“I’m not wearing lip gloss.”
“Then you’re defenseless.”
By the time the afternoon rush fades, exhaustion settles into my bones like damp weather. My feet ache. My lower back complains every time I bend. The register total is better than yesterday, which means we are less doomed than we were this morning but not so much less that anyone should celebrate with name-brand ingredients. I close the bakery at nine after wiping down the counters, setting the ovens to cool, counting the drawer twice, and locking the back door with a new sense of personal insult toward the old deadbolt.
Kauss was right about the locks.
That annoys me because being right should not come so easily to men who communicate like haunted architecture.
I change upstairs into clean jeans and a soft blue sweater, then head back down because I promised Nara I would meet her for one drink at Bellweather’s. One drink has been rescheduled three times because her shifts at the clinic have been brutal and mine have been bakery-shaped chaos. Nara has known me since we were both children running through Halo with sticky fingers and scraped knees. She is a nurse now, sharp-eyed, brown-skinned, black-haired, and permanently unimpressed by everyone’s nonsense, including mine.
Bellweather’s sits four blocks from the bakery in a narrow building with a green holo-sign that flickers between a bell and what looks, unfortunately, like a diseased cabbage. Inside, I smell cheap beer, fried peppers, old wood, and ozone from the dart board’s faulty scoring field. A wall heater rattles near the back booth. Rainwater drips from coats hung by the entrance, and low music crawls through the speakers with more bass than melody.
Nara waves from a booth near the corner. She has already ordered me a cider and herself something dark enough to strip paint.
“You look like the utility company sent assassins,” she says when I slide in across from her.
“They sent invoices. Same emotional result.”
She lifts her glass. “To surviving capitalism in space.”
I clink mine against it. “To not crying into the flour.”
“You cried into flour again?”
“No. That was one time, and the biscuits were still excellent.”
“They were salty.”
“They had depth.”
Nara laughs and leans back. “How’s Darlene?”
“Mean.”
“So alive.”
“Very.”
“And how are you, really?”
I take a drink before answering. The cider is crisp, cold, and just sweet enough to remind me I should have eaten more than broken tart edges for dinner. “I’m fine.”
Nara groans. “Oh, gross. We’re doing lies already?”
“I am bakery-fine.”
“That means one bad week from disaster but still making jokes.”
“See? You understand me.”
“I understand you too well. That’s why I asked again.” Her expression softens in a way I cannot deflect as easily as Darlene’s grumbling. “How are you?”
The music hums between us. At the bar, someone argues about a grav-ball match. Outside, rain ghosts over the windows. I trace my thumb along the condensation on my glass.
“I’m tired,” I admit. “The money is bad. The neighborhood is worse. Some gang idiots tried my back door last night.”
Nara sits up straighter. “What?”
