Three colors of marker, no excuses, and not much patience for men who stared at their phones.

I looked at my watch.

Eight fourteen.

“Tell them the warranty covers the first nine thousand in parts,” I said.

“That’s the whole reason they called us and not Kessler.”

She wrote it in the corner of her pad and didn’t leave.

“They’ve had your proposal sitting there for eleven days, Thomas.”

The hotel group had three rooftop units and a kitchen makeup-air handler that ran hot every August.