He poured coffee into two chipped mugs, and they sat at the bench, and for a while they talked about Daniel. Frank told her about the first ride they had taken together, twenty years ago, when Daniel had ridden too fast into a bend and come out laughing. Evelyn told him about the garage, the tools, the frozen calendar, and the note under the seat. Frank listened, and when she finished he said, very quietly, "He knew you, Ev. He knew exactly what would happen, and he wrote it down anyway, because he knew you'd find it when you were ready."
Evelyn looked at her coffee. The steam rose in a thin ribbon. "I found it four years ago," she said. "I opened the garage. Grace drove me. I sat on the floor for an hour and stared at four words."
Don't let fear win, Frank said, and it was not a question.
Yes, she said. "And I learned to ride. Ray taught me. In a church parking lot. I stalled, and I fell, and I got up, and I learned."
I know, Frank said. "Ray told me. He was proud of you. He still is."
They sat for a while in the quiet of the shop, with the motorcycle on the lift and the photographs on the wall, and Evelyn felt the weight of the week settle a little, the way a weight settles when you put it down in the right place, even for a few minutes.
I came because of the bike, she said at last. "There's a scratch on the tank. A key scratch. It happened at Murphy's, on Friday. Nobody saw it happen, or nobody will say they saw it. Murphy's camera doesn't reach the corner."
Frank listened. He did not frown. He did not raise his voice. He listened the way a man listens when he is hearing something he has heard before, in other towns, in other lots, about other bikes, and has learned that the first thing to do is to listen all the way to the end.
There's a group, Evelyn went on. "Young men. They call themselves the Night Riders. The leader is Cody Reyes. He's been mocking the bike for three weeks. He tapped the tank. He laughed. He said it ought to be retired. I don't know that he made the scratch. I didn't see him make it. But I know the scratch wasn't there when I arrived, and it was there when I left."
Frank nodded, slowly. "Cody Reyes," he said. "I know the name. I know his kind. Loud, and new, and angry at something he hasn't named yet."
Evelyn looked up. "You know him?"
I know of him, Frank said. "His brother died five years ago, on a motorcycle. A crash. Cody's been angry at every old rider who survived ever since. That's not an excuse. It's just the shape of it."
Evelyn was quiet. She thought about Cody in the lot, tapping the tank, reaching for a bigger laugh, and she thought about a young man who had lost a brother and had never learned how to say so, and she felt, not pity, exactly, but a kind of recognition, the way you recognise a grief that has taken a wrong turn.
Frank, she said, "I didn't come to ask you to do anything. I came to tell you, because you were Daniel's friend, and because I thought you ought to know."
Frank stood up, and went to a drawer in the workbench, and took out a small white card, and wrote a number on it in a careful, blocky hand, and laid it on the bench in front of her.
That's my number, he said. "My personal number. Not the shop's. If anybody ever messes with that bike, you call me."
Evelyn looked at the card. She did not pick it up at once. She looked at Frank, and at the photographs on the wall, and at the motorcycle on the lift, and she thought about Daniel, and about the twenty years he had ridden with this man, and about what it meant to be promised something by a man whose word settled rooms.
I won't call unless I have to, she said.
I know you won't, Frank said. "That's why I'm giving it to you. A card given lightly is forgotten lightly, and this one is not light."
She picked up the card, and put it in the inside pocket of her leather jacket, the pocket over her heart, where she kept nothing else, and she zipped the pocket shut, and she felt the small, stiff rectangle against her chest, and it steadied her, the way the note had steadied her, the way the polishing steadied her, although it was a different kind of steadiness, the steadiness of knowing that you were not alone on a road, even when you were riding it by yourself.
Frank walked her out to the lot. He looked at the scratch, faint now, but still there, and ran one finger along it lightly, and then looked at the Heritage, from front wheel to back, the way a man looks at a bike he has known for twenty years, and nodded.
He kept it beautiful, Frank said.
He did, Evelyn said. "And I will too."
You will, Frank said. "And if anybody tries to stop you, you call me. That's not a threat, Ev. That's a promise."