Ida turned her face toward the window. Winnie blinked hard at the ceiling. Miles stayed where he was on the mat, hands at his sides. He could not have crossed that room if he’d tried. A child had held back the truth for six days because she thought it would break something. And he had never once told the truth about anything without checking first whether it would cost him.
He cleared his throat. It came out rougher than he meant. “Mrs. Ferris, Ida, Marisol.” He looked at each of them. “I fixed a lot of boilers. Tomorrow’s Sunday, but I have people and I have trucks and I have a warehouse in the Bronx full of equipment. I can fix this by tomorrow.”
It was the sentence of a man who had said it a thousand times and had never once been wrong. Ida was quiet for a moment. She studied him the way you study a bridge before you cross it. “Frankie said that too once,” she said gently. “Fixed by tomorrow.” She turned the ring of keys in her palm. Then the power went out.
Sunday began the way Miles Ror began every crisis on the phone. By 8 in the morning, he had woken a rental yard in Queens, a supplier in Newark, and an electrician who owed him a favor. By 10, a box truck idled outside the building on West 143rd Street. Six space heaters came off it, then extension cords, then two industrial fans and a crate of weather stripping. A courier arrived with groceries. Another arrived with a pharmacy order Marisol had approved by text. It was, Miles thought, a very good morning’s work.
Ida stood in the vestibule with her arms folded and watched it all come through her door. “That’s a lot of heaters,” she said. “It’s a lot of cold.” “It’s a lot of amps is what it is.” She looked at the cords snaking up the stairwell. “This building was wired when Truman was president.” “I’ll have my electrician check it.” “Said Ida. Her tone should have warned him. It didn’t. Miles was moving too fast to hear it, and he had gotten a great deal of practice, over 40 years, at not hearing things that slowed him down.
He set the first heater in the hallway outside 3C, well clear of the door, where Marisol had said it was safe. He set others on the landings and in the vestibule. He had his crew spread the heaters across the outlets they believed were on separate circuits, moving faster than the old building deserved. Nobody had finished tracing the panel yet. Miles knew that and let the warmth persuade him that they could get away with an hour.
