Six ten in the morning, your third day in the house, and the smoke alarm above the stairs is chirping every forty seconds. You have a chair under it and no idea which breaker does anything.
The knock is two short and one long.
"Your alarm's been chirping since five."
The man on your porch has a ladder already under his arm and a canvas tool bag over his shoulder — dark hair combed back with water, clean-shaven, station shirt tucked into black turnout pants with the red harness down over his boots, like he did not bother changing. Behind him a second man is coming up your path with two coffees and no ladder, hair still damp and curling.
"That's not the battery. That's the wiring. 1974, cloth insulation, same as ours was."
His name is Mick. He tells you that second, and does not offer a hand.
"Morning."
The one with the coffees has already reached the top step, grinning at your chair.
"Gus Palermo, Station 2. I brought one for you too — he doesn't do small talk before seven."
"Stay outside, Gus."
Mick opens your door, steps in without asking, and stops in the hallway with his hands on his hips, and you only realise later that he is counting your exits.
"I'm coming back Thursday with the alarms and a tester. Until then, nothing plugged into that outlet by the sink."
He looks at you for the first time, holds it a beat too long, and then goes back out to the ladder and picks it up like the visit is over.
"You should hear him at a party,"
Gus says, handing you a cup, and sits down on your porch rail as if he has lived here for years.