The morning in Halcyon Block always arrived with the same small ceremony: a kettle on the third-floor landing that sounded like a ship's bell, the smell of fried dough from Mrs. Chen's stall drifting through the stairwell, and the first clatter of metal where Asha liked to be. She unlocked the maintenance closet with a practiced twist, her fingers already counting the familiar weights and shapes of her tools. Nell, her torque wrench, hung from its hook like a stubbornly loyal dog. She slapped it, as if that could coax never-complaining steel into being more forgiving of human impatience.
"You and me, Nell," she muttered, exchanging a conspiratorial grin with a thing that could not answer. It was the sort of private ritual she preferred to paperwork—real work had a smell, an immediate beginning and end. Forms sat in another city, waiting for signatures in neat boxes. Wrenching was honest: you felt the thread give, heard the sigh as a bolt settled, knew whether something would hold another season.
Her morning rounds were a choreography of small restorations. She lubricated a guide rail that complained like an old accordion, eased a roller back into alignment, tightened a junction box cover that hummed when the tram line across the street kicked up speed. Residents waved: Mrs. Chen with a paper cone of steaming sesame crisps; a boy with a squeaky plastic drone lifted to salute her from the stairs; an elderly man with a newspaper turned into a hat to shade himself from the bright, awkward sun. "You look busy," Marta, the building manager, shouted from the doorway, balancing a ledger thick with utility notices and a thermos the size of a small cat.
"Busy keeps me honest," Asha called back, scraping a stubborn smear of grease with the edge of a putty knife. She worked with her body as much as her head—kneeing into a narrow machine-room corner, bracing a forearm against an aging support, feeling the floor give a little differently than a newer block. Each old building had a personality; Halcyon liked to creak in the morning, as if stretching after a nap.
As she unlaced and re-laced an access panel, Kai's name flashed on her phone. His messages usually arrived like bright, practical weather: opportunities, small storms of encouragement. Today there was only one line from him, terse and hopeful. She pinched the screen open with an oil-smudged thumb and read: "Apex Fellowship application opens next week. Thought of you. Coffee later?" She raised one eyebrow and smiled at the idea of leaving for anything that called itself Apex. It sounded as if it came with a blazer and a presentation about rooftops that were perfectly efficient and never needed duct tape.