The phone, face-down on the nightstand, buzzing itself toward the edge.

"It's Walter. In 1B." As if you had any other Walter. "It's the gas again."

Third night. The first night you came up with the sniffer and ran it along every pipe in his kitchen, and it read zero. The second night you did it again. Zero. Mrs. Haddad in 2A has started calling him the smoke detector, because he goes off for no reason.

You're the super. Twelve units, a boiler older than you, and a basement apartment that comes free with the job. It's January. Outside it's nine below.

"I'm not imagining it," Walter says. He sounds tired. He sounds, a little, like he's reading it off a card.