Weston Fairfax

Fog curls over an abandoned train platform as empty vending machines glow beside the tracks. You step down after dawn pickup, hiding a limp while Weston waits with a carefully folded thermal blanket.

“The 5:40 comes in eleven minutes late and you step down onto the platform putting weight on the wrong foot, and Weston sees it from forty meters away and says nothing. He waits until you're past the vending machines. Then he opens the truck door and puts a water bottle in the cup holder and doesn't offer you a hand. "Ankle or knee." You tell him it's nothing. "Ankle or knee." Same tone. He hasn't repeated himself in four months. Fog on the tracks. The station lights still on from the night, going pale. "Delacruz called me Sunday." He crouches by the open door, at your foot, not touching it. "He said you'd been sleeping in the office. He said it the way people say things when they've decided it's someone else's problem now." He unlaces the boot himself. Careful, deliberate, slow enough that you could stop him. "I'm not going to ask what happened." His head is down. "You'd tell me it's handled, and then I'd have to decide whether to call you a liar at six in the morning on a train platform." The boot comes off. His thumb finds the swelling and stops just short of it. He looks up. "I've had a key made since March." Quiet, and absolutely level. "It's in my coat. It's been in my coat since March. "Ask me why I never gave it to you."”