“At the top end,” says the kid, “but it’s a little slow off the mark.”

“What do you think it gets to the gallon?”

The kid made a low whistling sound. “The four barrels will suck a tank dry pretty quick. At this altitude, you’d be lucky to get ten, maybe twelve.”

“Ten miles to the gallon?”

“Lucky.”

No matter how I did the math, the dollar plus change wasn’t going to get me home.

“You broke?”

“Naw,” I said, “but I left my wallet at home.”

“Guess you’ll have to call your dad.”

“Gone.” I shook my head. “He and Mom went to Hawaii.”

“Damn,” said the kid. “I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii.”

I stood there and tried to look pathetic.

“If this was Nevada,” said the kid, “you could put your dollar in one of those slots and take your chances. But I wouldn’t recommend it. Those places don’t make money by giving it away.”

Stuck in Truckee. It was almost biblical. Steal a car. Get stuck in Truckee. Divine retribution. Mom was going to find out I had taken the car. Dr. Philips was going to know that Katheryn Mavrias’s oldest boy was a thief.

Standing there at the service station in Truckee, I wondered if it was possible to push the car to the top of a hill, throw it in neutral, and coast all the way down to the valley and back to town.

“Course there might be a way I can help you out.”

“Okay.”

“Let’s pop the trunk and see what we got.”

MIMI TAKES A BATH. I lie in bed and watch the spiders on the ceiling. They’ve become part of the family now, along with the air conditioner that doesn’t work.

Eugene sits on the edge of the bed. Kitty has found her favourite corner. Chip is on the floor doing push-ups, while the twins count out each rep.

Busy day, says Eugene. Smart move, pretending to be sick.

An upset stomach, says Kitty, is one of the first signs of pancreatic cancer.

Twenty-eight, say Desi and Didi, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one . . .

I hear Mimi splashing in the tub. “For a sick guy,” she shouts out, “you were pretty good.”

Some lover, says Eugene. Lie on your back and think of mother England.

“Matter of fact,” says Mimi, “you were great.”

Or bowel cancer, says Kitty. It’s probably one of the two.

“And I was proud of you. The way you were prepared to protect me.”

“Maybe we should try to get robbed more often.”

Let’s not do that, says Desi. Confrontation makes Didi anxious.

Chip is up to fifty-three and is sweating pretty hard. Why does this shit always happen to me?

“When you get out of the tub,” I call out to Mimi, “you want to grab Chinese?”