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The second time Earl ducked was after he’d left the shack to take a leak behind one of the impounded cars. He was maybe two car lengths away from the shack when he heard something behind him. Like a rock had hit the shack. It was another eye blink before the whole shack exploded.

The police bomb squad said somebody had lobbed a Vietnam-era grenade at the shack.

After that, Earl had a twelve-by-twelve cement-block structure put up. A bullet-proof window in front. A john at the back.

“Sweet,” Earl said, “but volume at the city was better. And I got benefits. So I sold the private lot. Came out ahead. Besides, once I read the city’s snow emergency rules—ka-ching!—I figured it was a license to print money.”

Jorge Mendez—Georgie to Earl—said, “What I hear is people are gonna be able to sign up for an e-mail notification on snow emergencies. That could hurt our business some…”

Earl rolled his eyes.

“Georgie, Georgie, Georgie. You worked here how long? A year more than Frenchy, right? And you still haven’t figured out that our customers couldn’t get it together to move their cars if you and me went out and personally whacked each one of them over the head with a two-by-four.”

As usual, Earl was right. Nine times out of ten, people who got towed were people whose lives were already seriously out of control. These were people for whom bounced checks, parking tickets, and overdue rent were a way of life. They were running on a short fuse before they got towed, and getting towed was just one of a lot of things that lit their match.

Tom liked Jorge almost as much as he liked Earl, hard pressed as he was to explain what any one of them had in common with the other. Maybe the one thing that Tom and Jorge had in common was that neither could explain why they’d worked for Earl as long as they had.

“Does it bother you that he calls you Georgie,” Tom said, “instead of pronouncing your name right?”

Jorge shrugged. “I corrected him a couple times when I first started working here. Then he put my name up on the schedule spelled, Whore-Hey.So I told him to skip it. Just call me Georgie. It doesn’t really matter. What matters is, stuff like when my mom was here from El Paso. Earl gave me extra to take her out for dinner. And the second year I worked impound, I had mono, and he paid me the whole time I was sick. That came out of his pocket, but he made me take it. With Earl, what you see isn’t necessarily what you get. Know what I mean?”

It was Tom’s turn to shrug. “I guess.”

Jorge said, “Does it bother you he calls you Frenchy?”

Tom said, “I never really thought about it. Just like I never really think about why I’m still here.”

“I guess I like the flexibility,” Jorge said, “and the money’s not bad. It leaves me time for my music. That’s what I care about. Kind of like you and your French.” Jorge stopped, looking at Tom. “How long does it take to finish a French major, anyways? You’ve been at the U how long now?”

Tom thought a better question would be, how long had it been since he’d registered for a class at the U.

“It’s not like there’s a rule about how long it takes,” Tom said. “I’m doing a lot of independent reading. I’ll finish when I finish.”

Jorge’s eyes narrowed and he continued to look at Tom. “So you finish your French major or whatever. What do you do then?”

This was a question that Tom got a lot, and he liked it less every time somebody asked.

“It’s not like with a French major there’s a job that you do. I could do a lot of things. Like teach, or translate or—whatever.” He changed the subject. “The thing is, I’ll be qualified to do something. That’s what you need to be thinking about, Jorge. You need to have options. You need to have a Plan B in case your music thing doesn’t work out. You don’t want to end up like Earl, working at the impound lot when you’re sixty years old.”

“I got a Plan B,” Jorge said.

“Such as…?”

Jorge looked away from Tom. “You ever been to First Avenue?”

“First Avenue?”

“The club down by the Target Center. You know. Where Prince filmed Purple Rain.The Replacements played there in the ’80s. Every major rock and roll band from the ’70s and ’80s played there when they started out. It’s, like, a historic venue.”

“I was there once, I think. Music’s never been that big a thing for me,” Tom said.

“Maybe not for you, but for a lot of people, First Avenue is like Mecca. People who know anything about music, they’ll, like, come thousands of miles to see First Avenue. Just to breathe the air. Just to say they’ve been there.”

“I’m having a hard time figuring out how this music Mecca ties in with your Plan B.”

A smug look settled on Jorge’s face. “I’ve got two cans of the paint they used to paint the place. The original black paint.”

Tom shifted around a bit. “I’m still not seeing two cans of black paint as being your Plan B.”