The second Friday came in with the same orange light and the same smell of gasoline and grilled onions, but Evelyn felt the difference before she switched off the Heritage. The lot was fuller, the music louder, and a knot of younger riders had taken the spaces nearest the door, their new chrome throwing the light back in hard white flashes. She rode past them slowly, the way Ray had taught her to ride past anything that wanted her attention, and parked in the far corner, in the same space as the week before.
She switched off the engine, took off her helmet, and stood beside the old black motorcycle while the lot laughed around her.
Inside, Murphy was behind the scarred oak bar, wiping a glass. He looked up, and his face did the small, private thing it had done the week before, a softening around the eyes that was not quite a smile. He had known the bike before he knew the woman, and now he knew them both.
Evening, Evelyn, he said.
Evening, Murphy, she said, and took her usual stool at the end of the bar, where she could see the door and the lot beyond it.
Ray was already there, nursing a beer he had barely touched, a basket of onion rings going cold because he had waited for her before eating them in earnest. He was sixty-three, patient and funny, a former mechanic who had spent a lifetime fixing things other people had given up on, and his face lit up when he saw her.
You came, he said.
I said I would, she said.
How was the week?
Numbers, she said, and he laughed, because he knew what the accounting office did to a week. She laughed too, because the sound surprised her a little less than it had four years ago, when laughter had still felt borrowed.
Evelyn told him about a small rattle on the way over, high and thin, that vanished when she eased off the throttle. Ray listened with his whole attention and said he would look at it on Sunday. She believed him.
It was after eight when the door opened and the younger group came in, loud enough that conversation at the bar paused for a beat. Cody Reyes led them, in new leather that still creaked, his smile already switched on for an audience. Jake Miller followed with his phone in his hand, and Luis Vega and Brent Hall brought up the rear, carrying their helmets like trophies. They took the big table near the windows, ordered beer, and laughed too loudly at jokes Evelyn could not hear.
She kept her eyes on her coffee. Murphy had poured it without being asked, and the cup was warm in both her hands.
Jake went outside first, ostensibly to smoke, and came back with his phone held up, saying something to Cody that made Cody turn in his chair. Then the whole table turned, and they were all on their feet, drifting toward the door in a loose, laughing group, the way young men drift toward anything that might give them a story to tell later.
Evelyn finished her coffee and looked at Ray.
They're going to look at the bike, Ray said.
I know, Evelyn said.
You don't have to go out there.
I know that too, she said, and stood up and went out, because Daniel's note had not said to hide, and because the bike in the far corner was hers to stand beside, and because she had spent two years behind a closed garage door and did not intend to spend another evening behind a bar door.
The circle around the Heritage was already formed. Cody stood at its centre, one hand on the fuel tank. Jake held his phone up, filming. Luis stood a little back, smiling, and Brent stood further back, arms crossed.
Well, look at this, Cody said, loud enough for the lot to hear. "The museum piece made it back. I thought for sure we'd be pushing it home last week."
A laugh went around the circle, quick and practised. Jake laughed loudest. Luis laughed a fraction of a second later, as if he had waited to hear whether the joke was safe.
Twenty-nine years old, Cody went on, tapping the tank with one knuckle. The sound was small and hard, and Evelyn heard it in her teeth. "My granddad had a bike like this. He retired it. Put it in a shed. Grew tomatoes around it, I think."
Maybe it runs on nostalgia, Jake said.
Maybe it runs on polish, Cody said. "Somebody loves this thing. Look at the chrome. Somebody's been out here with a rag like it's a baby."
Evelyn stepped into the circle. She did not push anyone aside. She walked to the bike, took the soft cloth from her jacket pocket, and began to polish the chrome on the front fork, slowly, in small circles, the way Daniel had done it summer after summer while she watched from the garage doorway.
The circle went quiet. Not silent. Quiet in the way a place goes quiet when someone does something unexpected and nobody is quite sure what the rules are any more.
What year is it? Cody asked, a challenge in it, and a curiosity underneath that he would have denied if anyone had named it.