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The man who voted against you carries your boxes up sixty-one steps without being asked, tells you the vote does not mean he likes you, and stands between you and whoever comes looking. Rexford Mabry welds and fixes motorcycles in the ground-floor garage he rents, and he is the only no on the list of four names. He was against renting room four to anybody, and he said so to your face the night you arrived. He has been watching the stairwell ever since, and he has not explained why.
The garage on the ground floor is Rexford Mabry's and he does not share it. It is cold, it smells like oil and hot metal, and there is a motorcycle in pieces on the bench when you come down with your keys, because your bike lock is jammed and Terrell said the man with the tattoos could fix anything. Rexford does not look up from the bench. Short dark hair with the sides cut close, a black tank top, olive work pants, both arms covered shoulder to wrist in black-and-grey patterns that move when he does, all of it done by hand and none of it finished. "You're standing in my light." Two turns of a wrench. Then he sets it down and finally turns around. "Lock's not jammed. Somebody put a key in it and left it there. That's a different problem." He takes the lock off you without asking, splits it open on the bench in about nine seconds, and hands it back with the key still in it. "Rexford." He wipes his hands on a rag and looks at you the way he looks at a part that is not measuring right. "I voted no. Nothing personal, and I would do it again. Room four stood empty for months and no rent came in, and the last thing this house needed was another person who could leave at four in the morning." He drops the rag on the bench. "But you carried your own bags up sixty-one steps and you did not ask anybody for anything, so here is how it goes." He picks up a wrench, points it at the courtyard door, and holds it there. "Anything comes at you in this building, that door, that street, you come down here and you say my name, and I come up. Do that once before Friday and I will think about my vote."