The Modern Outlaws are riders of a new century. Buster hides his floating hostility with tact. Stuey underscores his triumph over poverty with excessive chrome, including braces at 45. Wheelie can only display his mastery of the basics by demonstrating his namesake. Derek is happily married, suave, and shameless. Wade is stoned. Dave resides at the pinnacle of industrial leverage, where he takes blood pressure pills. Rodney is a born-again Christian and a petty thief. Joe is a sociopath.

It’s all around the table with glad-handing, too many names to remember, and just as many IDs. We laugh like honest men at a rotary luncheon. We shake hands on our new business, understanding that it doesn’t mean shit, not one speck of it, because getting lost and becoming someone else begins with the utterance of your very name. This is the roll call of resurrection morn.

I’m Buster. I sell microscopes. We pulsate on a single idea, which is that of recapturing in the next 10 days what we’ve missed for the last 30 years. We won’t discuss prospects, lest we foul our luck. And because we don’t need to, because who we are and what we’ve done flares like an itch, and now we are poised with the big back scratcher.

Where the early years were gilded with promise, the middle years assure these men that this is it, what it all comes down to, what happened to us. What happens next is a fluke of nature, or maybe it was only a matter of time.