I set my crutch against the side rail of our lane and stationed myself at the top of the ramp. Dane sat in the plastic chair next to mine with one arm along the back, which put his hand approximately six inches from my shoulder, and Sable lay between his foot and mine.
“You go first, Chip,” Walker said.
I’d never gone first. The youngest person at the table goes first. That was a rule from my brother. I’d been raised on rules,but I could break this one because of my knee, so I guess it was all good.
“Okay.”
I lined up the ball, aimed at the second arrow from the right, and let it go.
The ball hit the pins and knocked down nine.
“Strike,” Taft said.
“That was nine,” I corrected.
Taft shrugged, “Nope, it’s a strike for the man with the brace; that’s the rule.”
“That is not the rule, Taft.”
“It is now.”
Dane laughed, and I couldn’t fully concentrate on my second roll because of it, and I threw a gutter ball.
Bob bowled next—granny-style, with two hands between his legs—and rolled an absolute house of a strike. Arnaud’s technique was neater. Taft bowled cautiously. Finn threw gutters until Walker stood behind him, put a hand on his hip, and corrected his stride. Then Finn rolled a strike, turned, and kissed Walker on the mouth in front of Strike Zone and the kid named Evan at the shoe counter, who could see lane fourteen from where he stood.
Evan kept his face neutral. I appreciated him even more.
It was Dane’s turn next, throwing a six and a two and shrugging at me as if he didn’t care about the score. I watched how his shoulder rolled as he came back to the seat, and I sat on my hands to stop myself from touching him.
By ten o’clock, the art guys were drifting. Walker and Finn had a cab, and Arnaud was driving Taft.
Bob stopped me at the door. “I’ll wait in the car.”
Dane was waiting for me in the lobby.
“Walk you out?” he said.
“Uh huh.”
The parking lot had filled in around us. The snow had stopped. The asphalt was wet where the salt had eaten it and crusty where it hadn’t. Sable kept tight to my left because the lot was busy with people. I hooked my crutch under my arm and went slowly, and Dane went slowly with me to row three where he’d parked his dark blue Ford Escape. It had one of those magnetic firehouse decals on the back panel that you could tell he’d taken off and stuck back on so many times as the corner had bent.
“Thanks for tonight,” he said. “I had fun.”
“Walker likes you,” I blurted.
“You think so?”
“His shoulder dropped when you shook his hand. That happens when he likes someone within three seconds. Within five, his jaw goes loose. Both happened with you.”
He looked at me for a second. It was the look he had in the back of the ambulance, the one he had at the cupcake box, and the one he had when he opened his front door last night and found me on the wrong stoop. It was a look I’d seen four times now and was beginning to recognize. He was interested enough to want to know more about the way I saw things, and warmth flooded me.
“You always read people like that?” he said.
“I read systems. People are systems.”
“Am I a system?”
“You are a system.”
