We shared a room in Reno

We went down to Reno the second week of August for a makeup air unit at a distribution center off Mill Street. Three days on the work order. It took six, because the crane outfit had us down for Thursday morning and then didn't.

Tuck drove the first leg. He always drives the first leg. He's got opinions about the way I take the curves coming out of Jordan Valley and I've heard every one of them more than once.

The office books the rooms and the office books whatever's cheapest with room for the van. This one was off Virginia. Fifty-nine a night, ice machine out on the walkway so you hear it every time somebody wants ice at two in the morning. Two beds, one room. That's been the arrangement for six years. Twin Falls, and a week in Ely I'm not going to get into.

The unit up on that roof hadn't been touched since it went in. Bearings were gone. Belt was glazed hard and just sat there squealing. It was a hundred and four by eleven in the morning and the roof was white, so the heat came up at you as well as down, and we went through a case of water a day between the two of us.

Our through-wall unit in the room didn't work either. It ran, it just blew warm. Tuck pulled the cover off it the first night and there was a dead moth sitting in the coil and about a pound of hair. I said something like, two guys who do this for a living and we're sleeping in ninety degrees, that's the whole joke, that's all I've got. He said yeah.

We had a routine by Tuesday. Off the roof around five, shower, the Maverik on the corner for a twelve of Banquet, back to the room. Little League World Series was on every night. A kid from Hawaii hit one over the scoreboard and Tuck sat all the way up for that and then laid back down.

I've known him since I was twenty-five. He was at my engagement thing in May, brought a gift card, stood by the cooler most of it. His divorce came through two years ago and he's got a picture of his girl clipped to the visor, the kindergarten one where she's missing the two front teeth.

He's the one who taught me to braze. Not the company, him, out in the back lot on a Saturday with a bucket of scrap copper and no pay for either of us.

I called Steph Wednesday from out on the walkway because the room gets no bars. She wanted to know whether my dad's wife counts as a plus one or as her own person on the chart. Her own person, I said. Down in the lot some guy had a generator running off a flatbed and I couldn't hear half of what she said after that.

Thursday the crane didn't come. Roy, the crane guy, called at seven to say Friday. He's got a heeler that rides up in the cab with him, sits on the seat like a person. You're not supposed to have a dog in a crane.

So Thursday we had nothing to do and we did nothing, and that's the night.

The ice machine quit around midnight and I was awake anyway. Tuck said my name from the other bed. Not like a question. He just said it. I said what, and he didn't answer, and after a while I got up and went over there.

I'm not going to lay all that out. It happened. Neither of us said much. I caught my knee on the corner of the nightstand and he laughed, and then he quit laughing.

After, I went back to my own bed. The clock was one of those with the red numbers. It said 2:14.

He was in the shower by five. I went down and sat in the van in the lot with the engine off until he came out.

Then we had two more days. Crane came Friday and we got the new unit set and the curb sealed, balanced it Saturday morning. He handed me the quarter-inch nut driver about forty times that Friday and both of us said thanks every single time, out loud.

Saturday after we buttoned it up the site guy walked us over to a buffet place on the corner and bought lunch. Tuck had two plates. I sat there and watched him have two plates.

He drove the first leg home. Course he did. We stopped in Winnemucca and he came out with two blue Gatorades and handed me one through the window and said, you good. I said yeah, you. He said yeah. Then he put the radio on and we did four hours of a station that plays Alan Jackson and then a commercial for a chiropractor.

Got in around nine. Steph had her sister over and the little sample boxes from the bakery were out on the counter and they made me try both. I said if the raspberry one costs extra then we're having the other one. Her sister laughed. Steph didn't, because she'd already paid for it.

She asked how the trip went and I said long. She said you always say long. I said well, it was.

Her mom put down on the Riverside back in February. Nonrefundable, she made a point of saying, twice.

It's a spring wedding, which in Boise means sun or it means four inches of snow, so, you know. Anyway.

Three weeks now and I've been in the van with him every day. Meridian and Nampa. A condensate line at the hospital that took two guys nine hours for what should have been one guy and forty minutes. He talks about his girl's soccer, she's playing up an age group now. I said furnace season's coming and he said we're already booked into November. Tuesday he wrote my wedding on the shop calendar in the marker, because he's the one who keeps the calendar, and he drew a box around the date so nobody schedules over it.

When I'm working I'm fine. I'm completely fine on a roof. It's a half hour out to Nampa and a half hour back.

I looked the hotel up on my phone a while back. I don't know for what. The photos on there are of a room with one king bed in it, so it isn't even our room, it's some other room in the same building with a different bedspread on it.

Steph's got the seating chart up on the fridge. My dad's wife is on there now, in pencil.