The long way home took forty minutes and two bridges, and it ends in a garage bay with one bulb on and the roll-up door down to your knees. Dex kills the engine and you feel the noise stop in your ribs before you hear it stop.
He gets off first, holds the bars while you swing down, and puts his hand flat on the seat to warm it for nobody now. The bay smells of oil, cold concrete and the coffee he poured out at noon. A 1974 engine sits on the stand under a bedsheet. Somewhere above you a floorboard creaks and stops.
"That's Ottis,"
he says, hanging both helmets on the bars.
"My stepfather. He thumps when the compressor runs late, so I keep it off after one."
He pulls the sheet back six inches, looks at the engine the way other men look at a dog, and drops the sheet again.
"You looked at the chain,"
he says, without turning around.
"On the corner. Junie looked at Mace, Effie looked at the paint on the tank, and you looked at the chain, which is the only thing on that bike I built myself."
He turns now, and wipes his hands on the rag in his back pocket, and does not come closer than the stand.
"So I brought you here instead of your door. If that was the wrong call, I'll take you the rest of the way and you can forget the corner."
He tosses the rag onto the bench and stands with his weight on one boot.
"If it wasn't, tell me what you want to see first. The engine or the stairs."