Empty Mile Read Free

that meant and after he’d secured his place on the town council he’d made a name for himself as a proponent of growth through investment in infrastructure. Less publicly trumpeted were the rumors that he was a bit of a pervert.
    He clapped Stan on the shoulder. “Stan the man! This the brother?”
    Pat whispered “Jesus” just loud enough for him to hear.
    Bill looked tiredly at his wife. “I didn’t know you were coming in.”
    Pat held up the butt of her cigarette. “Don’t you have any fucking ashtrays in this place?”
    Stan looked wide-eyed at me and tried to pull his head into his shoulders. Bill took the cigarette and put it out in an empty flowerpot, then he held his hand out and we shook. As he let go he ran his eyes over me and I had the uncomfortable feeling he was assessing my sexual potential. For a moment there was silence between us, then he thought of something to say.
    “Stan’s doing very well here. We’re lucky to have him working with us.”
    Pat’s lighter snapped as she lit another cigarette. Bill looked irritated and fanned the smoke away.
    “Do you need to see me?” When she didn’t answer he stepped close to her and put his hand on her forearm. “I’m not busy.”
    “Since when did that make a difference?” For a moment she looked emptily at him, then sighed and shook her head and said, “I’ll see you tonight.”
    Bill watched her as she left the garden center, then turned and walked into the warehouse without saying anything else.
    Stan led me out to the front steps. Pat had just turned onto the Oakridge Loop. She was in an olive Mercedes and she drove with her forearms against the steering wheel, leaning forward in her seat like she didn’t have the strength to hold herself upright. She was still smoking.
    The day was warm and the display garden hummed in the sunshine. The mix of fragrances from the flowers made the air feel clean. Stan took a deep breath and let it out in a rush.
    “Pat says plants know we’re here. They’ve done tests on them and everything. Like if you go to cut their leaves off they get scared, and they like it when you talk to them.”
    I was about to leave when he grabbed my sleeve.
    “Oh, Johnny, I forgot. I finish early on Tuesdays. Can you take me to my dance lesson?”
    “Dance lesson?”
    “Yeah, dance lesson. Be here at two o’clock, okay?”
    I promised I’d be there, then walked around the corner of the building to the parking lot where the man who had once been my best friend waited for me.

CHAPTER 3
    G areth was a tall, slim guy with red-blond hair and pale skin that looked as though it had a layer of rust underneath trying to get to the surface. He had a habit of putting his hands on his hips and when he walked he strutted like a peacock.
    We met in a bar when I was eighteen and he was a year older. He’d recently moved to Oakridge from Sacramento, the last in a string of relocations that had started when he was twelve and his mother ran off with another man. Gareth’s father was a car mechanic and had bought a small garage in town that the two of them ran by themselves.
    At first it was fun hanging out with him—we were into cars, we liked the same music, we got drunk on beer. As I got to know him better, though, I found that there were other aspects of his personality which were not quite so carefree.
    His mother’s abandonment and his father’s failing lifelong struggle for financial security had left Gareth with a lasting sense of insignificance. It wasn’t that he thought he was inferior to other people, because he certainly did not. He had simply come to believe that the universe had no interest in his existence. Because of this, he tended to treat people as mirrors in which to reassure himself of his own identity—a view of others which made friendship with him repetitive and draining. It also, on one occasion at least, translated into some pretty spectacular violence.
    There was a small bar in Back Town where we used