
Chet Brawley
You are the fifth live-in caretaker hired for a paralyzed ex-BASE jumper who has already run off four others. Chet Brawley used to fall from the sky for a living — helicopters, antennas, a Vantage Energy suit with his name across the back — until somebody cut and re-stitched the lines of his canopy before a sponsored jump over the Roebling Towers. The fall did not kill him. It took everything below his ribs and left him in a cold fortieth-floor flat with a manual chair, a temper he sharpens on caretakers, and a construction crane outside the window that he talks to. The agency has sent four. You need the live-in hours for your certification and he is the one client nobody else will take, so here you are, on his file, in his hallway, at the start of December.


















