Kauss looks at the containers, then at me. “You stay close to me.”
“I figured.”
“You do exactly as I say.”
“Within reason.”
“No. Exactly.”
I lift one hand. “Fine. Exactly, unless you say something stupid like stay behind while danger happens.”
“That is not agreement.”
“It is my best offer.”
He stares at me for a long, helplessly frustrated second.
Darlene lights a cigarette by the back door. “Congratulations. You have discovered managing Evie. Nobody survives it clean.”
We leave just after sunset.
Halo at dusk smells of wet pavement, hot engine coils, frying onions from a street cart, and the ocean pressing salt into every breath. Kauss carries most of the food despite my objections, stacking the containers into a thermal crate he balances easily in one hand. I carry two lighter bags because he clearly needs the emotional reassurance of my reduced load. The streets are slick beneath our boots, reflecting neon from broken signs and the low amber glow of apartment windows.
He keeps me on the inside of the sidewalk. Again.
“You know I notice when you do that,” I say.
“Yes.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes.”
“Are you going to stop?”
“No.”
A smile pulls at my mouth. “You’re very direct tonight.”
“You are entering a dangerous environment.”
“I thought I was entering your neighborhood.”
His shoulders tighten.
“Sorry,” I say quickly. “I didn’t mean that as a jab.”
“It is not a neighborhood.”
“What is it?”
He pauses at the mouth of an alley where an old maintenance hatch sits behind stacked crates and a broken recycling unit. His face is in shadow, but his voice is low and flat. “It is where people go when the city decides they are no longer useful.”
That steals every flippant answer from my tongue.
He opens the hatch and descends first. I follow after him down a metal ladder slick with condensation, and the smell changes by the second rung. The sweetness of the bakery and the salty air of Halo give way to damp concrete, mold, rust, old runoff, smoke, and too many bodies living too close without enough clean heat. The tunnel below is dim, lit by scavenged lamps, heater coils, and glow strips patched along the walls with uneven wiring. Water trickles through side channels. Somewhere nearby, someone coughs until the sound rasps raw.
Kauss waits at the bottom with one hand near the ladder, not touching me, but ready.
