Page 61 of The Evening Wolves

“So, what? I can’t call them sausages without being part of Big Meat?”

“Well, ideally, I’d like you not to refer to them as any kind of particle meat. Hot dog. Bratwurst. Weisswurst. Leberwurst. Any kind of wurst at all, actually—North, no!”

Shaw’s outcry came moments before a loud crash.

“All that talk about leberwurst,” North said contemplatively, “but you really should have been watching where you were walking.”

Shaw started up again almost immediately, but John-Henry tuned him out. It was hard to tell in the shadows, but he thought Emery might be blushing.

“It’s that stupid car,” Emery said. “He insisted on racing me.”

More car doors slammed shut.

“But you’d look so handsome,” Jem said.

“I wouldn’t feel handsome,” Tean said. “I’d feel like I was participating in cultural appropriation.”

“What culture?”

Tean’s hesitation lasted a moment too long. “Saved by the Bell?”

“Oh my God! You weren’t even listening to me?”

Emery rubbed his eyes. “Don’t say anything.” He was quiet for a moment and then, his voice verging on despair, he said, “They’re never going to leave, so we’re just going to have to move. That’s our only option at this point.”

The bell on the restaurant’s door jingled, and the voices cut off.

“Theo and Auggie?”

“With Evie, Lana, and Colt.”

John-Henry considered the situation for a moment. It was one thing that Emery had driven out here to find him—admittedly, yes, in part to pick a fight, but mostly because he was worried. It was something else entirely for the other guys to come too, and the rush of emotion left him struggling to speak for a moment. Finally he managed, “I guess we’re going inside.”

“Do we have to?”

When they stepped inside, the first thing out of Emery’s mouth was “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

John-Henry almost didn’t hear the words. Part of that was the music—an Elvis song played at eardrum-shattering volume. And part of it was the sensory overload. The air was warm, smelling like fried onions with an undernote of sour yeastiness. Instead of ceiling lights, the restaurant was only dimly lit by wall sconces shaped like old convertibles painted a light green blue. The tables and booths were covered in vinyl checkerboard tablecloths, and although distance made it hard to be sure, John-Henry was fairly sure the salt and pepper shakers were meant to look like Dwight and Mamie Eisenhower.

A woman with a shag of shoe-polish-black hair swept toward them, laminated menus in her arm, but then North stood from behind a pony wall and waved at them. John-Henry smiled at the waitress, pointed, and started across the room.

The four men sat at a round table. Shaw had laid the salt and pepper shakers on the table and was trying to look inside Dwight Eisenhower’s head. As John-Henry and Emery sat, Emery opened his mouth, but North spoke first.

“Don’t get me started. I’ve already had to listen to donkey-tits here tell me he had a dream about this place.”

“A sex dream,” Shaw corrected and then added, “And don’t say tits.”

“I had a sex dream too,” Jem said, struggling with a grin.

“No,” Tean said, “he didn’t.”

“Oh, did it have that guy from I Dream of Jeannie?” Shaw asked, his inspection of Dwight Eisenhower forgotten as he straightened in his seat. “The equestrian? He used his spurs on Tony, and Tony was screaming and screaming, but you could tell he liked it?”

North threw up his hands “It’s been four months. Four fucking months. And every fucking time, every fucking one of you makes it so fucking easy for him.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Jem said, the grin slipping free now.

“Yes, he does,” Tean said.

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