Chapter 5: Called

Hutch folded the letter in half, then in half again.

"It's a mortgage," he said. "I pay it every month. They can own the paper. They can't own the lanes."

"They can call it."

"Only if I'm late. I'm never late."

He put the letter in his back pocket and went to fix lane nine again.

I didn't believe him, and I don't think he believed himself.

Graydon came on Wednesday at two in the afternoon.

The seniors' league bowls Wednesday afternoons.

Twenty retirees in cardigans, a bucket of decaf, and a radio playing Sinatra.

I was in the party room with the door open, painting over the bowling pin's sunglasses.

I heard his voice and my brush stopped.

He'd brought a man from the bank in a gray suit with a leather folder.

They stood at the bar in their good shoes on the sticky floor.

"Hutch," Graydon said. "You look terrible. Does she let you sleep?"

The seniors on lanes one and two turned around.

Hutch came out from the back wiping his hands on a rag.

"Say what you came to say."

The man in the gray suit opened the folder and read.

Winthrop Trust was exercising its right under the loan agreement.

The full balance of four hundred and ten thousand dollars was due in ninety days.

January twelfth.

"There's no reason," Hutch said. "I've never missed a payment."

"Section nine," the man said. "Change in the borrower's risk profile. At the bank's discretion."

"Whose discretion?"

The man looked at Graydon.

Graydon looked at me in the doorway of the party room, with blue paint on my wrist.

"Of course," he said, "it all goes away the minute I own a certain painting. Name a number, little brother. I'll pay it, and the note disappears."

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