"Eat your tamale."
"I'm going to." She takes a bite and points the rest of it at Lashes. "Is he always like this in the morning? He's like a park ranger."
"He's been up since four," Lashes says, eyes still closed.
"Four?" Nova stops chewing.
"He does the bikes." Lashes doesn't open her eyes.
Nova turns and looks at me with half a tamale in her hand. "You do thebikes?"
Doom comes through the door behind her, takes in the room in one pass, pours a cup.
He gets to me and stops.
He looks at Hope asleep on my chest, doesn't say one word, and then he tips his chin about a half-inch and goes and stands at the counter.
Nova leans back against him without looking and he catches her weight with one arm.
Hope's hand opens and closes against my shirt and she makes that gurgly sound all babies do.
* * *
The compressor's a Campbell Hausfeld that came with the building, and the motor's been screaming since October.
Today it's not screaming anymore, which is worse.
I've got the panel off and my arm in it to the elbow, feeling for the coupler I can't see.
Compass is sitting on an overturned bucket eating the second half of an egg sandwich he didn't earn.
"You want the light?"
"I want the coupler." My knuckles find the housing instead.
He shifts on the bucket. "Yeah, but do you want the light?"
"Would help."
He gets the light and doesn't hold it anywhere useful. Of course.
The walkie-talkie’s on the bench by my head and it's been silent all morning, and that's normal.
It goes off at eleven-forty.
Compass grabs it before I can get out from under. "Yeah? Go."
"There's a woman at the gate."
Compass rolls his eyes at me. "There's always a woman at the?—"
"On foot."
My arm's still in the machine.
I come out of it fast enough that I take skin off my forearm on the housing, and I don't feel it happen. I see it after. A long red stripe filling in from the wrist up.
Compass keys the radio. "On foot from where?"
