What Have We Done (9)
In the haze, the first of the 12 Steps comes to him: Admit we are powerless over gambling, that our lives have become unmanageable.
Nico has never been one to think he’s powerless—he can stop gambling whenever he wants. But he’s got to admit, things have become unmanageable. He’s literally hit rock bottom—hundreds of feet down in a mine, no less. Maybe one of O’Leary’s boys came to send a message and set off a charge in the mine.
But that doesn’t make any sense. He owes $395,000 plus the vig. He’d been up to a half mil in debt, which O’Leary’s people found unacceptable, but he’d scraped together $100K. He had to do something bad to get that down payment, but you do what you gotta do. He’s current at the moment, so there’s no reason to murder him. He learned this much from his old man, who was one of O’Leary’s soldiers back in the day: You don’t kill the goose that lays the golden egg. You break its wing, rest the blade of the axe on its neck. Reset the debtor’s priorities. You don’t blow him up.
His stomach growls. A loud rumble that reminds him of something else that’s terrifying. He has no food. No water. His mind jumps to the safety course again. There was a lot of discussion in the class about a group of Chilean miners trapped for months who survived by drinking water from industrial tanks used to wash dirty miners’ gloves. Is there a water source down here?
He remembers the funny story about how one of the Chilean miners had both his wife and his mistress show up at the rescue site, a reality show in the making as the world wondered who would win his heart when he emerged. Who did the guy pick? Nico can’t remember.
There will be no one outside holding vigil for Nico, he knows that much. Beyond his love of gaming, there are a few constants in the life of Nico Adakai. One: People always think he’s an asshole. He’s not sure why, he doesn’t intend to be one, but there’s no denying it. Two: He’s a coward, always has been. And three: The people closest to him always leave.
This last thought takes him to another of the 12 Steps: Make a list of persons we have harmed and become willing to make amends to them all.
He thinks of his fiancée—correction, ex-fiancée—Natalie. She loved him. Really, really loved him. She was willing to work things through, even after discovering the credit cards he’d opened in her name. The thousands in debt he racked up.
“You know, it’s not the gambling,” she’d said on that last day. “You might be able to overcome that.”
“Then what is it?”
“You’re incapable of loving anyone.”
“That’s not true,” he said.
“You’re always one foot out the door so you can beat the other person at leaving.”
Natalie is an elementary school teacher, not a psychologist, but she’s watched enough Dr. Phil to be on to something. Nico made the mistake of telling Natalie about his mother leaving him behind to
escape his abusive father, about his father then disappearing. And he told Natalie about Annie, his first love who vanished without a trace.
In the fog of his thoughts—he must be in shock—his mind frolics to Annie.…
Raising her hand in ninth-grade science, one of the only kids listening to the teacher drone on.
Sitting on the top of the monkey bars at the seedy park watching the sunset. The way she smelled of bubble gum. Oh, and her laugh. It was high-pitched, cute, and made her seem softer, less damaged by her time in group homes.
The way she’d get exasperated with Nico and the other boys about their endless “that’s what she said” jokes. They were stupid, but “your mama” jokes didn’t play well in foster care.
In his mind, he’s walking home from school with the others. “How’d you do on the math test?” he asks Annie.
Before she answers, Artemis chimes in. “It wasn’t hard at all.”
Donnie barks a laugh. “That’s what she said.”
Nico sleeps.
It’s dreamless but restless at the same time.
When he wakes, it takes a moment to remember.
He’s in a collapsed mine.
He may never get out.
He hopes they’re trying to find him. That, up top, word is out and there’s a media circus surrounding the effort to save Nico Adakai. Portable lights, digging equipment, the National Guard, volunteers, network news vans.
He thinks of those Chilean miners again. How long were they trapped? It was sixty-nine days, something he remembers only because of the juvenile fascination with the number sixty-nine.
How’d they escape? There was a drill.
For Nico, they’re going to need to work all night, with a big drill, he thinks.
Then he smiles. “That’s what she said.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
JENNA
Jenna darts around the corner onto K Street, past a coffee shop, and into a CVS. The sound of sirens still floats in the air. She thinks she’s lost the woman but can’t be sure.
She takes an escalator to the lower level and makes for the back. There’s no restroom, but the greeting card aisle is empty. She strips off the jacket and fingers the fabric at the seams, checks the pockets. On the back hem, she finds it. A tiny square the size of an ordinary PC dongle sewn into the denim.
Yanking off the wig, she finds a mirror on a sunglass display stand in the back corner and tries to straighten her hair. It’s wet from sweat, disheveled. She finds a bristle brush on a rack and slicks her hair back, runway-model-style. Her cell phone and all her credit cards and money are stowed in the locker at SoulCycle, but she can’t go there. She needs to reach Simon. She still has the burner phone.