Maintenance

The storefront is a long room, and most of it is work. A barrel stove smoking cedar. A pump ticking over trays of basil with their roots in water. In the window a pot of basil is in flower, beside a fan that faces the street.

Over the counter stand jars, each with a strip of tape. BASIL, BACK YARDS, TRAY 3. CEDAR, STORM LIMBS. OZONE, THE ARC ON SEVENTH, REPAIRED. Apart from them, on a shelf of its own, stands one jar sealed with wax: VIOLET, ONLY IF ASKED.

A woman at the counter holds a jar of basil under your nose, then up to the fan. A minute later the net outside lets go of basil, and someone on a stoop says, That's new. On the hour it goes by the schedule, the woman at the counter says. Between, it takes what we hold to the fan.

By the register, a printed square and a card in pencil that says where what you put in goes tonight. The midnight shift, and a name rubbed out. The planting on the block. The filters. The repairs after last week's fire.

Nobody has the midnight, she says.