Day 59. Strength 23.5. Stamina 22.4. Agility 14.4. Intelligence 16.6.
Tom had slept three hours and forty minutes, and he told us that before he said hello.
"So if I say something stupid," he said, "that's why."
It was twenty to one on Monday and the bank sign across 51st said 111. Nobody was at the picnic tables outside Filiberto's except a grackle standing in the shade of one with its beak open. We were in Tom's truck for the AC, Tom and me in the front, Ren and Colby in the back with Mateo's booster seat between them. Colby had tried to move it and been told not to touch the booster seat, and now he was sitting with his knees up by his chest so he wouldn't touch the booster seat.
The kids were at school. In Arizona it starts the second week of August, which nobody from anywhere else ever believes, and Luz had apparently told her whole class about the man who blocks tennis balls without looking.
"She says you're a cheater," Tom said.
"I know."
* * *
Why not nine at night, at the tables, the one hour that belongs to all four of us? Because Okafor's card has a desk line and no title, and a desk line is a thing that has office hours.
So it was noon. I came straight off floors with the mop still on my hands. Ren came out of a pharmacology lecture she was going to be late back to. Colby didn't say where he'd come from, he never does. Tom came from bed, and it showed.
I put my phone on the dashboard, face up, on speaker, and dialed the number off the card, and all four of us looked at it.
It rang five times.
"Valley office, intake. Okafor."
"It's Miles North. From Bell Road. I've got my party here, you're on speaker."
There was a pause about the length of somebody putting a pen down.
"Go ahead."
* * *
Tom did the talking. He's the lead, it's his name at the top of the packet, and he did it the way he calls rooms. Portal number. Date of the county survey. Dev's report in April. Then he read Dev's text off Ren's phone word for word, lol included, which I wouldn't have done, and he was right to.
Okafor didn't interrupt. You could hear her typing, and then not typing, and then typing.
"The individual who reported in April," she said. "Full name."
"Devin Marsh," said Ren.
"And he reported it how."
"He called the county. The number on the fence."
"The number on the fence is the county intake line. Anything inside a portal routes to this division." More typing. "I'm looking at the intake log for April."
In the back, Colby held very still. The AC ticked.
"I don't have an entry for that portal in April," Okafor said. "Or in May."
"He said he called," said Ren.
"I'm not saying he didn't. I'm saying I don't have an entry." It was the same voice she'd used for everything else. "I'm only able to make the second statement."
* * *
Then she told us what happens now. It took her about a minute and a half and it sounded like she was reading it off the back of a form, and I think she was.
A report like ours gets logged as a supplementary observation. A secondhand temperature report, thirteen months after a survey, does not close a portal. It generates a re-inspection request. The request goes into a queue. She was not permitted to estimate the queue.
"The contract," said Tom.
"The Association doesn't hold your contract. The county holds it, and Copper Vale holds the subcontract. If the county hasn't closed the portal by Saturday, the contract is valid, and whether you enter is a decision for your party lead and your party."
"Is the county going to close it by Saturday?"
"I'm not able to say."
"Is that because you don't know," said Ren, "or because you can't say?"
A small pause.
"Yes," said Okafor.
Colby laughed, one bark, and put his hand over his mouth.
"If you do enter," she said, "and the standing water on level two is warm, you would be the first people to report it with a date and a reading attached. A thermometer is about nine dollars. I'm not advising you to enter. I'm telling you what I'd be able to do with it."
Tom wrote thermometer at the top of page one. He wrote it under the line he'd put there at the tables twelve days ago, and he still kept his other hand over that one while he did it.
"Mr. North," said Okafor. "Is this the number on your registration?"
"Yes."
"Thank you." And she hung up, without a goodbye, which I assume is also on the form.
* * *
The grackle walked out from under the table and stood in the full sun like it had something to prove. Nobody in the truck said anything until it flew.
Ren went first. She always does when it's money.
"My rotation starts in three weeks. Background check, drug screen, a mask fit test, and they want all of it before they'll put me on a floor. It's two hundred and ten dollars." She was looking out the side window. "I know what warm water means, Tom. I was there. I'm telling you what the three-fifty is for."
"I don't care about the money," said Colby.
"Yes you do."
"Okay, I care about the money. I care about the other thing more." He had his knees up and his arms round them. "My mom's four miles from Bell Road. She doesn't know I was in it. She thinks we did a warehouse clean-out."
Three hundred and fifty dollars is nine and a half days of my burn. I had that before Ren finished her sentence, and I didn't say it, because it wasn't the number anybody in the truck needed.
Tom rubbed his face with both hands.
"No clear, no registration," he said. "No registration, we don't bid. We don't bid, we're four people off the board again, and nobody's going to send four people off the board a second contract." He dropped his hands. "That's one side."
He didn't say the other side. Everybody in the truck knew it had a number, and the number was forty feet.
"I'll call Sandoval," Tom said. "Tonight, on my way in. I'm the lead, it's my name on it, she should hear it from me. Then Wednesday, here, nine. We decide then. All four."
"Wednesday," said Ren.
"Wednesday," said Colby, to the booster seat.
"Wednesday," I said.
* * *
My car had been sitting in the lot for forty minutes with the windows up. When I turned the key the AC blew air that was hotter than the air outside, and underneath it was that smell again, faint, like somebody had left a hair dryer on in another room.
I left the door open and waited for it to cool down, and it didn't.
Tom was going to call Sandoval at a quarter to ten tonight from the truck, on four hours' sleep, on his way to an eight-hour shift. I had her number. I had the whole afternoon. It was one question, and I could ask it in about eleven words, and it would save him a phone call.
That's what I told myself, and it's all true, and I typed it before I'd finished thinking it.
Told the Association about warm water on Laveen L2. Does the contract stand?
She rang me back in four minutes.
"Sorry, I'm driving, you're on the car thing, hang on." Something clicked. "Okay. Yeah. It stands. Copper Vale doesn't pull a contract because somebody made a phone call, they pull it when the county shuts the gate. That's just how it is. Sorry."
"Okay."
"Can I say one more thing, and then I'll let you go." She didn't wait. "Vance is going to read that your party called the Association before he reads anything else about you. That's not bad. It isn't good either. It's just first. So." A horn went off somewhere on her end and she swore at it, not at me. "And tell Guzmán I told you. He's the lead. This should've come to him, and I should've said that before I answered you, and I didn't. Sorry."
"I'll tell him."
I meant to. I drove home with the windows down, which in the last week of August at one in the afternoon is like driving with your face in an oven, and I did the second Intelligence set at the kitchen table, and the carry at nine, which is short again now that it isn't resting on my hip, and I had a shower, and I was in bed at ten, which I'd promised, and the phone was on the nightstand the whole time.
At 9:52 it lit up.
Called Sandoval. Contract stands. She said you already asked her.
The dots came up underneath it, like he was typing something else.
Then they went away.