he’d had no idea where Allie might be. Shopping with Bethany or her mom? She hadn’t shown up at school and he’d meant to phone her earlier to find out why, but his head had been preoccupied with getting to The Chow Down and, hopefully, seeing Link Hornsby. Now that he needed to tell her what had happened, he couldn’t find her.
Frustrated, he’d come home and turned on the seventy-inch LED in the family room just to have noise in the house. Two women on the Home Shopping Channel now oohed and ahhed over a skin cream that, from the sounds of things, did everything but cure cancer. Maybe even that, too.
“Thinking of ordering some?” teased Raye, nodding at the screen.
He didn’t reply. Instead, he began clicking the remote, ratcheting his way up through the hundreds of channels their satellite dish brought into the h
ouse.
Raye frowned, then plopped herself down on the loveseat that formed the short side of a leather L in front of the flat screen. “What’s up, Ethan?”
“Price of gas, according to C-SPAN.”
“Funny.”
“I’m here all week, two shows a night.”
Both of them silently watched the images change rapidly in front of them, logos of various networks flashing past.
Finally, “Ethan, is something wrong?”
“Life,” he muttered, his eyes still on the flickering screen.
“Anything I can do?”
He was about to say no when he suddenly turned to her. “That offer to loan me some cash still good?”
She nodded. “How much do you want?”
“How much do you have?”
“Four eighty, four eighty-five, something like that.”
Ethan tried to look nonchalant. “Say, three hundred? Just for a few days?”
Raye’s left eyebrow lifted, but her voice was even as she replied, “No problem. When do you need it?”
“When can you give it to me?”
“It’s upstairs.”
He grinned at her. “You didn’t get the memo about interest?” Their father was forever lecturing them about the importance of making deposits into their accounts rather than leaving their money lying around earning nothing.
Raye grinned in return. “He shouldn’t have given me Juanita,” she said, referring to the huge blue piggy bank that sat on her dresser. “I’ll be right back.”
And in a minute she was. “Here,” she said, passing him a roll of bills. She hadn’t asked him what the money was for, but the unspoken question hovered over them like a glowing neon sign.
Ignoring it, Ethan took the money and stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans. “Thanks, Raye,” he said. “I’ll get it back to you in a couple days. Three at the most.”
“No worries,” she said. “I know where you live.”
Standing up, Ethan grabbed the jacket he’d left lying on the ottoman and headed toward the patio door.
“Ethan?”
Both arms in the jacket’s sleeves, he turned. “Yeah?”
“Is everything okay?”
He flashed her a grin. “Never better.”
She looked down, and he could see a new splash of ink on the back of her hand where Jazz had been at work again. From across the room, he couldn’t tell what it was. Not a dragon this time. A unicorn, maybe?
“You don’t seem …” Her voice trailed off.
“What?” he asked, failing to keep the impatience out of his own voice. He had less than half an hour to make it to the bank before it closed. “I don’t seem what?”
She shrugged. “Nothing.”
He nodded. “Thanks again, okay?” And he left.
Afterwards, he realized he should have gone to find Hornsby and offered him Raye’s cash as a stake at the waterfront casino.
But he’d remembered Hornsby’s comment in the Echo, how their fifty-fifty split that night had been “a one-time low introductory offer,” and he knew the guy would want an even bigger chunk this time. And besides, Hornsby had been such an asshole in the alley—You think I’m your friend. I’m not—that he was the last person Ethan wanted to see that afternoon.
Instead, Ethan had made it to the bank just in time to deposit Raye’s three hundred bucks into his account, after which he’d gone home, logged onto MyDigitalVegas.com, and tried to transfer the money to the site. It took him a dozen attempts that afternoon for the money to go through—apparently, the bank’s site wasn’t as efficient as the online casino’s—but after almost an hour he was good to go.
And in less than fifteen minutes, he’d lost it all.
“—so if you two could keep the noise down this evening, I’d appreciate it.” Jack Palmer looked from Raye to Ethan, who absently moved something resembling angel-hair pasta—minus most of the calories and all of the taste, since Jillian had cooked it—around on his plate with his fork. “Is that doable?” he asked.
Ethan continued to play with his food until he felt a foot kick his shin under the table. “What?” he demanded, looking across at Raye, who was nodding toward their father. “Yeah, yeah,” he muttered.
“Thanks,” said Jack. “The crew should be in and out in a couple hours, and a lot of that is set-up time. The interview itself shouldn’t take more than half an hour.”
If he’d cared at all, Ethan might have wondered how the tech person in charge of lighting would handle the glare off those Brilliant Cream walls, since the media consultant for his father’s party had decided the interview should be conducted in their living room. He’d granted CBC’s Connie Althorpe an exclusive “At Home with Jack Palmer,” and she was scheduled to arrive within the hour.
