The Animators(69)

“Is that so.”

“It’s so.” We’ve slowed down, falling into step behind Mel and Tatum and Ryan, who are lighting Mel’s cigarettes and firing questions at her. I keep glancing at Teddy as we walk, unable to stop looking at his face. His accent falls in and out of shadow, the A’s still broad and unassuming, some of the words clipped, Midwestern-short. “So Faulkner’s own superstar artist. Have they rolled out the red carpet for you?”

“My mom fixed me beans and weenies.”

“Well, that’s something.”

Teddy’s only a few inches taller than me. My eyes fall just short of his Adam’s apple. I steal looks at it as we match pace. I feel him sneaking looks at me, too, fiddling with his little gold wire-rims, rubbing his five-o’clock shadow. He moves like one of those men who spent his adolescence with arms and legs too big for his body: slow, deliberate. He’s got a great mouth. Pink and even. We’re circling each other. What happened to you? How did you grow up?

I’m trying my best not to limp. “Do you ever miss Faulkner?” I ask him.

He grins. “Not really. Is that bad to say? My mom moving me up here was one of the best things that could have happened. I guess I didn’t have much of a choice at the time, but it was completely for the best. Louisville is home.” I feel him hesitate. “I already had this kind of, you know, sense of Faulkner. Like, kind of knowing that if I stuck around, the FFA guys were going to beat the hell out of me in high school? I didn’t really fit into the scheme of things.”

“I can relate.”

“I’ll bet you can.” He looks me over now with open curiosity. Bruised, beaten, and from the past; it makes me feel self-conscious, a little exotic. He sighs and squints in thought. “Let’s see. I moved here three days before I started the sixth grade.”

“I remember. It ruined middle school for me. Broke my heart.”

“Oh, mine too. I went through some solid Sharon withdrawal. Who else was going to force me to watch Liquid Television over and over?”

I bite my lip, hug myself. He remembers.

“So that’s been about twenty years. I think that’s right. Almost twenty years I’ve lived here, minus the four I spent in Lexington.”

“You went to UK?”

“I did.”

“I almost did, too,” I say. “But Ballister happened. The chance to put that many miles between me and my family was too good to pass up.”

“I read about you going to Ballister. That’s great.”

I feel my face heat. “You read about it?”

“I looked you up online, back in the day. Before Google. I Yahooed you. I Ask Jeevesed you. Does that creep you out?”

“It makes me glad.” I lean in a little. He’s wearing a wool jacket. I smell aftershave, smoke. I have to force myself to lean back. “They had a great art department back then. Still do. It’s how I met Mel. That’s where we started working together.”

“And you ended up in New York.” He looks to me again. I tuck my chin down and smile. He nods leisurely, hands stuffed in pockets. “Had you pegged for a New Yorker,” he says.

“How so?”

He shrugs. Squints ahead of us. “I dunno. Let’s call it self-preservation. You seem tough. That rough chuckles thing you and Mel have going on. Seems very big-city. Especially to rubes like us.” He looks to me and his smile grows wider, goofier. It is unspeakably appealing when he turns on his dumb look, his put-on hillbilly face. The way he stretches out the word rubes. Is he flirting? I slip in another glance. Nah. Probably not.

“So how did you end up at the video store?” I ask him.

“I’m a film major who never made any films. See? It wasn’t as useless as some might think, watching all the TV we did. You went the way of Liquid Television, and I went the way of—shit. I dunno. Monstervision? Stolen HBO? Something stuck for us, is what I’m saying. Something constructive.”

“I like to think so.”

“Me too. So I took a few business classes, climbed up the ranks to Manager Extraordinaire, then bought part of it out. We’re surviving. Getting at the stuff so obscure you can’t find it online. Putting on events. I figure the niche market’s safe, for a while.” He removes his hands from his pockets, twiddles them in the air. “Very grandiose, I know.”

“That’s great,” I say. “You’re a business owner.”

He leans back and squints at me. “You look great for a stroke patient.”

I run my hand over my head. “Heh heh.”

“I just mean,” he says hastily, “my mom had a stroke a few years back—a minor one—but it was enough to make her look pretty rough for a while.”

“Is she okay now?”

“Oh yeah. Lives in a condo with her new husband. Goes to Florida a couple times a year. She blames the stroke on my dad. The stress he caused her. I let her have that one. I mean, she’s not wrong.”

“I remember your mom,” I say. “Blond. Pretty. Drove something with a drop top.”

“It was a Buick Reatta.”

“Holy crap. It was. And it was red.”

“Aren’t they always red? It’s no good as a memory unless it’s red.”