He called Rick and told him he would be in late again.
He went to the Mulvane claim in the afternoon and did it badly. He knew he did it badly. He was on the roof of a ranch house with a leaking skylight and a mean dog in the yard below, and he chalked the test squares and counted the hits and lost count twice and had to start over, and the homeowner, a young woman in nursing-school scrubs holding a baby on her hip, called up to ask if he was okay, and he said he was fine, he was just being careful. Then he sat on the ridge of her roof with the chalk in his hand and looked out at the wheat stubble and thought: this is what I do. I walk onto a roof and I count only the damage I've been told to look for. Somebody tells me hail and I count hail. I don't count the old wear. I don't count what was already there. It's a good rule for roofs. It's the whole job. Somebody hands me a list on a yellow legal pad and I count exactly what's on it.
He wrote the woman's roof as a full replacement on the south slope, which it deserved, and drove back to Wichita on 81 with the radio off.
Itzel's practice ended at six on Tuesdays. He was in the warehouse gym parking lot at five-fifty, parked beside the Civic, and when she came out with her bag over her shoulder and her hair in a wet knot she saw his truck and slowed down, and then came over and knocked on his window, and he motioned her into the passenger side. She got in and sat with her bag on her knees, still breathing hard.
"Mom told me," she said, before he could start. "This morning. While she was making the eggs. She said you knew about Grandma Win."
"I do."
"Okay." She looked straight ahead at the cinderblock wall of the gym, where a banner said PRAIRIE FIRE: PLAY WITH HEART in red letters. "I can sell the car. I looked it up last night. Kelley Blue Book says like fifty-eight hundred, with the dent. I can give that back. I can quit club. I'm not on scholarship, they'd give a partial refund for the spring if I quit before December."
"Itzel."
"I knew it was weird." She said it fast, as if she had been holding it at the back of her throat all day. "The car. I knew Efraín didn't pay. Efraín doesn't pay for anything. He didn't pay for my braces. He sent me a