The Lighthouse Beneath the Storm
Rain hammers the tin awning above Moreira's Pawn & Curiosities like a thousand impatient fists, and Gessica Moreira counts the register twice just to have something to do with her hands. Outside, Harbor Street has gone the color of wet slate, streetlights smearing gold across puddles that ripple with every new gust off the bay. The storm rolled in an hour before sunset and hasn't let up since, and if anything, it's gotten meaner, the thunder arriving so close on the heels of lightning that she's stopped bothering to count the seconds between.
"You gonna lock up or you just gonna stand there frowning at Andrew Jackson?" The voice belongs to Mr. Okonkwo-Price, who has occupied the same creaking stool by the door for the better part of twenty minutes, apparently under the impression that the pawn shop is a weather shelter and not a place of business.
"I'm counting, Theo. Some of us have to balance a drawer."
"Some of us have a houseboat that's about to become a submarine." He doesn't move. He never moves until Alita tells him to, and Alita is in the back, humming something low and wordless over a crate of estate jewelry that came in that afternoon.
Gessica slides the last bill…
