Johansen said, “does he pull that shit with the Lincoln Logs story all the time?”
“What?” Edward Everett said, his tone perhaps sharper than he intended.
“You know. ‘My daddy told me he got me something and I thought it was Lincoln Logs’ and all that crap.”
“Oh,” Edward Everett said. “Yes.”
So, Edward Everett thought, I’m nothing more than collateral damage. He wondered how much longer he needed to stay. He pictured himself on the drive back to the airport hotel, defeated, someone who belonged in the slow lane, a frightened old man confused in traffic. What would he do now? He saw himself as Johansen surely must: gray, balding, fleshy, not much different from the lost old men that Edward Everett saw in supermarkets, lame men slumped in motorized shopping carts, straining to reach the canned soup on the higher shelves.
“So, look—” Johansen began. The door from the wraparound porch opened and Johansen stopped speaking. A woman was saying, “… have Dr. Tao look at his fetlock.”
“I hope it’s all right,” said another woman. “It’s so soon after you had to put down Falcon. I shouldn’t have taken that jump.”
“You’ve done it a hundred times,” said the first woman. “I’m sure—” The women stopped at the entrance to the room. In the dimness, they seemed to be twins, both slight, not much over five feet tall, their hair done in identical shoulder-length braids. “I’m sorry,” the first woman said. “I didn’t realize anyone was here.”
Johansen stood and Edward Everett did as well. “Mother, Joni,” Johansen said as the two women came into the room, their boots clacking on the stone floor.
“I’m Syl Johansen,” the first woman said, and as they came nearer, Edward Everett could tell they were not, in fact, twins. While the first woman was clearly older than he was, perhaps in her mid-seventies, the younger woman was no more than thirty. Syl extended her hand to shake Edward Everett’s, her grip much stronger than he would have expected from someone so tiny.
“I’m Ed Yates,” he said dully, not wanting to but nonetheless thinking of the money she had.
Syl cocked her head to one side. “Like the Irish poet or the American novelist?”
“I’m sorry?” Edward Everett said. “I don’t—”
“Ed manages for us up in Iowa,” Johansen said.
“Oh,” Syl said, giving the younger woman a look that clearly suggested the answer Johansen had given had immediately moved Edward Everett from one category, “men who were interesting,” to another, “men for whom she had no use.”
“Mother thinks of you as something like a two-legged polo pony,” Johansen said.
“I do not,” Sylvia said.
“Your words, Mother,” Johansen said, adding a wink, as if Edward Everett were now part of a conspiracy he didn’t fully understand. “As far as Mother is concerned, I live in two worlds. There’s my old world, working for my grandfather’s company, and there’s my new world, where I deal with two-legged polo ponies. Ed, sorry to say, you’re part of the second.”
“Stop it,” Sylvia said. “Mr. Yates, I don’t know what my son is—”
“Last month,” Johansen said, “at the Bridle Boutique—that’s B-R-I-D-L-E, as in horses, it’s a fund-raiser for abused equines—those things always have such clever—”
“I’m sorry,” Edward Everett interrupted, no longer masking his anger over being caught in a game between Johansen and his mother just when Johansen was about to tell him he was finished. “I’m sorry, but I think I’m just going to go.”
“I don’t understand—” Johansen said.
“I didn’t fly all the way here to lose my job and be made the butt of a joke.”
“Lose your job?” Johansen said.
“Marc, did you fly this man all the way—” Joni said.
“Good Lord, Ed,” Johansen said, laying a hand on Edward Everett’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t have flown you here to tell you I was letting you go.”
“He’s too much of a coward for that,” Sylvia said.
“Syl, you promised,” Joni said. “Mr. Yates, I apologize for my mother-in-law’s rudeness, interrupting your business with my husband.”
“Business?” Sylvia snapped. “The company his grandfather started is business. This is a hobby.”
Her daughter-in-law took her arm firmly. “Enough,” she said, sharply, pulling Sylvia with her out of the room.
“Joan, this is …” Sylvia began to say, but whatever this was, Edward Everett did not hear because they were soon beyond earshot.
“Please,” Johansen said, his voice soft, perhaps even penitent. “Sit down and hear me out. I wasn’t going to fire you. I was going to ask you if you wanted a job.”
By the time he left Johansen, it was dark, nearly nine p.m. As