Page 35 of Five Mountain Daddies

“Thanks,” I say. “I’m proud of it. I designed itmyself.”

“Really? I didn’t know you were anarchitect.”

I laugh. “I’m not. I hired someone to help, but the overall design ismine.”

She follows me inside. The whole space is basically one giant workshop, with a bathroom in the back, a single office room with a couch that I sleep on sometimes, and a kitchen room off to the other side. Mostly though, the place is one big room, with my machines, my half-built sculptures, and other scraps lyingaround.

“It’s a goddamn mess,” London says,laughing.

I can’t help but laugh at that. She’s totally right. I can be really scatterbrained sometimes, starting one thing before moving onto the next thing, and I have a tendency to leave stuff lying around. The workshop is a mess since I’m in the middle of so manyprojects.

She wanders into the space, stepping over scrap steel, and puts her hand on my latest piece. “This is really cool,” she says. “What isit?”

“I’m not sure what I’m calling ityet.”

The piece is made of several long, flowing steel beams, although really, they’re flat and gracefully curved. They’re natural-looking, almost like a clump ofgrass.

She smiles and moves on. I’ve been obsessing with natural forms lately, and she passes a group of interlocking circles and ribbon-like forms, something that looks like a human hand, and another bending and curving set of interlockingcircles.

“How do you even do these?” sheasks.

I show her my tools, my torches and other equipment. “I don’t know where I learned to do all this,” I tell her honestly. “I think I just picked it up from years of messingaround.”

“How does someone mess around with stuff likethat?”

“I worked on cars,” I say, laughing. “Mostly older ones with steel bodies and frames, so I was doing a lot of welding, and I guess it went fromthere.”

She nods and leans up against a desk, head cocked to the side. “This is really pretty,” she says finally. “Do you bring a lot of girls inhere?”

“No, not at all,” I say honestly. “I can’t remember the last person I brought inhere.”

“Really?” she looks surprised. “This feels like such an easy way to pick upchicks.”

I grin. “You think that’s what I do? ‘Pick up chicks,’ is that what the kids call it thesedays?”

“Shut up,” she says, laughing, “and yes, that’s what I think youdo.”

“Ouch. You wound me.” I walk over to her and push her back up onto the top of the desk, sitting her there. “You think so little ofme.”

“No,” she says. “I just heard about youguys.”

“Ah, yeah, the rumors,” I say, grinning. “Everyone loves totalk.”

She rolls her eyes. “I’m just saying, I get it, and I don’tcare.”

I pull back and watch her for a second, not sure how to react to that. “What do you get?” Iask.

“This is what you guys do,” she says, hopping down off the desk. She casually walks through my shop, looking at my things as she talks. “I thought more about it, and it makes sense. You guys like to find a girl that won’t stick around long to pull into your world, show a good time, and then she’s gone. No strings attached, lots of fun. Right?” She looks over her shoulder atme.

But I’m not smiling. “Is that what youthink?”

“Sure,” she says. “And I’m okay with it, really. I’m having a lot of fun with youguys.”

I take a breath and let it out. I don’t know why I’m getting annoyed, or why that really upsets me, but it does. I hate that she thinks she’s just some game to us, when really, that’s how this allstarted.

She’s not wrong about what she’s saying. In the past, that’s exactly what we’ve done, though not exactly so explicit like we’re doing here. We’ve all gone after the same girl before, just to see who can get her first, and sometimes that ended up with some of us sharing her. And yeah, that was no big deal, and it always ended at some point. And we meant to do that with her,too.

But hearing her say it out loud just feels so damn tawdry. I’m not fucking happy about it, and I wish she didn’t think of herself thatway.

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