Full Tilt. Rick Mofina

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       Epilogue

       Acknowledgments

       Endpage

       Copyright

1

      Rampart, New York

      The old burial grounds.

       Nobody ever goes out there.

      Chrissie was uneasy about her boyfriend’s birthday wish to “do it” there.

      “That place gives me the creeps, Robbie.”

      “Come on, babe. Think of it as your first time with an eighteen-year-old man, and our first time in a graveyard. How cool is that?” Robbie sucked the last of his soda through his straw, then belched. “Besides, we’ve done it everywhere else in this dog-ass town.”

      Sad but true. There was not much else to do here.

      Rampart was a tired little city in Riverview County, at the northern border of New York. It was home to small-town America—flag-on-the-porch patriots, fading mom-and-pop shops, a call center for a big credit card company, a small Amish community and a prison.

      The way Chrissie saw it, all people in Rampart did was work, get drunk, have sex, bitch about life and dream of leaving town.

      Except maybe the Amish, she thought—they seemed content.

      Chrissie and Robbie had been together for two-and-a-half years. Now, as they sat in his father’s Ford Taurus waiting for the light, she contemplated the dilemma facing them.

      She’d been accepted at a college in Florida. Robbie didn’t want her to go. He was getting a job at the prison and was talking about marriage. Chrissie loved Robbie but told him she was not going to stay and be a Rampart prison guard’s wife, working at the mall, driving her kids everywhere while trying not to hit the Amish buggies.

      Chrissie wouldn’t be leaving for a couple of months, but Robbie avoided talking about it. He lived in the moment. That was fine, but sooner or later she would have to end it with him.

      But not tonight. Not on his birthday.

      The light changed and they rolled by the Riverview Mall. Its vast parking lot was deserted