He parked behind the Harbor Table Community Kitchen, a modest brick building with a hand-painted sign and an entrance that stuck whenever it rained. Inside, folding tables stood beneath bright overhead lights, and a dozen adult volunteers were preparing trays for the evening meal. Someone was laughing near the sink; an old radio played softly beside the storage shelves. David was barely through the door when Walter Reed spotted him.
"Look who remembered we exist," Walter announced.
Walter was seventy-one, with a short silver beard, thick eyebrows, and the upright posture of a man who refused to let age determine the amount of work he could do. He wore a plaid shirt beneath a worn apron and held a clipboard as though it were a badge of office. David had known him for fourteen years, long enough to recognize that Walter's complaints were often his way of saying he was glad someone had come.
"I was here Tuesday," David said.
"Four days. I counted."
"You should get another hobby."
"At my age, they're running out of hobbies that don't require expensive equipment."
David laughed for the first time all day. The sound surprised him. Walter grinned, then noticed David's tired eyes and chose not to ask immediately what was wrong.
A rattling noise came from behind the kitchen wall, followed by the strained cough of a refrigerator compressor trying to start. David stopped laughing and tilted his head toward the sound. Walter saw the look and groaned.
"Don't."
"Don't what?"
"Make that face. The one that says you heard a broken machine and forgot you're supposed to be visiting."
David had already started toward the appliance. "How long has it been doing that?"
"Since lunch. We moved the perishables to the neighbor's freezer. A repair company wants three hundred dollars just to come out tonight."
"Cancel them."
"David."
"Walter."
Ten minutes later, David was kneeling on the tile floor with a screwdriver in one hand and a flashlight beside his knee. He checked the electrical supply, examined a worn connection, and used a spare component from the kitchen's maintenance cabinet to restore the circuit that had prevented the compressor from starting correctly. He made Walter stand beside him during the final test, explaining what the repair had and had not fixed. When the compressor settled into a steady hum and the temperature began to fall, Walter stared at the machine as if it had betrayed him by responding so easily.
"Normal rich people write checks," Walter said.
David wiped his fingers on a cloth. "Sounds boring. Besides, this still needs a proper service visit before the next busy week. The connection shouldn't have been allowed to get that bad."
"There he goes. Saving us money and then finding a way to spend it."
"That's called maintenance."
"That's called your favorite subject."
Denise Harper appeared from the pantry carrying a stack of metal trays against one hip. At fifty-eight, she was one of Harbor Table's most dependable volunteers, the sort of person who knew everybody's name and remembered who needed a second helping without making a spectacle of it. A support brace covered her right wrist, and David noticed that she was using her left hand to steady the stack.
"What happened to your wrist?" he asked.
"Nothing serious. Slipped at work."
"Why are you carrying those?"
"Because they were in the pantry and need to be in the kitchen."