Evvie Drake Starts Over(6)

   Andy shook his head. “I’m sorry, Dean. I wanted to call you, find out how you were. But it’s a lot easier to call Greenpoint and check with Margo.”

“You’re not funny.”

Andy grinned. “So now that you’re up here, what do you want to do?”

“Stay off the Internet,” Dean said. “Figure out what I’m going to do now that I’ve got a free, what, fifty years?”

“Any ideas yet?”

“Fuck if I know, man.” Dean stretched out his shoulder again. “I could coach, once I’m a little less famous for not knowing what I’m doing. There’s announcing, but I didn’t exactly make many friends in sports media. I’ve got money left, so I’ve got time to think about it. But I’ve been thinking about it for about a year, and I’ve gotten about as good at Overwatch as I’m going to get.”

Andy tried not to smile when he said, “Can I ask you something?”

“Yeah.”

“Is it true about Dancing with the Stars?”

“It’s true that they asked. Hey, don’t laugh. I was up for the dancing part. Did you see it when Emmitt Smith did it? Smooth as hell. But my sister-in-law watches every season, and she told me that if I did it, they were going to keep making me talk about how this was my only chance to redeem myself, and how they’d make me do a waltz while they played ‘Take Me Out to the Ball Game’ on a cello or some shit, so I told ’em no. They went and got that skater who fell in the Olympics and bled all over the ice instead. One washout’s as good as another, apparently.”

“You’re not a washout,” Andy said, putting his hand on Dean’s shoulder. “You’re a head case. It’s completely different.” They laughed, and Rose poked her head out of the playroom down the hall and hollered.

   “Dad, I can’t hear, you guys are so loud!”

“Do you need an ear cleaning? Should I bring in the garden hose? Or I think the Dirt Devil is around here somewhere,” Andy called back to her. There was more giggling, and the door slammed shut. “Awful children,” Andy said, shaking his head. “So. I put sheets on the foldout bed in the basement. I figured you can stay here for now. Tomorrow, I’ll take you over to Evvie’s. She wants to say hi, make sure you’re not violent and you don’t have a musical instrument.”

“Anything I should know?”

“About Evvie? She’s the greatest. You’ll like her. She’s a lot of fun. She’s cute; she kind of looks like…your sister.”

Dean frowned. “I don’t have a sister.”

“I’m saying she looks like everyone’s sister. Like someone’s sister.”

“Whose sister?”

“Nobody’s. She’s an only child.”

Dean shook his head. “You are not good at this.”

Andy shrugged. “Brown hair. A lot of sweaters. Brown eyes…I think.”

“Any other intel?”

“Just get her name right. As she always says, ‘Evvie like Chevy, not Evie like Max Greevey.’?”

“Who the hell is Max Greevey?”

“A cop on Law & Order. Evvie didn’t watch much TV when she was a kid, so she’s been catching up. She’s up to about 1998. She just started Dawson’s Creek.”

“Wow, old school.”

“But she’s great. She saved my life when I was first on my own with the girls. Do me a favor and don’t let her take care of you, because she’ll get completely carried away and you’ll wind up a much better person than you should be.”

“Got it. And you said she’d take $800?”

   Andy nodded. “Between you and me, I think she could use the money. The husband didn’t have life insurance.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah. I mean, whatever. You know what they say about ‘don’t speak ill of the dead or the guy your best friend married.’?”

“You two aren’t a thing? You’re not mooning about it?”

“Nope.”

“You’re both single now.”

Andy used his foot to nudge a little plastic lamp back toward the dollhouse. “Yeah, but when we met, we weren’t. And she was married until last fall. We tried to have some kind of a…moment in her doorway like six months ago. It seemed logical. I don’t know how to explain it, but it didn’t take. It was like trying to put a sex scene in the middle of one of those videos they play before your flight takes off, where they show you how to buckle a seatbelt. I think we know each other too well. Not that I’ve convinced my mom.”

“Oh, Mama Kell. Did she lose it when you got divorced?”

“She was worried that the girls might end up leaving with their mom. But when she found out they were mostly going to stay up here while Lori kinda did Lori for a while, I think she got that it was for the best.”

Dean took a drink, then tipped his head back until it rested against the chair again. “How are things with Lori anyway?” he asked in a low voice.

“They’re okay. We’re friends. Or at least friendly. She gets bored all the way up here, so she comes as far as Portland, I bring the girls down, she sees them. And she calls. She loves them.”