Lodestar looked particularly immaculate from the outside as Louis drove into his parking spot. He walked around toward the front. There were no weeds and no piles of leaves to be seen on the property. The cement was all swept up too, instead of being vaguely brown with loose dirt that had settled over time. Joe really had cleaned up, hadn't he? It was amazing but he knew Joe was always hard worker which was why he gave the mechanic time off on the rare times he asked. Louis looked at his coworkers who rearranging things in the auto shop's large garage. Joe and Vernard were busy cleaning up the inside as the buttery sunlight poured in through the open roll-up garage doors.

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A thought crossed Louis's mind. Joseph. He had to check on Joseph's bite. It hadn't been that long since Queenie had bit his friend's face and he hoped those stitches were holding up on the mechanic's face. He walked over to Joe who was moving from one side of the garage to the other with a push broom, getting all sorts of dropped things toward the edges. "Joe, come over here." He tilted his flat cap up a bit.

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Joe's focus shifted from being on the floor to up at Louis' face. He glanced to the sides quickly, his expression confused. "Did I fuck something up?" He stopped sweeping and held a hand flat to his chest.

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"No, no. You're not in trouble." Louis assured his friend. "I want to make sure you're not getting an infection." He carefully poked at Joe's nose bridge and was happy to see that his nasty bruising was getting better, "I think I know what you're doing. You're massaging your nose to break up the bruise, aren't you? That's why it has shifted from a nasty purple bruise to this less noticeable one."

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Joe smiled as he held the broom right by his side almost like a staff, "I'm kind of surprised you can tell. My momma always massaged my big bruises from rough play when I was little. But you know I had to be a tough guy and couldn't let her do it my whole life, so I started massaging my own bruises."

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"I told you already, I worked in this kind of thing before but things...got to me. The pressure and feeling like innocent lives slipping under my hands were too much. I couldn't save them but then I realized I didn't have to if I took care of the source of it. One for the sake of many." Louis explained, he had done so before but he thought that Joe never really paid much attention Sometimes those icy blue eyes looked a little crazy to him or even unfocused at times which made Joe look a little...air headed. He patted Joe's shoulder, "Back to work, I'll open the front. I've already ordered the pieces from home."

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Vernard had crept up behind Joe and Louis while the two of them had been busy talking, "So you were working from home? Isn't that against your own rules?" His voice made Louis nearly jump. "Whoops, Didn't mean to spook ya." Vernard laughed and patted Louis's back a few times.

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"Well...yes but no. Elmira and Piers are special people and so they deserve special treatment. The Fleet is this place's primary defense, you know that. The Black Vipers cover what the Fleetwoods can't. Small places, alleys, the highways further out, and back roads." Louis shook his head and sighed as he looked out toward the front of the auto shop's property, "I'm just expecting The Fleet to start rolling in. They were supposed to be here by now so we can close up the gates and the garage."

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Joe shrugged his shoulders and stepped away, getting back to sweeping the rest of the shop's interior as he had been just before.

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 Louis and Vernard stepped out toward the auto shop's front. There were fallen leaves scattered along the sidewalk that quietly crunched under the men's soles. There, Louis looked out both up and down the street. No sign of them yet. He felt something was wrong. It had to be. "Hmmnnnghh. I hate when people are late. Makes me worry."

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Vernard shrugged and stepped out a little further into the street. "They're fiiine. Don't worry your pretty head that much about 'em. We're mechanics not - uh, bodyguards." It didn't have too much traffic anyway for Louis to worry about the big guy being in any sort of danger. especially not at this time of the day. "I'm goin' back. I wanna play some more rock, paper, scissors with Joe. He keeps beatin' me and I don't know how. Maybe I'll figure it out..I think he's cheatin'." He rolled up the sleeves on his shirt as he walked past his friend and tilted the Italian's cap down.

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Louis sighed, watching Vernard go up to Joe and push on the man's shoulder asking for a rematch.

"Haha, not tired of losing yet!?" Joe leaned the broom against himself, the handle nestling between his arm and his pec as he rubbed his hands together and held both hands at chest level. One held flat, the other a fist. "Let's go. you owe me a beer. Give me a sandwich too."

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Louis ran both his hands down his face and walked into Lodestar's office. "I guess they deserve some time to fuck around don't they?" He took a look at the shop's earnings after wages paid and business expenses. Still a fairly nice net positive, something he was determined to keep no matter what. The moment that positive got too low, they'd be forced to engage into the more dangerous side of the gang.

