One Good Hustle

NINE




I WALKED AND walked, staring at the sidewalk, thinking of Drew. Plus what a f*ck-up Marlene is these days. And when I look around me, I realize that after twenty minutes of walking, all I’ve done is get closer to her. I try to picture Ruby and Lou standing in my mother’s living room. Mind your own business, you tubby little dyke.

When I get to Willingdon Avenue, I look across the street to the Old Orchard strip mall. The sun is breaking through the clouds and I’m beginning to sweat. I could really go for a drink. Maybe an Orange Crush. Ice cold. But the most immediate problem is money. That’s frequently the most immediate problem. I’m only about five blocks from Marlene now.

It’s not smart working close to home but sometimes you have to.

In the strip mall, outside the drugstore, I hang around the garbage can till I can discreetly fish out a few cash-register receipts. My dad told me about this one—he used to do this when he was young and broke. You have to act normal, you can’t make a big deal out of hunting for receipts or some uptight tool might notice and go squealing to a cop or something. The best one I find lists a pregnancy test, mascara, foundation, lipstick and blush. Total: $43.50. Nice. For appearance’s sake, I snag an empty store bag too.

Inside the store, I lift the items off the shelves. Marlene would freak; she thinks shoplifting is totally low-class.

The problem with this scam, though, is you have to be exact. Not like when Sam was young. Ever since some stores started using barcode scanners instead of perfectly decent price tags, everything’s gotten more complicated.

I have almost everything—the same pregnancy test, mascara, foundation and lipstick—but I can’t find the right blush. Shit! I see the tag on the shelf but there’s none left.

My heart starts to pound.

“Can I help you find something?”

Shit-shit! It’s one of those cosmetic-counter ladies, wearing a dump truck’s worth of makeup and frosty pink nails.

“No. I mean, yeah. I’m trying to find this, um, stuff and they’re all, umm—” Smooth. What a loser.

“Oh, that shipment came in yesterday. I guess they haven’t put them out yet,” she says. “Can you wait just a moment?”

So I stand there and wait for her to bring me some blusher to steal. God!

When she gets back I choose the “English Suede” shade, thank her with this big phony smile, and take off to another aisle. When I take the store bag out of my pocket, my chest is banging so hard, I’m pretty sure I’m going to have a heart attack. I should put it all back. My legs are all wonky and wooden. I make myself go to the checkout.

I dump the pregnancy test and makeup on the counter and hand over the receipt. The cashier slaps down a pad of return slips. This is the worst—when you’re freaking and you still have to close the deal. I take a deep breath, pull my hands out of my pockets, and write down a fake last name and number. As she reverses the charges and I take the cash, I start thinking about how disgusted my dad would be by this lame performance of mine.

“Sammie!”

My head snaps around. Jesus Christ. It’s Drew, three people behind me in line.

I freeze a second. “Hey, how’s it going?” I make a show of checking my watch as I head for the door. “I’ve got to go to the supermarket. For my mom.”

“Wait!” His woolly blond lion hair hides his face as he counts out change to pay for a pack of gum. He told me once that he leaves his hair kind of long to distract from his big nose and his zits, but his skin’s not that bad. And I like his nose.

I feel queasy and melty inside all at once.

“I’ll be outside.” I want to get out of here before a security guy’s hand lands on my shoulder.

Out on the sidewalk, I try to remember this morning’s dream. Something about fire. And Drew held my hand.

He comes out a few seconds later, and we head down the strip-mall sidewalk. The air between us is clunky.

“Where’ve you been?”

He’s acting like it’s no big deal, but I know he’s mad. Before that shitty night when he drove me downtown, we talked on the phone nearly every day.

“I keep calling. But every time, your mom says you’re not home.”

“I’ve been really busy.”

He nods. “You coming to the DYF roller party this Friday?” His voice is tight and the pitch is all wrong.

“Doubt it.”

“When I called the last time,” Drew tells me, “your mom said you were sleeping over at Jill’s. I thought you didn’t—I didn’t think she was your type.”

“We’re not dating, for chrissake,” I say, and roll my eyes as if he’s the biggest moron. “What are you doing around here anyway?”

“Mandy organized this thing at her place this morning, making cookies for the Burnaby Seniors Centre.”

“Mandy, Mandy. Quelle saint!”

Drew stops and stares at me. “Are you in trouble?”

I stop too. My chest clenches like a fist.

“A pregnancy test?” he whispers.

He saw. I look away and laugh.

Drew jams his hands in his pockets. He’s got a loose long-sleeved T-shirt on but I can still make out the bones in his chest.

“I was taking it back, doofus.”

“Your face is red,” he says.

His is too.

My mind bugs around for an explanation. I hate lying to Drew, but he asks too many damn questions.

“You’re such a goof.” I laugh some more. “My mom bought it by mistake. She thought it was a douche. Okay? She’s a total zone-out.” I start down the strip again.

Drew catches up with me. “Why haven’t you been returning my calls? Are you mad at me for something?”

“Nobody returns calls,” I blurt. “I called my dad a couple weeks ago. He never called me back.”

I wish I’d never said that. Now I can’t shut up. “And he’s my dad. But nope. That’s life.”

Drew trots to keep up. “Did you try calling him again?”

“F*ck him.” I shove my way through the supermarket door.

“What?”

I turn and squint at Drew’s face. “F*ck. Him.”

I need some food to bring back to Ruby. People are less likely to throw you out if you bring home groceries once in a while. At the meat section, I grab a package of bacon. Don’t even look at the price. Who cares? I watch my feet on the linoleum as I walk to the bread aisle.

Sappy Muzak dribbles through the store. Drew scrambles along beside me.

“That’s crappy, Sammie. I’m—I’m sorry. I thought you were pissed with me. Did you talk to your mom about it?”

I snatch a loaf of grainy bread off the shelf, the kind with sesame seeds all over the crust—the kind they wrap in two plastic bags, it’s so friggin’ fancy—and start back toward the syrup aisle. Real maple syrup, Ruby, the good stuff. Suck on that tomorrow morning!

“Why the hell would I talk to her about it?”

I can’t find the syrup. Just peanut butter and jam and my head is ready to explode.

I don’t know what to do when I get like this. I don’t know where to put it. This is why I don’t want to talk to anyone right now. Least of all Drew.

“She was funny when I talked to her the other night,” he says. “She thought someone had broken into the apartment and she kept saying, ‘Who’s there?’ in this man-voice. She put the phone down a minute and went to check and then she came back on the line and said she had a hammer for protection.” He laughs. “She wanted me to come over. She’s like—”

I stop in the aisle and stare at him. “She wanted you to come there? To the apartment?” This is too much. He has to be bullshitting. Maybe this is Drew getting even with me for ditching him all this time.

“She’d had a few. She didn’t mean anything.”

“Shut up.”

“She kept saying, ‘I need a man!’ ”

My hand shoots out and shoves him against the preserves. His face is shocked as he hits the shelf. A jam jar falls past his ear and busts open on the floor. It looks so horrible, the bloody red of it, like the inside of a skull. We both stare. A big goose egg sits in my throat and I can’t swallow.

Drew looks at me. His mouth opens.

I take off for the cashiers. He doesn’t follow. Who could blame him?