Ethan, however, didn’t give a damn. The only thing occupying his mind at the moment was the money he’d let slip through his fingers in the last two days. First the thousand remaining after he’d paid Filthy his five hundred, and now the three hundred he’d borrowed from Raye. And that wasn’t even counting the three hundred he’d paid for that damn driver’s licence. On top of that, he’d thrown away his job at The Chow Down this afternoon, and he’d be lucky if his next—and last—paycheque from there came to more than a hundred bucks. That wouldn’t even cover the Christmas gift he’d wanted to get Allie let alone the money he now owed Raye.
He had tried the Martingale system again, but he knew now where he’d gone wrong. The Martingale required more than balls and a bankroll to work. It also required brains. Ethan had been in a hurry, and instead of starting out with his regular five-dollar wagers, he’d begun placing ten-dollar bets, which meant he’d gone in the hole much faster. He’d been up sixty bucks when the law of averages kicked in and his initial winning streak ended. Five losing hands later, he had only fifty left, far less than the three hundred twenty his next bet should have been. What else could he do? He bet the fifty.
And lost it.
Idiot! If only he hadn’t gotten greedy. Next time, he’d know what to do. Next time, he’d stick to five-buck bets, wouldn’t get carried away by a few early wins.
Next time.
Chapter 25
Ethan unlocked the back door and slipped inside, feeling like a thief in his own home as he keyed the entry code into the alarm system. He’d left school after first period—Beaker had given his forged note only a passing glance before waving him off—and didn’t think he’d be missed since so many others in his class were absent, one of them Allie. Pete and Seth were among the missing, too, and he wondered what the two of them might be up to. Whatever it was, it couldn’t be worse than what Ethan was planning to do.
He passed through the kitchen and down the main hall, glancing into the living room where his old man’s interview had taken place. He wondered if it had gone as well as his father had hoped. As he’d promised, Ethan had stayed in his room the whole evening—he hadn’t felt like doing much else anyway—then he’d lain awake most of the night weighing his options. As a result, he’d overslept and missed breakfast, so there’d been no one to ask how the “At Home with Jack Palmer” thing had gone. Not that he was really interested, but at one point he could hear his father’s raised voice floating up from the living room. He was probably making some point like he did in court—dramatically. Ethan had heard nothing else after that, except for the camera crew’s van pulling out of the driveway a few minutes later.
Fighting the urge to tiptoe, Ethan now climbed the staircase and went through the first door on the left. As usual, he shook his head at the sign above his sister’s bed: Raye’s World. Even on this sunny day, it was like a tomb in there. The walls and ceiling were a deep purple, a tribute to her favourite band painted by Raye herself, the week before they moved into the house, and the window and bed were draped completely in black, a holdover from Raye’s brief goth flirtation. But Raye’s World was anything but grim. Pinned up on every available wall surface were hundreds of cartoons,
some clipped from newspapers and magazines, some downloaded from the Internet, and others drawn by Raye herself. They were nothing like the cartoons in those dumb decorating magazines that Jillian sometimes brought over and left lying in the family room. Raye’s taste ran to The Far Side and Doonesbury and even weirder offerings she’d clipped from magazines like The New Yorker and Harper’s. She’d shown Ethan her latest find a couple of days ago, a drawing of dozens of cattle entering a tiny corral with dialogue balloons saying things like “Excuse me” and “Pardon me.” Raye had laughed like crazy when she’d shown it to him, and he’d laughed as much at her reaction to it as anything else. Although he’d never said so, his sister’s weird sense of humour was just one more thing that he loved about her.
Which made what he was about to do now even harder.
Moving to her dresser, he picked up the blue ceramic pig she’d named Juanita P. Orker and heard inside it the clink of coins and the rustle of something more substantial. He turned it over and unscrewed the plastic plug in the pig’s belly, then shook the contents onto the black bedspread. Just as he expected, he counted nearly two hundred bucks, more than half of it in toonies, loonies, and quarters. It was so like Raye to have given him only bills the night before while she kept the more unwieldy coins for herself.
Replacing Juanita’s plug, Ethan scooped up the money and shoved it into his pockets, then repositioned the pig on Raye’s dresser. With the law of averages on his side—and what he knew about balls, bankrolls, and brains—he’d be able to repay all the money he’d borrowed from her by the end of the day. He was sure of it.
“You don’t have school today?” asked the teller at the bank, a young man who was carrying about fifty pounds more than he should.
Looking over the counter, Ethan saw that the guy’s ass hung over both sides of the stool he was sitting on. “In-service,” he lied.
“Gotta love those, huh?” the man grinned. “Now what can I do for you today?”