Here by Mistake Read Free Page A

like the clutter. Stephen was new to him.
    “And who do we have here?” Quint asked.
    “Stephen Walker,” Brandon said, as Quint and Stephen shook hands. “I met him on the track.”
    “Of course you did. Stephen’s the man you told me almost beat you in the sprints. How about it, Stephen, going to beat my man B?”
    “Soon.” Stephen smiled.
    “In your dreams.” Brandon smiled back.
    Sarah raised the dust rag from the can of Pledge. “This was here two weeks ago.” She sighed. “You need a wife to look after you.”
    “I had two of them,” Quint said. To Stephen he added, “Not at the same time, mind you.”
    “What happened?” Stephen asked.
    “They divorced me. The first one said she couldn’t take it anymore. The last one called me a neat freak.” He raised his shoulders. “She was one strange woman.”
    Quint stepped into the kitchen and called back to the living room: “Let me take a wild guess: Dr. Peppers all around?”
    “Yes, Quint, like always.” Brandon laughed.
    Quint returned with three Dr. Peppers. He moved the stacks of financial reports from the sofa and chair to the coffee table, and everyone sat down. “May I?” he asked, picking up Stephen’s backpack. Stephen nodded. Quint reached into the pack and brought out two books. “ The Almanac of American Politics 2005 . . . Twentieth Century Digest . . . Wow, Stephen, do you read these for fun?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’ll hand it to you. I just read the reports I need to for my work.”
    Stephen pointed at Quint’s arm, where something green was peeking from under his half-sleeve. “What’s that, sir?”
    “Quint’s the name, Stephen. If y’all start calling me ‘sir,’ I’ll be feeling the need to straighten up this place. Which I don’t want to do. This thing,” he continued, pulling up his sleeve, “is one of my big mistakes. I’ve made my share.” He showed Stephen a tattoo of a green chain stretching around his bicep. “I was eighteen when I got this. For maybe a year I thought it was the best thing I’d ever done. After that I wondered what the hell had gotten into me. I’d get rid of it if it wasn’t such a project to do it.”
    “It’s cool, Quint,” Brandon said. “Like I told you, I’m getting one either like that or with thorns.”
    “And like I told you, it’s a lousy idea, B,” Quint said. “People look at these things and say ‘thug’ to themselves. They look down on you before they even know you. And besides,” he added slyly, “you don’t have the muscle to make it look good.”
    Brandon laughed. “The hell I don’t,” he said, using a favorite phrase of Quint’s. He knelt beside Quint, rolled up his sleeve, and flexed his bicep.
    Quint made a muscle, which made Brandon’s look puny. “What is that, B, a walnut? Sarah, get the camera. This needs to be recorded.”
    Sarah took Quint’s Polaroid camera from the shelf above the couch. “Are you sure you want this picture, B?” She giggled.
    “You just don’t know power when you see it,” Brandon said, straining to make his muscle big. “Take the picture!”
    “Yeah, quick,” Quint said, “before he gets a hernia.”
    Sarah snapped. The camera flashed, whirred, and rolled out the photo.
    Brandon liked Quint’s Polaroid because it made a picture right away. “Your old-fashioned camera’s cool, Quint,” he said as he took up the photo. Slowly the image of two grinning friends and two mismatched biceps came into view.
    “You keep it, B,” Quint said as Brandon studied the snapshot. “Keep it in a secret place. So you won’t feel embarrassed.”
    They sipped their drinks and talked about different things: the school year that had just ended, some nasty teachers, a nastier baseball coach. Stephen answered a couple of questions about the Twentieth Century Digest . Brandon fell silent, looking as if he wanted to raise a subject but didn’t know how.
    Quint gestured for him to speak. “What’s on your mind, B?”
    “Quint