There was a woman at the laundromat named Clara.
She was twenty-two. She had red-brown hair she kept in a braid that always came loose on the left side. She worked the counter from noon to eight, folded other people's clothes without complaint, and every time Rof came in — which was twice a week because the trailer had no machine — she found a reason to talk to him.
Rof had known this for three months.
He had never done anything about it.
Not because he didn't notice. Rof noticed women the way he noticed exits in a room — automatically, without deciding to. Clara was kind and she was pretty and she laughed at things he said that weren't jokes, which either meant she liked him or he was accidentally funnier than he thought.
He came in Tuesday morning with two bags. She was behind the counter. Her braid was already coming loose on the left.
"Rof." She smiled. Full thing. "You look rough."
"Rough week."
"You always have rough weeks." She took his bags, started sorting. Her hands were quick. "You work nights now?"
"Something like that."
She glanced up. Read his face. Clara was the kind of person who read faces without knowing she was doing it — not like Silas, not like a weapon. More like concern that had been there so long it became instinct. "You eat today?"
"I'll eat."
"That's not what I asked."
Rof looked at her. She looked back. The loose piece of braid fell across her cheek and she pushed it back with her wrist.
"There's a place on Morris that does eggs all day," she said. Careful. Casual. "I get off at two. If you're still around—"
"I can't," Rof said.
He watched the sentence land. She kept her face even — she was good at that — but something small changed. Not hurt. More like a quiet adjustment. The kind people make when they've been half-expecting an answer and got it.
"Okay," she said. Bright. Professional. "I'll have these done in an hour."
"Clara—"
"It's fine, Rof. Really." She turned to the machine. Her back was straight. Nothing dramatic. Just done.
Rof stood there for a second. He opened his mouth. Closed it.
Here was the thing about Rof Leon that Rof Leon did not know about himself:
He could have said something then — something simple, something true, something that would have given Clara back the thing he'd just taken. He knew the exact sentence. He could feel it. Not because he was smart, but because some part of him always knew what another person needed to hear. Always. He couldn't explain it, couldn't teach it, couldn't even access it deliberately. It was just there.
He said nothing.
He sat down and waited for his laundry.
And Clara folded other people's clothes and didn't look at him again until the hour was up.
Outside, bags in hand, he called Vera.
"What do you know about where Silas trains?" he asked.
"I showed you this morning."
"The other place. His real place. Not the one he performs in for guests."
Silence. Long enough that he knew she was deciding whether to be impressed or suspicious.
"How do you know there's another place?" she asked.
"Because nobody practices that clean in a gym that bad. The bag he was hitting was wrong for his style. He was putting on a show." Rof shifted the laundry bags to his other hand. "He wanted me to see what he wanted me to see."
More silence.
"Broad Street Athletic," Vera said finally. "Third floor. He's there from four to seven every morning. Real training. Different combinations. Different man." A pause. "You clocked that in fifteen seconds."
"I'm not smart," Rof said. "But I know when somebody's lying to my face. Known that my whole life."
He hung up.
He walked home. Sun was coming out. The city smelled like exhaust and something frying.
He thought about Clara.
Then stopped thinking about Clara, because thinking about Clara led somewhere he didn't have room for right now. His father was sick. Silas was coming. Whatever was sleeping in the back of his skull was just starting to stir.
There would be time for things like Clara later.
He told himself that.
He told himself that the way people tell themselves things they need to be true.
He got home, put the clean clothes in the drawer, checked on his father — still sleeping, breathing even, soup half gone from the container — and sat at the kitchen table.
He put the cross on the table in front of him.
Looked at it for a long time.
Then quietly, with nobody watching, Rof Leon folded his scarred hands on the table and bowed his head.
He didn't pray pretty. He never had.
He said: I don't know what's in me. But if You put it there — help me use it right.
He sat like that for a while.
Outside, Philadelphia moved like it always did. Loud, indifferent, enormous.
Inside, a man with no plan and no training and something ancient sleeping behind his eyes sat with his God and his cross and got ready for the only thing he knew how to do.
Not fall.