Compass is at the parts washer with his back to me.
He's been washing the same bracket since I came in.
Every so often his shoulders come up like he's going to turn around, and then they don't.
Brick comes and finds me at the bench. He doesn't say anything.
He just stands next to me for maybe two minutes with his arms crossed, looking at the same wall I'm looking at.
Then he goes too.
Every man in this club walked through that gate carrying something.
Amara said it to my face in her own office, how everyone lied to get here in some aspect. So, what the fuck is with the silent treatment?
Fuck if I know now, but I’m going to find out.
* * *
They put Mila in the room at the end of the hall, past the laundry.
Ruby made it up. Clean sheets, a lamp, a chair.
Zorro put a lock on the inside of the door in about ten minutes, without being asked, without saying one word to anybody about why.
She's in there, and I'm in a garage eighty feet away, and I don't go down the hall.
Amara said to stay on the property. She didn't say don't go down the hall.
I shake my head and focus on the compressor instead.
Four hours. I get the panel off and the housing out and I get down to the coupler, and I pull it, and it's sheared clean through.
There's nothing wrong with the motor.
There was never anything wrong with the motor.
It was the coupler in October, and it's the coupler now.
I sit down on the bucket with it in my hand.
The metal's cold. There's a burr on the fracture where it finally let go, and I run my thumb over it until it opens the skin.
I don't move for a while.
At six, the light goes orange over the wall, and then it's gone.
At eight, the courtyard's empty and the wind's picking up. Boots come across the gravel and stop in the door.
Dante comes in with two cups of coffee and sets one on the bench without asking if I want it. "She's out back."
I look up.
He's got his hands in his jacket pockets and his chin tucked into his collar. "Figured you might want to know. In the sunroom. Been there about an hour and a half now, in the cold, with the heater off."
"Prez said?—"
"Prez said property." He's already turning around. "It's on the property. Anyone can tell you two have shit to talk out, so go fuckin’ talk, prospect."
