Free All We Want Is Everything by Andrew F. Sullivan Page B

find her daughter banging on the lint trap. After that, it was just movies and board games.
    “Can you keep your voice down, Jimmy? You’re gonna wake up Del. He’s supposed to find out tomorrow if they’ll let him do any physio after the trial is done. Doesn’t want to be a cripple forever—Cal get your hands off of that shit. I’m air drying those things.”
    Cal takes a seat and pulls out some postcards he jacked from the gas station. He’s written letters to his mother across the back with fake addresses stretching up and down the Golden Coast. It’s the only excuse he can think of to avoid the hospital. Cal can’t handle hospitals—too many reflective surfaces, too many people asking how he feels today, asking for reasons and for his personal information. His Mom is only twenty minutes down the highway, but it may as well be Florida for all he cares.
    “Who gives a shit about Del?” I say. “He shouldn’t have run. They catch him with three or four plants in the car, so what? Could plead that down. Get off with some probation.”
    Donna rolls her eyes at me. While I was plotting murders in Alice’s inbox to try and win her back, Del had been trying to move his stash from an abandoned cottage to the family farm. New owners and buyers in the area had everyone a little on edge. Lots of old things lying underneath rotten decks and docks that no one with any sense wanted to find. Del was just trying to do some clean up when the sirens came on behind him. He let them chase him for twenty minutes until they forced him into the ditch and broke his collarbone.
    “You know, I could probably get two TVs for the same price if I just wait you out,” Donna says and pries a bottle out of her housecoat. The pink fabric and orange furniture make my eyes burn. Cal is picking through Donna’s underwear while she tries to twist off the childproof cap.
    “You’re talking about two hypothetical TVs there,” I say. Hypothetical is a word the lawyer likes to drop in my lap whenever I talk about getting the kids back. He says we’d have to start with some anger management classes, some group therapy—all the court-ordered treatments I’ve tried to ignore. Maybe I could get a few hours of supervised visitation if I followed those suggestions. The lawyer gave me the name of Cal’s shrink, the same one writing prescriptions for half of Owen Sound and most of the reserves outside this town. We may be second cousins, but I know my brain isn’t as mangled as that boy’s mind.
    “Hype-a-what?” Donna laughs, and slides an Oxy down her throat. She doesn’t need to chase it with anything. Her lips are always wet.
    “Hypothetical. Yeah, we might have to steal something else tomorrow, or someone will decide to toss their old set out for garbage day, but you’re taking a risk there. We’ve got you a bird here, right in the hand. You can talk about the two you see out there in the bushes all you want, but they aren’t sittin’ in my backseat. Thing doesn’t even have a serial number.”
    “Everything’s got serial numbers in California,” Cal says. His eyes have moved onto the VHS tapes stacked up by the busted old TV. Donna tapes all her performances at the Stockyard and tries to sell them on the Internet. Delaney’s convinced her video is still a viable format. He needs the money, but can’t afford a DVD player or any of that Blu-ray shit.
    “No serial… Oh, hell no. You took the TV from the bar? Didn’t Cal just start there? You really think Big Randy won’t put that together? He’s not stupid you know—just a pig. Just a rutting pig. He’s all over the new girls now, taking them back to the office. Even when they gotta dance! Even when the crowd is rowdy, Randy’s got ’em cooped up back there all for himself.”
    Donna and Alice used to be those girls back in the office with their razor blades and magic mirrors and stained panties landing on the floor. That’s how Randy says it. Panties. He really liked