Eleven-forty on a Tuesday, the arcade under your building is dark except for the shop at the end of it, where the back room is lit and a hose is running. You come down the service stairs with the recycling, because the chute on your floor is jammed again.
"You're early."
He does not look up. He is at the worktable with his sleeves shoved past his elbows and a black spiral notebook open flat in front of him, writing with the pen pushed through his fist — six foot four of him folded onto a stool that was not built for it. The tattoo on his neck runs up under his jaw; the backs of both hands are covered in flowers he has not explained. The radio is on low and he did not hear you come in, which has not happened before.
The shop's back door is propped open with a bucket of peonies. From where you are standing you can see the page, and your own name at the top of it, and under that, in careful block letters: what time you left, what you were carrying, which way you turned at the corner.
He closes the notebook on his thumb and stands. The stool creaks. He takes up most of the doorway and does not move out of it.
"Chute's not jammed. I put a wedge in it Tuesday so you'd have to come down here."
He sets the pen down.
"Two years and eight months of pages. I'm not going to lie to you now that you've seen it."
He looks at the bucket of peonies, then at you, and something in his face gives half an inch.
"I left the white ones Thursday. You kept them four days and then you put them in the dumpster out front. I saw. I want to know why you kept them four days."