“Back at you,” I said. It was freezing in there, they must have already cut off the utilities. She had on a red turtleneck and fleece type boots that looked like they’d come from the sheep to her feet with minimal processing. One of those overly colorful knitted hats with the earflaps and yarn braids hanging down. “Your pipes could freeze,” I said. “Want me to build you a fire?”
She set down the box and frowned at the castle-size fireplace. We’d tried roasting marshmallows in there as kids, and it never ended well. “Nah. Let’s not burn the place down till I’ve got the cash in hand.”
She stood there sizing me up, as people did now. I looked taller than I would ever feel.
“On the other hand,” she said, “I’d better get some free labor out of you. Before you sell your book and get too famous for me to talk to. How’s Annie, by the way?”
“Oh crap.” I’d learned from Mr. Armstrong that it was not a false alarm, and I should stay tuned. A call had come in while I was driving, that rolled over to messages. I read it now, aloud: Woodie Guthrie Amato Armstrong. Seven pounds, one ounce, twenty-two inches.
“Seriously.” Her mouth shifted completely to one side, my favorite of all her smirks. I’d borrowed it for my character Bernie. If Angus noticed, she never said. “Are they too old to know what that’s going to be like, a little boy going to school with the name Woodie?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I said. “By age five he’ll be going by something else.”
“Like Hard-On.”
“Exactly.”
Another pause. We were a cold engine, not perfectly hitting.
“Nice hat.”
She pulled it off and looked at it. “Right? I bought it off a guy on the street in Nashville.” Set free, her hair sprang into action, somehow girlier than it used to be. We were standing in the exact places where we’d first met. I felt reckless, like setting something on fire for real.
“Remember the first day I came here? And thought you were a boy?”
The smirk shifted. “Angus, ‘like the cattle.’”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you let me go on like that, the whole day? You could have just said.”
She stopped smiling. “Late in the day to start asking now.”
I sensed myself picking a fight. The kind that helps you break up with somebody, evidently. “Right. I forget these things. How you always have to be queen of all the bees.”
The gray eyes went through several changes of weather before they settled. “Can you not think at all about how that was for me? I had no say in the matter. Some kid I’ve never met is moving in with us. Coach is finally getting his boy.”
“So you’re going to roll out the idiot carpet.”
She shrugged. “It wasn’t planned, it just happened. I remember thinking, maybe this is my chance. Like we’d get along better as brothers or something.” She stared, waiting for me to catch up. “Being a girl in this house never got me anyplace great, you know?”
And I’d missed it all. The evil red eyes of U-Haul on her little girl body, her dad’s neglect, one root cause. And then came me, regaling her with my conquests. “Damn,” I said. “I’m sorry for all that. You were the brother of all brothers. Or sister, you pick. A-team.”
She smiled, but it was empty. “We missed you at the hootenanny last night.”
“You didn’t even know I was in town.”
“I did actually. June Peggot told me. And then you didn’t show up. I figured you’d blow in and out of town without saying hello.” She bent over to pick up her box. But I caught the thing in her eyes she was trying to hide.
“I wouldn’t do that.” I almost had.
I asked her if I could take a last look around the house. Really just to calm down. I went upstairs to the beanbag lounge, now a blank space with a stained ceiling. Came back downstairs and found her in Coach’s old office, sitting on the floor with paper piles spread in a complete circle around her, trying to figure out once and for all what needed to be saved. I asked about her job and she told me some about it, in-school services for kids that were wound too tight.
“Miss Betsy said you’re lighting out again for more school. For doctor or something.”
“Social worker. I’ve already lit out, technically. It’s a nonresidency thing, you do a lot of the coursework online. I’ll only have to be there in person a few months at a time.”
“In Nashville?”
“Kentucky.”
I thought with a full heart of Viking and Gizmo. I took files she handed me and put them in a trash box. Getting up my nerve. “So. Miss Betsy tells me you’ve set your cap for some guy.”
She gave me the longest, strangest look. So I changed the subject, trying to think of respectful questions to ask her about social work. Would it be in mental hospitals or what. She said her main interest was kids. Abusive situations, incarcerated parents. I said no shortage in the supply around here, and she said that’s what she was thinking. Job security.
“You mean you’re planning on staying. Here.”
She nodded. “And it sounds like you’re not. You could be a famous cartoonist from anyplace, you know. We got us some real broadband in these parts now.”
“That’s all I’ve been thinking about for the last day and a half. It’s all I want, but I can’t picture it. Staying here as, you know. Who I am now. How do you even do it?”
“I don’t know. Day at a time? You just do what needs to be done.”
“But you’re god material, Angus. Not like the rest of us. You know that, right?”
Those manga eyes. Was it really possible she didn’t?
Back in the day, we never touched each other. Ever. The rule was hard and fast. But something made me reach over and open her right hand. I drew a heart on it, closed it up, and handed the fist back to her. “I’m sorry, god-dess material. There was never any confusion in my mind, after that first snafu. Just so you know.”
She called it quits on the papers and turned to a box of massively tangled resistance bands. Blew out her breath and lay back on the floor. “Fuck this shit. I don’t guess you know anybody that could use a truckload of heavily used sports equipment.”
“I might, actually.” I was thinking of Chartrain’s teammates. Legless Lightning.
She sat up. “Then I hope you’re driving a huge motherfucking vehicle.”
“Pretty small. But she’s a cutie-pie. Want to come outside and see?”
“You and your cutie-pies.” She shoved the box at me. “Take this out to the trash pile for me. First mountain on your left, can’t miss it. I’ll be out there in a sec.”
Outside it had gotten colder, not even yet noon. I stood watching my steamy breath come out of my mouth, which I took to mean I was still alive on the inside. Snow started to fall, just a little spit here and there. I lit a cigarette. Thirty seconds later she came out, and I hid the smoking gun behind my back. She laughed and said she was telling Coach. And then we were okay. We studied the giant pile of crap she’d hauled out of there. I told her where she could get a railroad-car-size roll-off for three hundred dollars. She checked out the Beretta and said of course I would have a car that’s the color of the ocean. I hadn’t even thought of that.
“Did you ever get to see it? After the tragically aborted early attempt?”
Two attempts. The school-trip rout at Christiansburg she meant. I’d never told her much about the Richmond-Mouse debacle. I finished my Camel and ground out the butt. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Okay, that’s a no. But it’s still out there. Just so you know.”
“Do tell?”
“Yessiree Bob. You can take that one to the bank.”
“I’ll have to take your word on that. Given the college degree.”
For a minute the sun came out, while it was snowing. People say that means the devil is beating his wife. Then the snow stopped, which I took to mean she was leaving the bastard. I asked Angus what she and Coach were doing for Christmas.
She gave me a funny look, chin pulled back. “What Christmas. That was all your doing.”
“But you seemed so into it. Am I wrong?”