He grimaced and picked up speed, shaking off the dream’s last traces.
At this hour, he pretty much had the sidewalks to himself. Later the dog owners would be out in full force, and the mothers taking their children to school. His route was a long oval leading first north and then west, and there were schools galore to the west.
When Micah went on his runs he never wore his glasses. He hated to feel them bobbing up and down on his nose, was why. He hated how they grew steamy when he sweated. This was unfortunate, because in the past few years his distance vision had noticeably worsened. Not that he was going blind or anything; it was just that he was getting old, as his optometrist so tactlessly put it. At night the lane markings on the streets were all but invisible, and just last week he had whacked a black spider that turned out to be a tangle of sewing thread. On the homeward stretch this morning, he made his usual mistake of imagining for a second that a certain fire hydrant, faded to the pinkish color of an aged clay flowerpot, was a child or a very short grown-up. There was something about the rounded top of it, emerging bit by bit as he descended a slope toward an intersection. Why! he always thought to himself. What was that little redhead doing by the side of the road? Because even though he knew by now that it was only a hydrant, still, for one fleeting instant he had the same delusion all over again, every single morning.
After he had put the hydrant issue behind him he slowed to a walk, panting, and set his hands at his waist in order to get more air in his lungs. He passed the Mission of Kindness and the auto-parts store; he turned onto his own street and passed the lake-trout joint and then took a right up the cracked, stubbled sidewalk leading to his building. A young man in a tan corduroy blazer was sitting on the edge of the stoop—or a boy, really, perhaps not out of his teens. “Hey,” he said to Micah, getting to his feet.
“Hey,” Micah said. He veered slightly to the left of the boy as he climbed the steps.
“Um,” the boy said.
Micah turned to look back at him.
“Do you live here?” the boy asked.
“Yep.”
This was a rich kid, Micah saw. Handsome, in that polished and privileged sort of way. Well-cut dark hair conforming to the shape of his skull, collar of his white shirt standing up in back, sleeves of his blazer pushed nearly to his elbows (a style Micah found affected). “Mr. Mortimer?” the boy said.
“Yes?”
“Mr. Micah Mortimer?”
“Yes?”
The boy raised his chin. He said, “I’m Brink Adams.”
Wouldn’t you know he’d have a name like “Brink.”
“Well, hi,” Micah said, on a tentative note.
“Brink Bartell Adams,” the boy said.
Was this supposed to mean something? The boy seemed to think so.
“How do you do,” Micah said.
“Lorna Bartell’s son.”
Micah dropped his hands from his waist. He said, “Whoa.”
Brink nodded several times.
“Lorna Bartell!” Micah said. “You’re kidding. How is Lorna, anyway?”
“She’s fine.”
“Well, what do you know,” Micah said. “I haven’t thought of Lorna in…gosh! What’s she up to nowadays?”
“She’s a lawyer,” Brink said.
Micah said, “Really. Didn’t see that one coming.”
“Why not?” Brink asked, cocking his head. “What did you imagine she’d be doing?”
Micah hadn’t given it a thought, to tell the truth. “Oh, well,” he said, “the last time I saw her she was not but a, what, a college sophomore, maybe…”
“Senior,” Brink said.
Actually, no, but Micah didn’t bother correcting him. “At any rate, I’m pretty sure she hadn’t figured out what she was going to be yet,” he said.
Brink still seemed to be waiting for something, but Micah didn’t know what. He said, “So! You live around here?”
“No, I’m just passing through,” Brink said. “I thought I’d look you up.”
“Well, isn’t that—”
“You got time for a cup of coffee or something?”
“Uh, sure,” Micah said. “You want to come inside?”
“Thanks.”
On his own, Micah would have unlocked the front door and headed straight for the basement, but that meant leading Brink through the laundry room and the furnace room, which somehow felt wrong although he couldn’t say exactly why. He came back down the steps and took the side path around to the parking lot, with Brink following close behind. “Where’s your mom living now?” Micah tossed back as they descended the outside stairwell. His voice gave off a faint echo.
“She’s in DC.”
“Is that so.”
He couldn’t remember the name of the town Lorna came from, but it was some little place in western Maryland that she had always planned to go back to after college. She had said she needed mountains around her; she liked how they softened the meeting between the land and the sky. And now look! She was a DC lawyer. Had a son with pushed-up blazer sleeves.
Micah unlocked the back door and stood aside to let Brink enter first. “I’m out of cream, I just want to warn you,” he said as they walked into the kitchen.
“That’s okay.”
Micah gestured toward one of the chairs at the Formica table, and Brink pulled it out and sat down. He was looking toward the living area beyond the kitchen. “Sorry about the mess,” Micah said. “I like to get my run out of the way first thing in the morning.”
And after that he liked to shower; already he had that itchy feeling down his back as the sweat dried. But he took the ground coffee from the cabinet and started measuring it out. His coffeemaker was an old-style electric percolator that he’d found here when he moved in. The glass knob on its top was wrapped in grayed adhesive tape that kept him from seeing inside, but it still made a good cup of coffee. He filled it with tap water and plugged it in. “You take sugar?” he asked.
“Yes, please.”
Micah set the sugar bowl on the table, along with a spoon. He sat down across from Brink.
He saw now that Brink could very well be Lorna’s son, in fact, although he wouldn’t have guessed it if he hadn’t been told. That dark hair (but hers had been long and streaming) and then those eyes, dark also and extra-pointy at the corners like a deer’s eyes. His mouth was not Lorna’s, though. It was curved at the top, dipping at the center, while hers had been straighter and firmer.