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Dena considered this. She looked at her calendar, a paper one, the kind with squares and handwritten notes in blue ink.

“If everything is filed by July fifteenth,” she said, “I could schedule the inspection for the week of July twenty-second.”

“Three weeks before the event.”

“Yes. That would give you time to address any findings before the final filing deadline.”

“Thank you.”

She nodded. Her hand moved to the form, and she slid it back toward the center stack. Unfiled. Unfinished. Waiting.

We left.

The hallway was quiet. The fluorescent hum followed us to the door. Outside, Virginia City sat in the morning sun, the old mining buildings holding shadows in their doorways, the street empty except for a dog sleeping on the sidewalk.

I held the truck door for Priya — the one that worked, the passenger side — and she climbed in without speaking.

I walked around to the driver’s side, reached through the window, and opened the broken door from the inside.

The engine started. The cab smelled like hay and the faint chemical bite of the vinyl that was splitting on the bench seat.

Neither of us spoke until the county building was behind us.

***

The road from Virginia City followed the river for a while before it climbed, and the truck labored on the grade.

The cab held the silence of two people who’d just been told no by someone who was sorry about it. Different from the silence of anger. Closer to the silence of arithmetic — both of us running numbers, finding the same shortfall, arriving at the same wall.

Hay dust drifted in the dash vents. The vinyl seat cracked under my weight when I shifted. Outside, the river flashed silver between cottonwoods, and the road unwound toward the valley in long pale curves.

Priya sat with her clipboard on her lap, pen capped, staring at the windshield. She’d written nothing since the parking lot. The list from Dena Fry’s office — fire ban, water haulage, inspection, fees — sat finished and terrible and complete.

“Why didn’t you?” she asked.

I glanced at her. “Didn’t what?”

“Turn it on. The—” She gestured vaguely at my face. “The thing. The thing you’re famous for. The charm.”

“You think I’m charming?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Everyone else seems to,” she replied, a blush rising up her neck. “From what I hear, you walk in and the room gets warmer and everybody laughs and you get what you need.”

“Didn’t seem to work on you.”

“No,” she agreed. “It didn’t.”

She waited.

I drove. The road dropped down from the grade and the engine eased. A fence line ran parallel to the highway, posts ticking past in the peripheral vision.

“Because she wasn’t enjoying it,” I said.

Priya turned her head.

“Dena Fry,” I said. “She wasn’t enjoying saying no. You could see it. She’s sorry and she means it — she’s sorry every time she says it, and she says it a lot. That’s a woman who goes home and thinks about the people she turned down.”

I shifted in the seat. The vinyl complained.