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Two massive Fleetwoods rolled up into the lot, both automobiles had shiny chrome but matte black paint jobs. Their doors were littered with holes and the windows shattered to the point that someone might have thought they had been rolled down if it weren't for the massive spiderwebs of cracks that adorned the front and rear windshields. Both Vernard and Joe stopped their game of rock, paper, scissors and scrambled to look busy. Vernard rolled the two trash bins out of the way for the land yachts to lumber into the auto shop's building while Joe scooped the pile of dust, screws, and trash bits into a dust pan. The drivers of the vehicles dropped the keys off and stepped out of the lot, getting into a third car and leaving just as they had come.

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Louis heard Joe grumble as he stood by the window of the office and watched the Fleetwoods park and be turned off. "Mostly glass work my ass. That's glass and door skin work." Joe hung the broom on a hook. He huffed and closed his eyes, "At least it isn't body panel alignment. Hehe, thankfully the parts aren't in yet...wait- ugh."

Louis saw the look of anguish on Joe's face and placed his hand firm and square on Joe's shoulder. "You just realized it didn't you? Ya gotta clean those cars out of aaall those tiny glass pieces. Ahaha! Go get the shop's vacuum. I'll work on taking off the rear and front glass off of them." He unhooked his heat gun from the wall and playfully pointed it at Joe and then at Vernard. "Come on! don't give me those looks!"

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"Alright!" Joe left toward the shop's closet and dragged the shop vacuum behind him. He plugged it into a socket and opened the cars to start placing some strewn about papers into a file folder. He then began to vacuum the glass out. The small shards making one hell of a racket in the vacuum's bin.

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Behind him, Vernard took off the doors of one car to lay them on the large counter that hung from the ceiling. "I'll do the skin work. I actually like that job. Oh by the way, whatever happened with that girl you mentioned at Double Deuce?"

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 "She!" Joe bounced up with a big smile. "I saw her again and I got to talk to her for a while too! She has a cat, one of those weird ones that look like a chicken breast and ballsack at once. Oh, you have one of those don't you Vernard? Hah!" Joe recounted his time at the Nightingale Cafe Lounge and how before that he had given her the Food Fortunes tarot deck he had found while window shopping. He admitted not knowing if Rori really had liked his gift but that she had suggested a date at the Farmer's Market in Cathedral Park. "I don't want to miss it. She'll think I'm not serious if I do!"

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"From what I'm hearing and seeing, you're pretty interested." Louis raised his eyebrow, "Look at you being all bouncy." He laughed, glad that Joe was beaming with happiness. "I think that you should definitely keep trying with Rori but...just be a friend with Nara. I wouldn't date Nara. Let's be honest she walks tight rope on the knife's edge. As a friend that cares about you, I'm not about to let you play with more knives than you already do!"

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"Louis? I know it's only Monday BUT could you be a pal and let me have tomorrow off? Please?" Joe held his hands together, gripping the shop vacuum's hose between them both. The rattling of glass pieces still going on in the background like spoons in a sink disposal. "Come on!"

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Louis felt his two coworkers look at him, one in anticipating, the other thoughtful as he heated the edges of the rear window of the first Fleetwood they were working on. He turned the heatgun off and shoved his tool under the cracked glass It crunched a bit. "Ovviamente Joseph... I'm all about you taking some time off when you need it. You work hard, sometimes well into the night." He then watched Joe grin and get back to work with more enthusiasm than he had seen in the past two weeks.

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Vernard chuckled, "Now don't wear yourself out. You don't know what'll happen tomorrow. You need ta keep some reserves in ya. Don't want to be all tired when you gotta be showin' how energetic ya can be."

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"I-i don't think I'm goin to get laid tomorrow. She doesn't seem like the type for that. But she rides a bike so I know she's fit. I gotta keep up with her all day. I'm sure she'll drag me all around the park tomorrow." Joe knelt down to vacuum under the driver's seat. "I'll be bringing Queenie though. They need to meet and get along. I can't have her get jealous of my getting new attention." He scooted along to vacuum the back and then went all the way around to work on the passenger side. When one car was left glassless, the trio moved onto the second Fleetwood to clean it up and have it prepared for the doorskins and fresh glass. 

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Upon hanging his heatgun once more and hearing Joe pouring the glass out of the shop's vacuum Louis knew that tomorrow none of them would have real reason to be here. Not until the shipment of parts came in. He looked out at the street once more. "Bring us something interesting from the farmer's market won't you? I rarely get the chance to go and I'm sure there's something there we could all snack on here at the shop. I'll add the cost of the snacks to your upcoming paycheck, Joe."