Evvie Drake Starts Over(37)

“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.”

“The coffin factory?”

“It’s not a euphemism for anything, Eveleth, it’s a coffin factory. A place where coffins are made. Apparently, Corey does handles and trim and this guy Bill does linings. And his dad, Bill’s dad, had the pinball machine that we’re going to pick up. It’s got race cars on it, you know.”

“Yes, you said.”

“I’m hoping it has a horn and a siren. You’ve got to admit, that would be pretty fucking fantastic.”

“Why would a pinball machine have a siren?” she asked.

“Probably doesn’t, but wouldn’t it be great if it did? Keep you up all night long with that,” he said. “I just like the sound of it.”

“If you’re that eager to hear a siren, I can call the police and have them pull you over.”

“Oh, big talk, Minnesota.”

“You know,” she said, “I might not know you well enough to be your navigator yet. I don’t know how much time you’ve spent around Boston, but the streets are designed to prevent anyone from successfully figuring out where they’re trying to go.”

“We’ll take our chances.” She kept her eye on the phone until it was time to wiggle the truck through the baffling, jammed, often diagonal and one-way streets of Somerville. They found the tall, slate-blue house, and Dean parked in the driveway beside it. They climbed out, and Evvie bent over and hugged the backs of her knees to stretch out her back. She followed Dean up onto the porch, where he rang the bell. The door opened, and a man with half-gray hair and a UMass sweatshirt pushed the screen open.

“Morning, sir, I’m Dean, and this is Eveleth.”

“Oh, hello, yes, I’m Bill, come on in.” Bill shook both their hands and moved aside, and they found themselves in a mostly empty living room with cardboard boxes stacked in one corner labeled GARAGE SALE 1 and GARAGE SALE 2. “Pardon the mess, we’re still working through my father’s things.”

   “Not at all,” Dean said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Thank you, Dean. It’s a pleasure to meet you, I enjoyed watching you play. If that’s all right to tell you.”

“Of course, thank you.”

“My father did, too, even if he’d sit in front of the TV and call you something not so flattering. He’d have gotten a charge out of you buying the machine.” Bill put his hands on his hips and heaved a sigh.

“Well, hopefully he got to see my last few appearances and it brought him some joy.”

Bill looked up and gave Dean what Evvie could only characterize as a full-on twinkle. “I think he saw some of it, yeah.”