Chapter 9: Night Watch

At nine that night, someone knocked on the annex door with a boot.

I looked through the gap and saw a paper bag, a thermos and a black bob of hair.

"Your boss said nobody sleeps here," Cleo said when I opened up. "He didn't say anything about dinner."

"That's his daughter's argument?"

"It's the only one that ever worked on him."

She came in with her bag of fried chicken and a bottle of the cheap red the crew kept under the bench.

We sat on two overturned crates by the heater, with the Anvil on its stand beside us wrapped in its tarp.

She ate with her fingers and stole the last drumstick off my napkin.

"You were good today," she said.

"A hose split and the board wanted to fire me."

"My father stood up for you."

"Your father stood up for his engine."

"He stood up for you. He just doesn't know the difference yet."

I laughed, and the tension in my shoulders loosened for the first time in two weeks.

She set down her wine and looked at me.

"What's the first thing you'll do if this works?" she asked. "If you get the five percent."

"Pay the crew."

"After that."

"Pay the crew again, with interest."

"And after that?"

I leaned back against the lift and thought about it.

"I'd buy Marty's wife a dishwasher," I said. "She's been washing dishes by hand for nineteen years."

"Nick."

"What?"

"What would you buy yourself?"

I shrugged.

"Nothing. I'd have what I lost back, that's all."

"Which is what?"

"Two hundred twelve thousand dollars," I said, quietly.

"That's what eighteen years of pension is worth. The number was printed on a folder in my desk."

"Lyman erased it with one sentence."

I took a sip of wine.

"It's stupid. I stand on a podium and tell the truth and it costs me a house."

Cleo didn't answer.

When I looked at her, her face had gone completely still.

Her fingers were clamped around the stem of her glass.

"Cleo?"

"I'm fine," she said. "It's the wine."

She put the glass down too hard.

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