your job I’m doing.”
Yes, and dealing with his father fell to her far too often. What he’d told Teddy yesterday was true, though. If good outcomes were what you were after, Anita was the ideal person for the job.
Hanging up, he massaged his temples with his thumbs. Had he really dreamed about Troyer last night? Somewhere between his thumbs a dark thought was coalescing.
* * *
—
IN THE SHOWER, he made a mental list of things that required his attention after Teddy and Mickey left on Monday. The place was beginning to look shabby, inside and out. Too many of the exterior shingles had transitioned from weathered to warped, and the interior walls all needed a fresh coat of paint. The wooden deck railings were going punky with rot. Anita had instructed him to make a cell-phone video of every room in the house so she didn’t have to rely on his own assessment. In her opinion he was, like most men, blind to what was right in front of his face. Lincoln supposed she was right, but in his view too many gender insults were getting lobbed in his direction of late. Whenever he was foolish enough to generalize about women, he himself could count on a chorus of outrage from his wife and daughters. So how was it that men remained fair game? More to the point, if Martin was right and the place was a teardown, the video he’d been told to make would be a waste of time. For that matter, so would a paint job and new shingles.
He was toweling off when he heard a low, throaty rumbling outside and felt the floor vibrate under his bare feet. Knowing what this heralded, he quickly pulled on gym shorts and a T-shirt and hollered to Teddy, who was out on the deck working on some manuscript.
The big Harley shuddered into silence just as Lincoln emerged. Mickey—dressed in jeans, cowboy boots and a leather jacket—pulled off his helmet and just sat there, staring off into deep space, his expression uncharacteristic, unreadable. Longing, Lincoln speculated, or regret? Whatever, it vanished so quickly when Mickey noticed him standing there that Lincoln wondered if he’d imagined it.
“Face Man,” Mickey said, breaking into his old, familiar grin.
“Big Mick on Pots,” Lincoln responded as he stepped gingerly across the gravel in his bare feet. Their old nicknames—avatars of younger selves—were a long-established ritual of greeting.
“What the hell’s wrong with you?” Mickey said, frowning. “You’re all bent over like some old man.”
“Stiff lower back,” Lincoln admitted. “I straighten up as the day goes on.”
They shook hands, Mickey still astride the Harley like he was deciding whether or not to stay. The screen door squeaked open on its rusty hinge as Teddy, dressed in a bathing suit, flip-flops and a threadbare Minerva sweatshirt, came through.
“Tedioski,” said Mickey, who had at least one nickname for everybody he knew. Others for Teddy included Teduski and Tedmarek. “So, come over here and let me have a look at you. You’re not wearing socks with your sandals, anyway.”
“You thought I would be?”
“I figured this could be the year.”
“You look the same,” Teddy said. “Or at least the sixty-six-year-old version of the same. Are you able to get off that thing, or do you just sit there looking like Brando?”
Slipping out from under his backpack, he handed it off to Lincoln, who was surprised by its weight. “What’s in here? Rocks?”
“Vodka, tomato juice, Tabasco sauce, vodka, celery and vodka,” Mickey informed him, swinging a big leg over the Harley to release the kickstand. “We had a gig last night. I didn’t get home till three.”
When he wedged his helmet under the bike’s seat, Teddy rapped it with his knuckles. “You’ve started wearing one of these at last.”
“It’s the law,” he said. “Also, there’s this.” He parted his longish rocker hair to reveal a long, angry pink scar.
“Jesus,” said Teddy, the blood draining out of his face.
Mickey chuckled, all too aware of Teddy’s lifelong horror of bodily affliction. “Anyway,” he sighed, shouldering his pack again, “it’s Bloody Mary time.” He regarded Lincoln dubiously. “You think you can make it back inside, old man, or do we need to carry you?”
“Good to see you, too, Mick,” Lincoln told him. “I can’t think of why, but it is.”
Mickey clapped him on the shoulder. “Come on. It’s the abuse you miss.”
“That must be it.”
At the door they heard a metallic groaning behind them and turned just as Mickey’s Harley lost its purchase