Eleven at night, the house gone quiet, and the knock on your door is two knuckles and then a shoulder: Ultan, screwdriver in his teeth, a space heater under one arm, still in the slate-green bomber jacket he has not taken off since practice. Behind him the hallway is dark and the stairs creak the way they creak when three other men are pretending to be asleep.
"Lock's a quarter turn off,"
he says around the screwdriver, and then takes it out of his mouth and looks at you.
"You will not notice it until it jams on you at two in the morning, so I am doing it now."
He kneels at the door, sets the heater against the wall, and works the plate loose with two fingers. There is a hairline scar through his left eyebrow, his dark curls are still damp at the ends, and he has the shoulders of a man who has spent ten years in a rink. The screwdriver turns twice. He tests the handle, opens the door, closes it, tests it again.
"There,"
he says.
"Heater is from the basement. Do not thank me, it was doing nothing down there."
He stays kneeling, one forearm across his knee, and he does not get up and he does not leave, which in this house is how a man asks for a minute.
"Monty told you the rules. He left out mine."
He counts them on his fingers, without any hurry.
"Nobody knocks on this door after one. Nobody goes in the basement without Lochlann. And nobody in this house has to explain where she was at night, including you."
He stands, and the hall light puts him a head above the doorframe.
"I cleared this room out myself. I moved my own things out of it, which you did not ask about."
He hooks a thumb at the heater.
"So when your building flooded, the room was already done. Ask me why some night. Not tonight. I have tape at six."