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Vic frowned.

The phone was on a separate line from the one in the house. It was comically referred to as “the business line.” No one ever called them on it.

She dropped from the front seat, a good four feet to the concrete floor. She caught the phone on the third ring.

“Carmody’s Car Carma,” she said.

The phone was painfully cold. Her palm, clutching the receiver, made a pale frost halo on the plastic.

There was a hiss, as if the call were coming from a great distance. In the background Vic heard carolers, the sounds of sweet children’s voices. It was a little early for that—mid-November.

A boy said, “Um.”

“Hello? Can I help you?”

“Um. Yes,” the boy said. “I’m Brad. Brad McCauley. I’m calling from Christmasland.”

She recognized the boy’s name but at first she couldn’t place it.

“Brad,” she said. “Can I help you? Where did you say you’re calling from?”

“From Christmasland, silly. You know who I am. I was in the car,” he said. “At Mr. Manx’s house. You remember. We had fun.”

Her chest was icy. It was hard to breathe.

“Oh, f*ck you, kid,” she said. “Fuck you and your sick motherf*cking joke.”

“The reason I’m calling,” he said, “we’re all getting hungry. There hasn’t been anything to eat forever, and what’s the point of having all these teeth if you can’t use them on something?”

“Call back and I’ll put the cops on you, you deranged f*ck,” she said, and banged the phone down in the cradle.

Vic put a hand over her mouth and made a sound somewhere between a sob and a cry of rage. She bent double and shook in the freezing garage.

When she had recovered herself, she straightened, lifted the phone, and calmly called the operator.

“Can you give me the number that just rang this line?” Vic asked. “We were cut off. I want to be reconnected.”

“The line you’re on?”

“Yes. I was cut off just a moment ago.”

“I’m sorry. I have a phone call from Friday afternoon for an 800 number. Do you want me to connect you?”

“A call came in just a moment ago. I want to know who it was.”

There was a silence before the operator replied, a caesura in which Vic could make out the sounds of other operator voices speaking in the background.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have any calls to this line since Friday.”

“Thank you,” Vic said, and hung up.

She was sitting on the floor, beneath the phone, with her arms wrapped around her, when Lou found her.

“You been, like, sitting out here for a while,” he said. “Do you want me to bring you a blanket or a dead tauntaun or something?”

“What’s a tauntaun?”

“Something like a camel. Or maybe a big goat. I don’t think it matters.”

“What’s Wayne doing?”

“He snoozed off. He’s cool. What are you doin’ out here?”

He looked around the dimness, as if he thought there was a chance she might not be alone.

She needed to tell him something, make up some explanation for why she was sitting on the floor in a cold, dark garage, so she nodded at the motorcycle he had primed.

“Thinking about the bike you’re working on.”

He considered her through narrowed eyes. She could tell he didn’t believe her.

But then he looked at the motorcycle and the transfer paper on the floor beside it and said, “I’m worried I’m going to f*ck it up. You think it’ll come out okay?”

“No. I don’t. Sorry.”

He shot her a startled look. “For real?”

She smiled weakly and nodded.

He heaved a great sigh. “Can you tell me what I did wrong?”

“‘Hardcore’ is one word, not two. And your e looks like the number 8. But also, you have to write in reverse. When you stick the transfer paper on and make the copy, ‘hardcore’ is going to be backward.”

“Oh. Oh, shit. Dude. I’m such an idiot.” Lou cast her another hopeful glance. “At least you liked my skull, right?”

“Honestly?”

Lou stared at his feet. “Christ. I was hoping Tony B. would throw me fifty bucks or something for doing a good paint job. If you didn’t stop me, I’d probably have to pay him fifty for ruining his bike. Why am I not good at anything?”

“You’re a good dad.”

“It ain’t rocket science.”

No, Vic thought. It was harder.

“Do you want me to fix it?” she asked.

“You ever painted a bike before?”

“No.”

He nodded. “Well. Okay. If you f*ck it up, we’ll just say I did it. No one will be surprised. But if you kick its ass, we should tell people who really painted it. Might pull in some more jobs.” He gave her another long look, sizing her up. “You sure you’re all right? You aren’t out here pondering dark female thoughts are you?”

“No.”

“You ever think, like, you shouldn’t have quit on therapy? You’ve been through some shit, dude. Maybe you ought to talk about it. About him.”