Across the intersection, the yellow sign above Ruth's Kitchen glowed through the gray evening. The restaurant occupied the corner of an old brick building between a laundromat and a pharmacy. Its front window was fogged from the heat inside. Maya was halfway past when she saw Walter Hayes struggling beside a delivery van. At 67, Walter was tall but slightly stooped, with silver hair and hands that always looked as though they had just finished repairing something.
He had two cardboard crates stacked against his chest and was trying to hook a third with one foot. Maya crossed the street. "Mr. Hayes." Walter looked around. "Don't you start."
"You're going to throw your back out." "My back and I have had disagreements longer than you've been alive." Maya took the top crate. Walter tightened his grip. "I've got it."
"Sure you do." She took the second one too. Walter surrendered with a grumble. Rain tapped against the cardboard as they hurried inside. Warmth wrapped around Maya immediately.
Coffee, fried onions, chicken stock, old wood polished by decades of elbows. Ruth's kitchen wasn't fancy. Half the chairs didn't match and the menu board behind the counter had been rewritten so many times that faint ghosts of old prices remained beneath the chalk. But people looked at one another here. That mattered.
"You saved me 20 minutes and probably a chiropractor," Walter said. He reached into his wallet. Maya frowned. No. "Take it."
"No." "Maya." "Mr. Hayes." He held out a $10 bill. She folded his fingers around it.
You're buying your own coffee tomorrow. Walter studied her face. His expression changed. "What happened?" "Nothing."
"That answer never means nothing." Maya looked toward the counter. Lisa wasn't there. An evening server was pouring coffee for two older men in work jackets. Walter noticed the stain drying along Maya's white sleeve.
"School?" Maya shifted the crates onto the counter. "I dropped lunch." Walter looked at her for a long moment. Maya knew he didn't believe her.
He let it go. For now. "You training tonight?" "Later." "Room's open."
"I have the key." Something almost like a smile crossed his face. "I know you do." Maya stepped back into the rain. Their apartment was six blocks away on the third floor of an aging brick building where the elevator had been temporarily unavailable for eight months.
Apartment 3C smelled faintly of lemon cleaner when Maya opened the door. Denise Carter was sitting at the small kitchen table, rubbing one ankle. At 48, Denise still carried herself with the brisk efficiency of someone accustomed to hospital corridors and impossible schedules. Her navy work pants were creased from a long shift at Richmond Crown Medical Center and her environmental services badge remained clipped to her shirt. "There she is."
Maya quickly turned the stained side of her jacket away. "You're home early." "Only because they want me back tomorrow before sunrise." Denise pushed herself upright. "You eat?"
"Yeah." The lie came easily. Too easily. Denise opened the refrigerator. "I made chicken yesterday."
"There's rice." "I'm okay." Denise turned. Her eyes narrowed. "What happened to your sleeve?"