We Live in Water by Jess Walter Read Free Book Online Page A

indentation in the carpet. He even marked quarters, left them on top, and sure enough, the marked quarters disappeared.
    Wayne gets down to eye level. The handle’s turned to eight o’clock.
    “I’ll be goddamned!” He hoists the heavy jar and holds it up to the light. Two days this week; the thief is getting brash.
    “Please, Wayne,” Karen says from the bed. “You’re imagining the whole thing.”
    “I’m imagining at least four bucks missing?”
    “Four dollars? From a jar of two hundred?”
    “It ain’t the money, Karen. This is our vacation. You want one of your kids stealing from their own goddamn family? You want your kids to do this? To be like this?”
    “Come to bed.”
    Wayne’s hands are shaking. One of his kids. Christ.
    “ NO WAY, ” Ken says.
    “Then who? Karen?”
    “No. Course not.”
    “You think some cat burglar’s breaking into my house to steal a few quarters at a time?”
    “No. But your kids? Your kids are good fucking kids, Wayne.”
    His kids are good kids. Get A’s. Polite. Not shitheads. Wayne presses his arms against the worn padding of the bar.
    The door behind them opens and it’s that Donna, tart secretary from the Union Hall. She walks the length of the bar, sings hi to everyone. Then she and Ken go through the whole thing of pretending they’re not screwing. “It’s the Ken and Wayne show. What are you fellas up to?”
    “Hey Donna,” Ken says. “How you been?” Like he didn’t poke her in his car just last night.
    It’s only his second beer but Wayne wants out of there. His watch says 11:50. Someone has put goddamn Anne Murray on the jukebox. Pool balls clatter. Wayne bangs his glass on the bar. “Well. I should—”
    “Nah, stay, man,” Ken says, half-assed. Wayne doesn’t blame Ken. After a night on the pot-line, breathing that slag steam, who wouldn’t want a knock at Donna? Wayne likes to think that if she ever came at him, he’d say no—she ain’t half as good-looking as Karen—but part of him thinks he couldn’t say no. Shit. Sometimes he hates people.
    “Yeah, stay for one more, Wayne,” Donna says, less half-assed than Ken did. She puts a hand on his arm.
    But tomorrow’s Friday and Wayne’s got one last swing on the pot-line before a three-day and then he rotates to a week of day shifts. He puts his coat on. “Nah, I’m goin’ home. Gotta catch me a thief.”
    “A what?” Donna twirls her wedding ring.
    Ken says, “One of Wayne’s kids is stealing from his vacation fund.”
    “Where you going?” Donna asks.
    “Kelowna,” Wayne says. “B.C. That Fred Flintstone Land.” And then he thinks of something—the thief started after Wayne picked that place. He thinks of the girl again. What fourteen-year-old wants to see Fred Flintstone Land?
    Donna reaches for the beer Ken bought her. She’s got on a tight silky dress with a red bow tied above her waist. “I hate kids,” she says. “Especially mine.”
    THE MIDDLE one’s finger is up to the first knuckle. His other hand holds his fork like a pencil.
    “What do you think is up there?” Wayne asks. “A Three Musketeers?”
    “Huh?” Middle kid always looks at him like he’s just talked French.
    “Don’t do that at the table.”
    “Oh.” The finger comes out of his nose like a sword from a scabbard. He straightens his glasses.
    The Little boy smiles at his older brother’s plight.
    The Girl is a hundred miles away, herding stewed tomatoes.
    “You ain’t leaving the table until those tomatoes are gone.”
    “They’re gross.”
    Karen tells how the Little one passed the Presidential Fitness.
    “All except the pull-ups,” he says, and shrugs. “Nobody could do the pull-ups so Mr. McAdam said to not worry about pull-ups.”
    Wayne looks at the Middle kid. He never passes the Presidential Fitness. Big crisis every year.
    “I was in the sick room,” he says. “I almost puked in science.”
    “Well, maybe next year,” Wayne says.
    The Middle one pushes his