Betting Blind (3 page)

“Sure.” Mom’s eyes were twinkling. “‘Love, bittersweet, irrepressible, loosens my limbs and I tremble.’ That’s Sappho.”

I knew it was Sappho. I’d heard it before, every time Mom found a new guy. Mom would go online and look through quote websites for hours, and when she found one she liked, she’d write it down in this cheesy book with an angel on the cover. Once I told her that a quote only counts if you read the book it came from, and she got mad at me. We’re not supposed to talk about how we both suck at reading.

Mom disappeared, and a second later she was back with her purse. “Be a gentleman and pay for her food.” She handed me the keys and a twenty.

“Thanks.” I took the money, but I felt bad. Phil was so stingy, he didn’t give Mom enough for any extras. Kyle’s offer flew through my head again.

“Have fun!” Mom stood aside to let me down the stairs.

Fun? Weirdly, I was hoping for something more than that, although I wasn’t exactly sure what.

The concert was in Fisher Pavilion at Seattle Center, where they hold all the free concerts for Winterfest. I got there early so I could grab a seat in front. I wanted Irina to see me the whole time. My plan was to ask her to get coffee after. I thought she might try to talk about music, so while I was waiting, I looked up a big-time classical music blog (according to Technorati) called
The Rest Is Noise
.

I couldn’t concentrate on my phone’s tiny screen, so I gave up after reading a blurb about some Chinese dude, Lao Ping, who was rocking the classical music world with his
passionately lyrical performances
. Good enough.

I had a reality-check moment.
Am I seriously memorizing comments about classical music?
Then Irina walked onstage with the rest of the musicians. She was wearing a white button-down shirt and black skirt, very professional-looking and mad hot. As she sat down, she smiled at me, and in that one second she made up for the music homework.

The concert I mostly ignored. Whoever invented the drums did the world a giant favor. But Irina did play awesome, if you like that kind of thing: passionate, fingers flying, bow jumping. Watching her, I wished I was good at something.

I’m not, though. Or if I am, it’s stuff that doesn’t count: Playing poker. Getting girls’ numbers. When I was a kid, skipping rocks. Seriously, that’s all I can think of.

The concert went on for a freaking ice age, and the whole time I was getting more and more nervous about what I’d say to Irina, and whether I even had a chance; because after that smile, she didn’t really look my way again. In fact, she seemed to be staring at a different part of the audience, and I had this horrible thought that maybe there was some other guy, but I checked and everyone was like sixty.

Finally the concert finished. I waited around, pretending to check out the booklet they gave me, while the audience broke up and drifted out the doors. She’d come through, wouldn’t she? I didn’t want to seem like I was watching the stage . . .

Then I heard a voice behind me. “Hey, you came.”

I whipped around, and she was standing there with her coat on, holding her violin box. I said, “Yeah, you played really good.”

“Thanks.” She stared at me curiously. Her face was so delicate: thin nose, tilted eyes with light brown lashes, smooth blond hair.

“You want to get a coffee?”

She looked over her shoulder, then back at me. “Okay. A quick one.”

“Are you here with someone? Your parents?”

“Yeah, my dad’s here. But he’s talking with his friends, and he’ll probably take a while.”

I looked past her at a bunch of older guys in suits standing in a circle. I sure hoped the six-foot-five bulldog-looking one wasn’t her dad. “We can go right there if you want.” I nodded toward Starbucks at the other end of the pavilion.

“Okay,” Irina said. I could see all the other guys watching her as we walked over to Starbucks. Guys think they’re sly, but their eyes do this obvious tracking thing. It made me proud.

We got drinks and sat down at one of the rickety metal tables by the stage. Irina pulled back her blond hair and snapped on a rubber band. She did everything fast and confident, even putting back her hair. Her hands were tiny and pretty and . . . man, I had it bad. I wanted to skip the getting-to-know-you and lean in and kiss her perfect mouth.

“You played like Lao Ping. Really intense but lyrical,” I said.

She grinned. “Have you been reading Alex Ross’s blog? ’Cause it’s funny, he said the same thing yesterday.”

My face heated up. Why was I so stupid? Of course she read that blog, too. “Yeah,” I admitted, fiddling with a straw wrapper on the table.

She gave me a hard look—but not unfriendly. “Gabe, do you really like classical music? Or was this whole thing just a way to get my number?”

Damn.
The flush was getting worse.
Called out to the billionth power.
I had a feeling if I lied, she’d see right through me. And besides, I didn’t want to lie to her. “No, I’m not really that into it,” I mumbled. “But I don’t hate it or anything.”

She laughed. “I knew it. Thanks for sitting through that whole concert.”

“You were good! Seriously! I like classical music if you’re playing it.”

She gave me a really nice smile, and I could tell she wasn’t mad.

“I saw a bunch of your YouTube videos,” I said. “You’re like a prodigy, huh?”

The smile dropped off her face. “No, I’m not.”

“That wasn’t you?”

Her cheeks were getting pink. “It was me, but I’m not a prodigy. A prodigy is a genius.
Mozart
was a prodigy.”

“Okay, you’re not a prodigy. How’d you get so good, though?” I asked her.

She took a sip of coffee. “If you spend six hours a day doing something, you get pretty good at it.”

“Six hours a
day
?” I couldn’t imagine doing anything for that long, except sleeping.

“Yeah, two years ago I started homeschooling, which means every day I practice for six hours and then study for two hours with a music master.”

“That’s kind of . . . insane,” I said. “What about schoolwork?”

She shrugged. “No offense, but my parents think school in this country is a joke. I have my GED, and I’m going to a music conservatory instead of college anyway, so it doesn’t really matter.”

