The first time I met Scotty he was twelve years old and staring at a television set, his hands moving rapidly over a video game controller. His father introduced us, and I waited for Scotty to stop playing, to turn and acknowledge me, but he didn't. He kept moving his little video game character around the screen, his eyes fixed dead ahead, his attention captured. He looked mesmerized, as if someone had put a whammy on him.
"Did he hear you?" I asked his father, wondering if perhaps the boy had a hearing disability I hadn't been told about. Scotty looked healthy enough, despite being tied to a television set by the controller in his hand. His body was lean and lanky in that awkward, adolescent way, and he had a ball cap crammed on over a mop of brown hair.
"Yeah. He heard." Aaron sighed and took my elbow, leading me into his dining room. "He's just twelve, and rude, and too far into his game to actually understand all the words I said when they're all in a row. 'Scotty, this is Hezekiel' will take a few moments to filter through all that noise until it means 'Scotty, look over and say hello.'" He sounded both resigned and disgusted.
I sat at Aaron's table and sipped the coffee that his wife had made. "Don't take this the wrong way," I said carefully, "but in my day--"
"In your day there weren't video games, television, radio or anything like what I'm dealing with." Aaron gave me a hard look. "Don't tell me how to parent, Hez."
I dismissed his lecture with a roll of my eyes. I'd known Aaron for far too many years to be either abashed or intimidated. "Your father would have tanned your butt."
"My father would have tanned your butt." Aaron grinned and pulled my big, heavy ledger toward the end of the table and sat down next to me. "So. Do you need cash, or do you want to move investments around?"
"Both." I smiled and shrugged one shoulder. "It's time for a new name, I think, as well. Or for someone to inherit some of this; there are at least two accounts that should be closed before someone gets nosy."
"In this town? No one will ask questions here, you know that." Aaron raised an eyebrow at me and started flipping pages, his own notebook open. He was wearing his little half-moon glasses and peering over the tops of them, and it struck me how much he'd aged in the last twenty years.
I should be used to that, I suppose, but it always comes as a shock when my friends suddenly gain a decade or two and a new generation appears before my eyes. My mother said I'd get used to it in time.
She was wrong.
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