“Look,” he says, “I wasn’t going to say anything about how we met if that’s what you’re worried about.”
I nod my thanks. “Dude, seriously, how’d you—”
“Colin.” He says it like I’m a skittish animal he doesn’t want to freak out. Damn name tags. “I was concerned last night. It wasn’t safe for you to be wandering around that drunk in the middle of the night. I followed you to make sure you got home okay. That’s all.” He puts his hands up.
“Wait, you followed me. All the way home? I didn’t… I didn’t see you.”
“I know.”
“But wait, how’d you… did you…?” Did I talk to him and not remember it?
“There was a car parked outside your house. It had a bumper sticker for the garage on the back. I figured I’d take a chance it was yours.”
“Um.” Who the fuck would go to that much trouble for someone they don’t even know—especially someone who blew them off—unless they wanted something? Unless—oh, jeez, unless he’s one of those wannabe vigilante freaks with a superhero complex who think they have some mandate to beat up evildoers in alleys and protect the downtrodden…. I saw a movie like that once. Of course, that’s better than the alternative, which is that he’s an entirely different kind of freak.
“Listen,” he says, “can we—”
“Okay,” I say, cutting him off. “So, I’ll be in touch about your car.”
Then I hurry back to the shop before he can say anything else.
THE AXE comes down before the man has time to scream, blood splattering the barn, the hay, and the rakes that lean ominously against the wall, and I look away from the TV. I put the movie on in the background for some noise. Usually, I love horror movies and gory war movies. Tonight, though, the sounds are getting to me. Every time someone screams, I find myself looking up. I’m trying to finish the model of the DeLorean DMC-12 that I started months ago and abandoned for a while because the plasticard I got from the hardware store wasn’t setting properly and it was pissing me off. I got new sheet plastic at a hobby shop that’s malleable enough that I can dunk it in hot water and mold it around a can, secure it with rubber bands, and it’ll hold a curve without cracking.
A knock on the door startles me. It’s got to be Brian. He’s the only one who stops by unannounced.
Still, I yell, “Who is it?” at the door as the deranged killer mows down an attractive young couple with a thresher.
“Uh, me.”
I’m lucky Brian didn’t just use his key. Thank god I pretty much broke him of that habit last month when he walked in on me jerking off.
A chorus of screams and revving motors is the soundtrack to my brother grinning in the doorway, holding up a six-pack of Yuengling bombers. A few years ago we saved a bunch of those twenty-four ounce cans to be the base of a beer-can Christmas tree, moving to twelve-ouncers toward the top. It was pretty epic.
“Game’s on,” Brian says, tromping in and plopping down on my couch. He cracks open a Yuengling and tosses one to me. It’s warm. “Dude, what the fuck is this gonna be?” he asks, waving around one wing of the DeLorean’s chassis.
“Dude,” I mock, “aren’t you supposed to be a fucking mechanic? What does it look like?”
Brian, impervious and immediately bored as ever, drops it on the coffee table and changes the channel to the Penn State–Michigan game. We watch in silence for a while as Michigan pulls ahead by a touchdown. After a commercial, during which Brian explains how he could tell that the woman who brought her Accord in for an oil change wanted to sleep with him, the broadcast shows an aerial shot of Michigan stadium, teeming with maize and blue, that pulls out to include the fall leaves and artificially green grass of what must be a golf course nearby.
“Hey, Col? Do you think Daniel’s okay?”
Daniel. Our youngest brother moved to Michigan last month for an English professor job. He didn’t even tell us he was leaving until the night before he split. Which was par for the course, considering he didn’t really give a shit about any of us anyway.
“Okay, how?”
“Well, just. Michigan. Like, what do they even do there? Is it near Ann Arbor, where he is?”
“Nah, it’s north.”
“So he’s not teaching, like, at Michigan.” Brian points to the TV, and I shake my head. Brian’s never looked at a map in his life. Hell, I don’t think he’s ever been anywhere outside the Philly area except a few trips to the Jersey shore and one ill-conceived trip to New York to see a Rangers game at Madison Square Garden. He ended up getting trashed and puking into my empty popcorn bucket—well, mostly empty.