“John, wait. Come on.” Roy stepped back two stumbling strides and ran his hands through his dirty, graying hair. It had been a good few days since he’d been able to shower. He could smell himself. “I didn’t mean to make you so mad. I just wanted to talk.”

John scanned him head to toe, and Roy wanted to fold flat under the miserable spotlight of John’s anger.

“How did you see it? Huh? Did you get yourself a smartphone? Dummy got a smartphone now? Is that it?” John sneered as if he were going to spit. Roy almost couldn’t imagine John spitting. People with ironed shirts and shiny red cars didn’t spit.

John was still midtirade and Roy came back on task, almost sharp with caffeine, but still drifty with the vodka.

“—do you get Wi-Fi in that heap-of-shit truck? Did one of your homeless buddies get YouTube pulled up on the internet for you? ’Cause I know they didn’t let you into the library looking like that.”

“I’m sorry.” Roy didn’t know all of what he might be sorry for at that particular moment, but he felt quite a bit sorrier than usual.

John stared at him, his shoulders rising and falling with the heaving of his breath. Something was off—really off—and the caffeine side of the seesaw lifted Roy into a short swell of clarity. He chanced a solid long look at John’s face. He was tight around the eyes, as if he couldn’t let all the way go of a squint. The little ridges between his eyebrows looked almost sad. He was pale and fighting to keep his shoulders straight. If Roy could recognize anything in the world, it was a back that wanted to stoop.

“What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”

“What’s wrong? What’s—” John leaned back and looked at Roy, regarded him fully up and down with an extraslow, searching pass of Roy’s face. For once, it didn’t feel like being scraped with a wire brush. John was checking for something.

Then John sent his own word back to Roy. “Wait.”

Roy shuffled back another small step, sneaking in another few inches between them, a bit more head start, just in case.

John tilted his head, and the more usual mocking study of Roy warmed back up on his face. His natural smirk bloomed and brought a little of his color back with it. “Is this just a regular day for you, Roy? What do you mean ‘Is everything okay?’ ”