I put my elbows on the table. “What do you mean ‘school in this country’? What country are you from?”

“Well, I was born here, but I’m Russian.”

I looked at her almond eyes and perfect white skin, and yeah, of course she was Russian. That’s where all the models came from. “Cool,” I said. “So were your parents born in Russia?”

“My mom is from Petersburg, and my dad is second generation, but his dad was from Krasnodar.” Irina made her voice deep, with a heavy accent. “Irinushka, ze job of true Rossians ees to breeng great art into ze vorld. Ve understand sorrow and passion, and so ve are ze voice of beauty. Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Pasternak, Barishnikov, Akhmatova . . . Thees are your people.”

I cracked up. She sounded exactly like an old Russian dude.

She looked pleased. “That’s my grandpa.”

“So your job is to bring art into the world?”

She nodded and her eyes got a little gleam, and I saw that she totally believed it. And I believed it, too—she was that good. “That’s what Russians do,” she said proudly.

A couple sarcastic comments about the
other
things Russians do, like run violent mobs and have screwed-up political systems, jumped into my head, but it’s not like I knew that much about it, so I kept my mouth shut. Note to self: don’t bash hot girl’s country.

“So, what are you into?” she asked, looking at me over her cup. “What kind of work do you want to do?”

It was weird to me that she connected those two questions, like they had something to do with each other. It was depressing that I didn’t have an answer for either one. I took a swig of coffee to buy time.
Sorry, no talents, no future, and no plans except finding enough cash to buy a decent car. Feel free to leave whenever.

“I’m into . . . science. I’m going to be a doctor, probably.”
Oh crap, did I really say that?
There should have been a big red lie alarm on my head, flashing like crazy.

She tilted her head to the side and said, “Wow, that’s really cool. What kind of doctor?”

“A pediatrician.” It was the first thing I thought of.

She looked sort of mushy. “That’s so sweet. You love kids?”

I nodded, making my lie alarm explode into pieces, because the truth is, I think kids are noisy little grease monkeys who can screw up a perfectly good day just by being around. At least Jason, my neighbor, can, and he’s the only kid I know.

“I do, too. I want to have like ten of them,” she confessed.

Any other girl and I swear I would have found a way to end the date right there, but I smiled at her and said, “Me, too,” and for half a second I actually meant it, because, in my head, it was somehow connected with getting to sleep with her ten times.

“Russians don’t do that, though,” she went on. “It’s seen as tacky to have more than one or two. But I always wanted a big family, or at least a sister. It’s too much pressure, being the only one. It’s like your parents don’t have anything to focus on except you.”

I was an only kid and my mom wasn’t too “focused” on me, but I didn’t want to admit it. I changed the subject. “So if you’re homeschooled, who do you hang out with?”

She gave an awkward laugh. “Nobody, really. My best friend, Anya, moved to New York last year, and when I stopped going to school, I sort of lost touch with people. Besides, there’s not that much time left over after violin practice.” She paused, and her brown-gold eyes met mine. “And I’m a freak.”

“No, you’re not,” I said.

“How would you know?”

I didn’t have an answer for that. She was a music genius, and she was homeschooled. Those two things alone equaled freak.

“Well, then you’re a cool, beautiful freak.” For a second, I was scared it came out insulting, but she smiled. “You just spend too much time working,” I went on. “You’re a teenager. You’re supposed to have fun.” I held her eyes, and she didn’t look down like most girls would. “You want to come to a party with me Friday night?”

The second I asked, a bunch of reasons why this was
not
a good idea rushed through my head, such as I wanted to check out this Becky girl who supposedly liked me. And I wanted to keep Irina to myself; I didn’t want rich boys scoping her.

“Okay,” said Irina. But then her face kind of froze. She stood up.

“What?” I said, turning around.

Damn. The six-foot-five bulldog had broken off from the circle and was marching over. He had those piercing Russian eyes and five o’clock shadow that would break a razor, and he was wearing a black suit. He seriously looked like a Mob boss.

“I’ll text you about the party,” Irina said quickly. She grabbed her violin and practically jogged toward him.

CHAPTER THREE

S
tupid idiot.
That’s what I was for asking Irina out without making sure the car situation was handled. Turned out Mom needed the car that night. She and a bunch of her middle-aged-going-on-nineteen buddies from White Center had a book club—except, according to Mom, none of them actually read the books. They just got drunk and talked trash about their exes.

Anyway, “book club” was the night of Morton’s party, and I was supposed to pick up Irina at her place. The cool thing to do would be to just show up, and hell with what she thought . . . but my ride was one of those messed-up toy cars that Europeans drive. It was fourteen years old. Its bumper was held on by duct tape. I had to squeeze to fit into the seat, because Europeans are midgets. And the car stank like dog, and the upholstery looked like the dog had cheese graters for paws.

Back in White Center, I was kind of a hero for driving it. All my friends called me “Claude the French Pimp” and pretended I ran a call-girl service out of my ride. But in Redmond it was just a piece of crap. And by the way, I didn’t buy it; I won it from a meth-head vet in Scrappy’s Pool Hall.

I wasn’t going within ten miles of Irina in that thing. So it was either make her drive herself, which wasn’t an option, because she texted
Pick me up Sat at 8
with her address, or rent a car. The problem was cash. I’d just cleaned out my savings buying a new laptop and I had only fifty bucks left. A decent rental plus insurance and gas would easily be seventy. I also needed extra money in case Irina wanted to go out after the party. There was a place I could generally find some, but it wasn’t exactly risk-free. Still, it was the only way I knew to get quick cash, aside from stealing.