Episodul 41 · Before It Breaks

Saturday morning, Soles was tightening the vise with his good right hand when Maxim returned from an early collection. He had been waiting to explain what his messages had left out.

A thin metallic whine rose from the truck at idle and faded when Maxim revved it. Lucky ran to the gate. Mina trotted from the shed with a work glove and dropped it at Soles’s foot. Lucky came back for the other glove and tried to make it a tug-of-war.

Maxim came in without ringing. He carried a paper bag in one hand and his keys in the other.

— I brought pretzels, he said. They were warm when I bought them. Now they’re pretzels.

He set down the keys to the spare room beside the bag and looked properly at Soles’s face.

The bruise on Soles’s cheek had begun to yellow.

— Turn around, he said. Toward the light.

— Maxim.

— Toward the light.

Soles turned. Maxim looked closely at his face, then at the rebandaged hand, then at the way Soles held one arm near his ribs.

— You called that a scuffle.

— It started small.

— Your face disagrees. Who?

— A woman. A boxer.

Maxim waited for the rest.

— Her name is Tesa, Soles said. She’s a boxer. She was waiting for me at Ivo’s, in the dark, between the blocks. She thought I was with the lawyer.

— At Ivo’s.

— Yes.

— When?

— Thursday night.

Maxim looked down at the bag.

— I got your message about Ivo, he said. Not this.

— Varren was with me. He took me to urgent care afterward.

Maxim fell silent. He took a pretzel from the bag, broke it in half, and ate neither half.

— You could have called after.

— You were asleep when we came back. Yesterday I thought I’d explain when you got home.

— You went upstairs before I could ask.

Maxim looked up too quickly. Soles recognized the effort of making his face ordinary again.

— What’s with the calls? Soles asked.

— Nothing.

— Maxim.

— The dispatcher. Customers call him, then he calls me. Apparently being late travels faster than a truck.

He broke the pretzel again. The pieces scattered over the bench, and he stopped with the crumbs still in his palm.

— Next time, you call me, he said. And if I don’t answer, call again. And if I still don’t answer, message Bren, because Bren never sleeps.

— I didn’t want to drag you along every time I…

— You’re not dragging me.

His voice went short.

— I don’t want to find out what happened from your face. I don’t want to get there after.

Maxim was looking at the pieces of pretzel on the bench, and Soles understood that the sentence had not been only about Thursday.

— Fine, Soles said.

Maxim looked up.

— Fine, Soles repeated. No more messages that leave out the reason I’m in pain.

Maxim nodded. His shoulders loosened slightly. He took the other half of the pretzel and this time bit into it.

— So, a girl, he said around the mouthful.

— Boxer.

— And what did you do? Fix something for her?

— I broke her nose.

Maxim stopped chewing.

— Well done, he said after a pause. Made a good impression.

They sat on the shed step. Soles told him about the fight, leaving out only what he still could not explain.

The morning at the gym and the fists touched afterward. Tesa’s brother, the guard for Banks, and the hand he could no longer close. The garden. The committee’s email, with the word “victim” placed exactly where it needed to be. The invoices with the two signatures. Krista’s two days.

At the brother’s injured hand, Maxim’s jaw tightened.

— And what does Tesa want? he asked at the end.

— To burn it all.

— And Krista?

— To read everything before it burns.

— And you?

Soles looked across the yard at the greenhouse, at the plastic shifting lightly in the wind.

— To find out whether what burns is what should.

Maxim put the bag aside.

— Then I want to meet her. And hear the rest from Ivo myself.

— Krista’s checking the papers until tomorrow lunchtime.

— Fine. But we go to Ivo together. I don’t want to hear from her the names of any more people you’ve met.

— You have the delivery Monday.

Maxim blinked. He did not ask how Soles knew.

— Then Tuesday.

— Tuesday.

Maxim stood and brushed the crumbs from his pants. He left the bag and went to take the truck back to the depot. Lucky followed, betrayed by the absence of falling pretzels.

Soles followed him slowly.

Maxim climbed into the truck and started the engine. The whine returned immediately at idle, thin and steady, with a slight vibration beneath it that Soles felt more than heard. He went to the hood and listened.

— You’ve got a bearing going, he said.

Maxim leaned his head out the window.

— What?

— Water pump, probably. Or the tensioner. More likely the pump. Listen to how it changes when you rev it.

Maxim revved the engine. The whine thinned, then returned.

— It’s done that since they gave it to me, he said. It has personality.

— Its personality is going to leave you on the side of the road.

— Fine.

Maxim drove away.

He would check the pump before ordering anything. Maxim could ignore the noise. The bearing would not ignore Maxim.

That evening, Soles checked the company truck’s details in the message Maxim sent him. He found a replacement pump, a tensioner and the gasket at the parts shop near the depot.

He put everything into a virtual cart. He did not place the order. He kept his finger above the button, wondering how Maxim would take having a problem fixed before he admitted it existed. He would probably say it had personality.

He closed the phone.

Tesa had texted at eight: Ivo has a niece. She brings him food on Tuesdays. Don’t ask how I know. He did not ask. He replied only: Tuesday. She sent back a single symbol, a fist.

Maxim came home after the dogs had eaten and went upstairs without another call from work. Soles slept in his own bed that night. His ribs found a position on one side, his arm held close to his chest. Mina climbed onto his feet. Soles had just enough time to think about the pump’s thin, even whine before he fell asleep.

In sleep he found the tree. Elias stood beside the fine stems, bent forward as if over a page only he could see. Soles touched the nearest leaf.