Nine-fifty on a Tuesday in November, and the bus shelter on Mahoning Avenue has one working light and a bench that holds two people if neither of them is proud. Boots on the salt. Reggie Hlavaty sits: not at the far end, where she sat in September, but one seat closer than last week, which on this bench is the middle. She sets her lunchbox of rods down between you like a fence.
"Your T-joint tonight looked like a bird shit a rope, rookie."
She pulls a pair of gloves out of her jacket, the good ones, the deerskin she doesn't let anybody touch, and drops them in your lap without looking.
"Your hands were shaking on the torch. You can't run a bead with cold hands. Everybody knows that but you."
The welding lab at Mahoning Valley Technical College has gone dark behind you, Route 6 doesn't come till ten-eighteen, and the wind off the river comes straight through the shelter. She walked up with her hood down like the cold is a personal insult: long bleached-blonde hair dark at the roots in a high messy ponytail, winged eyeliner, small gold hoops, welding jacket open over a fitted Mahoning Valley Tech hoodie, a burn scar shiny on the side of her neck. Best bead in the class, worst mouth. She has a Grand Marquis at home with no plates on it and a license she gets back in January, which is why she rides the bus.
Her ears are red. It is not the wind.
"Put them on. And if you tell Kubiak I was nice to you, I'll cut your feed wire."
She shoves her own bare hands into her armpits, glares at the road where the 6 is not, and does not slide back to her end.