“I’ve just thought of something crazy,” I say when he returns, after thanking him for the beer.
“What?” he asks.
“It’s unethical. It might even be immoral. You’ll probably hate me for it.”
“Spill.”
“There are so many small villages in England and most don’t have a shop. A few years ago, I came up with this idea of fitting out a van as a shop and having it drive around villages, half an hour here, half an hour there, giving people a timetable so they knew when the shop would arrive. I thought you could literally call it ‘the Village Shop’ and have a big sign made for the van. Anyway, I imagined it having this mechanism at the rear so the back of the van—like, more than just the doors—would open up, revealing shelves and magazine racks andsweets and a bunch of stuff for kids and old people and everyone in between to come and browse.”
“I like the idea,” he says with a nod. He’s been watching me speak this whole time, a small smile fixed on his lips. Then his eyebrows jump up. “Wait, you’re not thinking about doing that withthis, are you?”
“Is that bad?” I ask.
“Cutting up a vintage Airstream? It’s depraved!”
I burst out laughing. “You’re right.”
I’m not proposing we turn Bambi into a village shop. I was thinking more along the lines of opening it up to the elements. The view out the back would be great, and maybe the kitchen could be fitted to the rear so that sometimes, weather permitting, you could cook outside.
Anders stares at the Airstream as I explain my vision, then he walks around to the back, where he stops and stares at it a bit more. I go and join him, taking a sip of my beer.
“You couldn’t cut it down the middle because of the window,” he says.
“What if the whole back opened up from a single point here?” I suggest, indicating a line of rivets that divide the curved back from the main barrel shape of the body.
“Hinge it at the panel gap,” he says thoughtfully before shaking his head. “The weight of the door would pull the whole thing over.”
He’s right, of course.
“But youcouldhave a retractable wheel that comes down to carry some of the weight,” he says. “We’d have to check out the frame. It might not be strong enough to support the hinges.” He pulls out his phone and types something. I peer over his shoulder and realize he’s googled the internal framework of a1961 Airstream. “Yeah, those aluminum hoops wouldn’t be strong enough,” he muses. “We’d have to weld a new steel frame to the steel subframe base.”
He looks at me.
I beam at him.
He laughs and pockets his phone.
I’ve been trying very hard since the incident with Laurie’s perfume to shift my feelings for him into purely platonic territory. I’ve pretty much got my head on that side now, but my heart is taking a while to catch up. His laugh still makes me feel as though someone has pumped helium into my chest cavity.
“It would be so wrong, wouldn’t it?” I say.
“Yet somehow so right,” he replies. “First things first, though. Let’s finish stripping her back.”
“Him,” I correct him.
“Him,” he agrees, indulging me.
He’s been cleaning out the grain bins this week while Jonas has been at work—the two giant silver silos over by the far shed. I had a look inside one of them and it was like the TARDIS—cavernous—with a perforated metal floor and an aeration system that blows hot air up through the grain. Jonas has only just taken the last of the winter wheat to market—they keep it in the bins until they can sell it at a good price. It’s hard to believe that soon their two giant Tin Man heads will be full of the soybeans and corn that he and his dad planted back in May.
When Jonas arrives home, Anders calls him over. He listens as Anders tells him what we’re thinking about doing with the Airstream.
I’m waiting for the horror to strike his face, but it nevercomes. Instead, he nods and says he can order in steel via work, nonchalantly adding, “On one condition.”
“What?” I ask.
“We serve popcorn and drinks out of it on movie night.”
My face lights up before I can determine if he’s mocking me.
