Blood Sports by Eden Robinson Read Free Book Online Page A

shuttle.”
    “Nope. Nothing.
Mel
. No, baby. Tom, can you get her?”
    Tom scooped Mel up before she tipped the garbage over.
    “Maybe I’m getting Alzheimer’s,” she said.
    “Me and Mike were under the radar in high school. I was anyways until … well, you know.”
    “Yeah,” Paulina said. “I know.”

    Tom checked the clock above the front doors. Two more hours until the morning shift showed. The security buzzer bleated as a young guy in a baseball cap walked in. Behind the man, Tom noticed the black van cruising into the empty parking lot. The distance from the shop blurred the Crime Stoppers–worthy details like the licence plates, model, and make, but he was sure it was the same van that had been through the lot twice before.
    Tom ignored the urge to lock the front doors. There were loads of non-robbing reasons people would wait in a deserted parking lot with their van’s headlights off and the engine running. Maybe this was a lost tourist who kept stopping to check his map. Maybe this was some horndog picking up women. Maybe this was just some dealer waiting for a drop. The van turned out of the lot and disappeared down the deserted street. Tom massaged his temples. Or maybe sleep deprivation was making him bug-eyed.
    Tom absently tracked the customer on the security cameras. He was a little taller than Tom, body-builder buff, black muscle shirt and sweats. When he turned his back, he had a thin brown ponytail tied at the nape of his neck. The guy lingered overthe adult magazines, snatched a
Hustler
, and brought it to the counter.
    “A 6/49 Quick Pick,” the guy said. “How much is your Internet time?”
    “A dollar for twenty minutes.”
    “Huh,” the guy said. “Pretty quiet tonight. Is anyone on the computer or are you alone?”
    Tom studied him. Overly tanned with wide-set brown eyes in a narrow face. No scars or tattoos.
    “We’ve got two computers. Someone’s using one, but the other one is free.”
    Stan suddenly said, “Eat that! Yeah!”
    Through the security camera at the back, Tom could see Stan leaning forward as he exploded, burned, and decapitated mutant enemies galloping across his computer screen in
Alien Apocalypse IV
.
    A young black man wearing shiny blue shorts banged on the window. “We won!” he screamed. “4-2 on the penalties! We won!”
    “That’s great!” Tom said.
    The man banged the window a few more times then skipped away. The guy in the muscle shirt paid with a twenty and left. Must be a full moon tonight, Tom thought.
    The same black van rolled into the parking lot. It parked near the street.
    “That van’s back,” Tom said.
    “Yeah?” Stan said, distractedly, still focused on his game.
    “What if they’re casing the store?”
    “Fuck, don’t be paranoid.” Stan craned his head around a pile of canned pop and stared out at the van. “If it turns into a robbery, give them whatever’s in the register. Insurance’ll cover it.”
    “Glad we have a plan.”
    “Don’t worry,” Stan hunched down, grunting and swaying as he got back into his game. “You’ll get used to it.”
    The van waited.
    Stan emerged from the back as a parade of cars honked past. The passengers hung out the windows, wahooing, alternately in shadow or brightly lit as they passed under the streetlights. When Tom glanced back at the parking lot, the van was gone. On the hood of the last car in the parade sat a well-endowed topless woman with two strategically placed soccer-ball pasties, her upraised arms flying a large, flapping Brazilian flag. She sang along to Queen’s “We Are the Champions” as it thundered out of the car’s stereo system.
    “Wow,” Tom said. “You gotta love The Drive.”
    Stan said, munching Cap’n Crunch cereal from the box, “Brazil must have beat Holland in the semi-finals.”
    “Beat them at what?”
    “The World Cup.”
    Tom must have still looked puzzled, because Stan said in exasperation, “We talked about this last week. When