them my other arm if they could make the good one work the way it was supposed to.”
Evvie hooked her phone up to the truck stereo and put some music on.
The middle part of Maine, all the way from Bar Harbor to Portland, hangs down like stalactites that drip little islands into the Atlantic. It’s divided by rivers and harbors with cozy names that sound like brands of bubble bath or places boats sink in folk songs: Sheepscot River, Damariscotta River, Linekin Bay. Route 1 skips down the coast, ducking into tourist towns like Wiscasset and Bath and Brunswick before it almost regretfully meets up in Portland with 95, which stomps down from Bangor and Augusta a little farther inland.
As they approached Freeport, which was a little more than an hour south of Calcasset, Dean pointed at one of the signs. “Hey, we’re going past the L.L.Bean store; did you need a tent with a dog door or some boots that are rated for eighty-five degrees below zero?”
“I’ve been in that store,” she said. “It’s huge. It’s full of men who want to find themselves but will settle for getting poison ivy on their balls instead. Tim was upset they didn’t have a wedding registry.”
Dean frowned. “What kinds of wedding presents did he want to register for at L.L.Bean?”
“Sleeping bags,” she said, “and canteens and backpacks and stuff. He had just moved back up here, and he wanted us to be outdoor people, I think. It never happened. He swore at a bunch of tent poles and that was about it.”
About another hour south, they passed a billboard that said, VICTORY TATTOO NEXT EXIT 4 MILES: AWARD-WINNING INK.
“Hey, did you need an award-winning tattoo?” she asked. “We could stop off.”
“I have a tattoo,” he said.
She turned toward him. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“I got it when I signed my first contract. I was drunk, though, and even though I was out of college, it’s very high school yearbook.”
“Where is it? I mean, unless it’s—”
He grabbed the right side of his jersey with one hand and, keeping the other hand on the wheel, he yanked it up to reveal a good part of his right side. His eyes were still on the road, so he didn’t see her mouth open and then close as she took in his side, his skin, a patch of the belly that drummed against his shirt when he laughed. Something in her knees answered this with an appreciative pulse, and it came to her with bell-pealing clarity: Oh, right, she thought. Lust.
And right over his ribs, there were words inked in black, in simple type: THE DAY YOU QUIT, YOU START TO DIE. She opened her mouth, and what came out was—and one day much later, they’d both agree this was what it sounded like—“Buuuuuuuh.”
He laughed and pulled his shirt back down, almost apologetically, like she was reacting to the sentiment. “I was into longevity. I didn’t expect to set records or get rich. I just wanted to play a long time.”
“Oh. That sucks.” Surely, she thought, this could not possibly be the best she could do. But as the moment stretched on, it seemed that it was.
“Don’t get tragic,” he said. “Or I won’t show you the one on my ass that says: I HATE LOBSTER.”
“I’m not getting tragic!” she protested. “I’m listening to the story!”
“Hey,” he said with a nod in an ambiguous direction, “can you grab the address out of that pocket and put it in your phone so we can get some directions when we get closer?”
“You…want me to get the address out of your pocket?”
There was a pause, and then he frowned. “Hey. You. Mind in the gutter. The pocket in the visor up there.” He shook his head. “Out of my pocket.”
“I didn’t understand!” She laughed and pulled down the visor, which did indeed have a pocket strapped to it, and in that pocket, she found an address in Somerville, which she typed into her phone with her thumbs. “You’re the one taking your shirt off,” she muttered as the GPS located them and popped up a prediction that they had about an hour and fifteen minutes to go. “Do we know anything about this guy whose house we’re driving to?” she asked. “Do we know that he’s not going to skin us and make us into lamps?”
“My friend Corey, who I played with at Cornell, works with him at the coffin factory.”