Everything on the Line Read Online Free PDF

Ira Spade himself, photos of many of the father’s real-life heroes, and consequently heroes of the son, too: Woody Hayes, Bobby Knight, Vince Lombardi, Pete Rose, Jimmy Connors, George Steinbrenner, and George W. Bush. At the bottom of the framed enclosure is Ira’s favorite quote, ergo Jack’s, a pithy and charmingly redundant one by former Yankees owner Steinbrenner:
    “I hate to lose. Hate, hate, hate to lose.”
    Taped on the wall on both sides of the large window are posters of the punk/funk/rap/rock/pop groups Bismuth Maiden and Piggly Wiggly.
    Most noticeably, on the wall over his bed is a quote that was blown up to 72-point type and framed neatly for Jack by Ira. The words are reputed by QB Roman Gabriel to have been said by Redskins coach and fiery competitor George Allen, regarding the roast beef sandwich he was eating at the time:
    “That roast beef is a loser. All the winners are out there, alive, walking around, eating hay.”
    Ira Spade enters the room, and Jack whistles twice, which automatically closes the Mick Jagger PodFile and stops the music.
    “Time to kill lobsters!” Ira announces.
    Jack bolts out of bed like he was shot out of a blunderbuss. The two Spades jog into the kitchen like excited schoolmarms, and awaiting them at the marble counter by the fridge is the perfect name for a rock group.
    Avis and the Three Unsuspecting Crustaceans.
    With demonic glee, Ira Spade stalks the crawling black beauties and lowers them, one by pitiful one, into the bubbling cauldron on the stove.
    “Yesssss!” he hisses with a ghoulish smile, watching them descend to their demise. Jack hisses and smiles ghoulishly, too.
    Avis, like the lobsters, endures the massacre with a silent and dignified resignation. Do her eyes deceive her, or are the poor crustaceans looking back up at her from the bottom of the pot with their beady little opaque eyes, pleading for her and her alone to save them, their last hope on their way to meeting their spiny maker? In some deep place in her soul, she is shocked and enraged by the cold-blooded crime just committed by her husband and enjoyed by her eyewitness son. It is only her abiding loyalty to Ira and her love for Jack that prevent her from shrieking “Murderers!” at them both and chasing them out of the house with her wooden salad utensils, instructing them never to darken her door again.
    Powerless to commute the sentence of the lobsters, she watches helplessly as they go gentle into that good night.
    “See how they turn that bright, beautiful red? Now ain’t that purrr-dy ?” Ira drawls to Jack.
    “Y’know,” he continues to his son, “these boys are born losers. Know why?”
    Jack does not.
    “Because like George Allen’s roast beef sandwich, when they walked right into that lobster trap, they didn’t have a clue what they were doing. Made no attempt to escape, to fight for their lives, to figure out how to survive. Now that’s what I call a real loser!”
    Jack nods obediently.
    “Now that I think about it,” Ira rants on, “if you take the b and the t out of the word lobster, what do you think you get?”
    Avis figures it out. Jack scratches his head.
    “Loser!” Ira answers, cracking himself up.
    “Yep,” he continues, “it’s win or get boiled alive. Dog eat dog. You or me, buddy. Eat or be eaten. Kill or be killed. Just remember what Darwin said, especially every time you step onto the tennis court. Survival of the fittest! He sure got that one right, ol’ Charlie did.”
    Father pats son on sturdy shoulder and son looks up and smiles obediently and mother dutifully drains lobsters and puts them on plates and tosses salads and brings all this, plus drinks and table settings and nutcrackers and those teeny lobster forks, to the dining room table, where her hungry cavemen await.
    Jack Spade is a strikingly handsome young man whose face, beneath a mop of straight black hair, features piercing brown eyes, an aquiline nose, and thinnish, bowed lips.