He looked at Clare. Clare looked at the carpet. Because it's midnight, Clare said, and I didn't want to wake him up for work. You woke him up anyway. Lily pointed out.
Lily bed now. Fine. She turned then turned back. Miss Clare. Yes.
There's a fan in the closet. Dad puts it on me when the power goes off. You can have it. And she went to bed. Clare stood in the middle of the living room with her arms crossed over her chest and did not say anything for a long moment.
Then she said, "Marcus, your kid is going to run this country someday. God help it, Marcus said. He gave her the couch. He gave her a blanket she didn't need and a pillow that still smelled like Nikki's shampoo because he'd never figured out how to throw out a pillowcase. And he set the box fan on the floor angled at the cushions.
And he stood in the doorway to the hall with his hand on the light switch. Marcus. Yeah. Thank you. Don't Don't thank you.
Don't make it a big thing. He killed the light. "It's a couch." "It's not a couch," Clare said in the dark. He stopped.
"It's 104° in my apartment," she said. "And I have 400 people in my phone, and I drove around for 2 hours, and I ended up on the porch of a man I've said 11 words to." Marcus didn't turn around. "Nine," he said. "What?
Nine words?" Two of them were, "Hey, doesn't count." He heard her breathe out. Something between a laugh and the other thing. Good night, Clare.
Good night, Marcus. He went down the hall. He checked Lily. He lay on top of his covers in a room that read 88° with his hands folded on his chest like a man in a coffin. And he stared at the ceiling and thought, "Then why didn't you ask him to fix it out of the mouths of babes?"
He was up at 5:40. He was always up at 5:40. Clare was already awake, sitting on the couch with the blanket folded, folded squared off at the corners, like a woman who had never in her life left a blanket in a pile, and she had made coffee in his kitchen in his percolator, which nobody had touched since Nikki. Marcus stood in the doorway looking at that percolator for about 4 seconds longer than a man should look at a percolator. I'm sorry, Clare said immediately.
I shouldn't have. It's fine. I couldn't find the You have a manual percolator, Marcus. Who has a manual percolator? My wife did.
The word came out of him like a nail out of a board. Rusty hole. Clare set the mug down. I'm sorry. Stop apologizing.
That's four. I'm counting. I'm counting, Marcus said, and took the coffee she poured him, and it was good. and that annoyed him in a way he did not have the vocabulary for. At 5:41 in the morning, they stood there, two adults, one kitchen, a box fan running in the next room. So, he said, "Your AC, right?
What's it doing?" Nothing. That's the problem. Nothing like blowing warm air or nothing like nothing. Nothing like nothing.
No air, no sound. It's just off. Marcus took a drink of coffee. Inside unit or outside unit. I don't know what that means.
Big metal box out back with a fan in the top. Is it spinning? I didn't go look. You didn't go look? Marcus repeated.
It was midnight, Marcus. It was 104 and you didn't walk 20 ft to see if the box was spinning. I panicked. Okay. Clare's voice went up.
First crack in the paint. I panicked. Is that I'm allowed to panic? I woke up at 11:00, soaked through, and my phone said 104. And I sat on the edge of my bed, and I could not I couldn't think, Marcus.
I couldn't figure out what a person does. And I thought, the only person on this street I've ever seen do anything useful is the man across the road with a toolbox in his truck. And so I drove around for 2 hours being humiliated about it. And then I knocked. Marcus set his mug down.
Okay, he said. Okay, I'll look at it. You don't have to. Claire, what? I've been fixing AC since I was 19 years old.
Marcus said, I have never once in my life walked past a broken unit. It's not a favor. It's a compulsion. My wife used to say I'd stop at a stranger's house at Christmas. Clare looked at him.
What? That's the second time you've mentioned her, she said. In 8 minutes. Marcus picked his mug back up. Yeah, he said.
Well, um, he didn't get to it that morning. He got a call at 6:15 from dispatch Mrs. Ruthie Coleman on Delano, 81 years old. No air since Tuesday granddaughter calling from Charlotte in tears. And Marcus was in the truck by 6:20 with a travel mug and a shirt he'd found in the dryer.
He was gone 11 hours. He came home at 5:40 p. m. with his hands cut in two places, having replaced a capacitor for free, having lied to Ruthie Coleman's face, and told her the part was on warranty, having eaten nothing since coffee, and his house was cold. Marcus stopped in his own doorway. Cold? His house had not been cold in 14 days.
Marcus' AC was a 16-year-old unit he kept alive with prayer and stolen parts. And he ran it at 78 because 78 was what you could afford when the light bill was the thing that could sink you. The house was 71° and there was music playing and his daughter was laughing. Laughing. Marcus stood in the doorway of his own house and listened to his daughter laugh and did not go in.
He couldn't have told you why. He'd have told you his hands hurt. he'd have told you he was tired. The truth was that Lily Williams had not laughed like that big, loud, unguarded, the way a kid laughs when the floor is solid in three years. And hearing it from his own porch felt like walking in on something. Then Clare's voice.
Absolutely not. That is not how you spell it. Lily, it is Lily. There is no W in restaurant. There's a W sound.
That is okay. That's actually a great point, but no. Marcus went in. Clare was on the floor of his living room with his daughter's spelling homework still in yesterday's clothes, hair up in a pencil. She had a legal pad.
She had drawn a diagram. "Hi," she said and stood up too fast. "Hi, I paid your power bill." Marcus did not move. "Daddy," Lily said.
She turned it to 71. Marcus looked at Clare. Clare looked back at him with the expression of a woman who had rehearsed this and was watching the rehearsal fall apart in real time. Say something, she said. You paid my power bill.