She nodded slowly. “That sounds serious.”
“It’s manageable,” he said. “It’s not an emergency today, but it shouldn’t wait much longer. The belt itself isn’t expensive. The labor is about an hour.”
“I see.” She paused. “And how much would that be, altogether?”
He quoted her a fair price. She thanked him and said she’d like to go ahead. He began gathering what he needed and she settled into a chair near the waiting area, an old plastic chair that he had noticed wobbled slightly on its left leg. He made a mental note to fix that.
Over the next half hour, they talked the way people sometimes do when one of them is working and the other is watching. Not constantly, but in the natural pauses between tasks. She asked whether he had worked there long. He said four years. She asked whether he enjoyed it. He thought about it genuinely before answering, which she seemed to notice.
