He walked with a pronounced, dragging limp on his right side, and his shoulders were hunched forward as if he carried a heavy, invisible weight across the back of his neck. Right now, he was hunched over the open hood of a rusted 2004 Honda Civic, a wrench clutched in hands that looked more like dried roots than flesh and bone. Chloe leaned against the brick wall, sipping water from a battered metal flask. She watched him. She didn’t dislike Arthur. In fact, she hardly thought of him at all.
To Chloe, the world was divided into two distinct categories: predators and prey. Wolves and sheep. The people who trained to survive violence and the soft, ignorant masses who hoped violence would never find them. Arthur was definitively the latter. He was frail, broken. A stiff breeze looked like it could tip him over. “Evening, Arthur,” Chloe called out, her voice raspy from exhaustion. Arthur didn’t look up immediately. He tightened a bolt, his jaw tight, before slowly standing straight.
He pressed a greasy rag against his forehead. He turned to her, offering a faint, polite nod. “Chloe, working late again.” His voice was gravelly, quiet. It rarely carried over the ambient noise of the city traffic. “Only way to stay sharp,” she said, stretching her neck side to side until it popped. “You should go home. That piece of junk isn’t going to fix itself tonight.” Arthur looked back at the Honda. He wiped his hands on the heavy dark blue coveralls he wore year-round.
“Owner needs it for work tomorrow morning. Single mother. Can’t afford to miss a shift.” Chloe offered a tight, cynical smile. “You’re too soft, Arthur. People take advantage of that.” “Maybe,” he said softly. He tossed the wrench into a red metal toolbox. The clatter echoed off the brick. “But a car is just a machine. You treat it right, put in the time, it runs. People aren’t much different.” Chloe let out a short, dismissive breath. She liked the old man’s work ethic, but she pitied him.
He lived a life of quiet subservience, fixing things for people who probably never paid him on time. He was a victim of his own decency. In the ring, decency got you choked out. Out here in the real world, it just kept you poor and tired. “Well, don’t stay up too late,” Chloe said, turning back toward the gym door. “Neighborhood gets sketchy after midnight.” “I’ll be fine,” Arthur replied. He didn’t look at her as he said it. He was already reaching for a socket wrench.
