We sat in his car after practice

Sorry, this is going to take longer than it's worth, because nothing actually happened, we just talked, and I still can't get it out in a couple of lines.

I'm second year at the dental school in Augusta. It's two hours and fifteen minutes on I-20 if I get out before three, and I come back most Fridays because Saturdays I'm on the counter at my parents' cleaners on Pleasant Hill. My dad runs the press in the back. The shop goes in my name after he retires, that's been the plan since I was about fifteen. The pass-through was built for somebody a foot shorter than me and I've got a permanent flat spot on the top of my head from forgetting.

Sunday is nine o'clock English, then eleven thirty for my mother's side. Wednesday is prayer at seven thirty. Fridays the young adults are downstairs in the fellowship hall, except if there's a funeral lunch, then we're upstairs. Praise practice is Thursday at eight, and it's supposed to be done by nine thirty, and in four years it's been done by nine thirty maybe twice.

My mother's been a deaconess in that building twenty years. Twenty-one in October. She still goes Wednesdays when it's six people and Deacon Roh asleep in the third row.

I play keys. I'm not good at it. They needed somebody who could read the chart and I was standing there.

Peter plays bass. He's thirty-four. He calls me the giraffe in front of everybody and then says sorry for it later out in the lot. I'm six three and about a hundred and sixty and my cousin says I look like a lamp, so it's not like he's wrong, it's just, whatever.

We load the amps out together because I can reach the top of the closet. Maybe twice a month we'd end up at the twenty-four hour place by the Kroger and I'd get home at one. He texts me the set list on Tuesdays, just the songs, no hello.

That Thursday in March we went until almost ten because the new board had come in and nobody could get the in-ears working. By the time we had the cases downstairs it was his van and my Corolla and nothing else in the lot. He said sit for a second, he wanted to ask me about the retreat.

His seat was so far forward that my knees were against the glove box, and he laughed and reached over and did the lever for me. There was a booster seat behind him and a juice box in the cup holder that had been there a while. He never started the engine.

He never asked me about the retreat. We talked about the board, which was forty-two hundred dollars out of the building fund and which the sound guy still can't operate. And his back. He did his back moving a refrigerator for his brother-in-law and the brother-in-law has this whole thing going on, I'll get to it. I don't know if he ever went and got it looked at.

He asked if it wrecks your hands, doing what I'm going to be doing, and I said ask me in thirty years, and he said no, seriously, so I told him about the plastic tooth in the manikin head and how your whole arm starts shaking on it for no reason. The acrylic gets in your clothes and you can't wash it out, my roommate can smell it on me. My lab partner is a girl named Priya who talks for the entire three hours and I don't mind it anymore. At some point I told him what I owe, which is more than my parents paid for their house, and he went quiet and then said God's got it.

The lot lights are on a timer and they cut at eleven, all four poles at once. He didn't look up. He kept talking.

So the brother-in-law wants him in on a tire place off Buford Highway, and it's real money, more than he's making now, but the hours are Saturdays and Sundays both and that's the end of the young adult group, which he runs, so he's not doing it. He said that twice. He said the part about the hours twice.

A possum came across in front of the van and he said something about it and then we didn't talk for a while. My phone was at nine percent and the cord was in my car and I just let it die.

Sorry, I said I'd be quick. Around eleven he brought up Esther. Her mother and Deaconess Chung are basically the same person in two bodies and it's been going since Christmas. Esther works at the bank up in Suwanee and she's actually nice. Her family sits two rows behind us.

I made it a joke. I said probably, eventually, my mom's going to wear me down, what am I going to do. He didn't laugh. He looked at the steering wheel and said okay, and then he said okay again.

Then he went back to the tire place. He said if he took it he'd be there both days and he wouldn't see anybody, and then he said he doesn't really see anybody now either, and that he'd be fine, he'd be fine, it's just there's nowhere he goes where he isn't running it. Then he said my name. Not Andrew. The one my mother uses.

I said yeah, okay. I don't know what I meant by it. My foot had gone to sleep and I had to stand there holding his door for a second before I could walk, and he waited until I started my car before he pulled out.

My mother was at the kitchen table with the offering envelopes when I got in. She asked if practice ran long. I said the new board.

Monday I drove back down and I don't remember any of I-20. Nothing happened. I know I got to the lab before eight because I signed the book.

We sat in a parking lot for two hours and talked. That's all that was.

That was March and it's September now. He still sends the set list Tuesdays. Sundays I'm at the keys with him about four feet to my right. I've gone to young adults twice since and both times he ran it exactly the way he always runs it.

The first Sunday after, during the offering prayer, he came around behind the drum shield and put his hand on my shoulder the way he does with the whole band, and then he went and stood at his mic. I counted. He did it to four of us.

In June his wife asked me at the potluck whether I was seeing anybody, and I said school, and she said that's what Peter said. Grace does the nursery rotation and she had their girl on her hip the whole time. The girl isn't two yet. Their boy started kindergarten in August.

My mother asked about Esther again two weeks ago. Deaconess Chung wants to do a lunch after service, just the families, nothing formal. I said after boards.

They bring their dry cleaning to us because everybody at that church brings their dry cleaning to us. Last Saturday their shirts were still hanging on the back rack, five white with the light starch tag on them, and the ticket was in my dad's handwriting.