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smiled. “Also, everyone would like you to talk with that guy from the Co-Op.”
    I froze. “ What guy from the Co-Op?”
    Marolo waved his hand over his chin. “You know. The one with the funky beard. The kind that looks like he’s got a crab hanging from his lower lip.”
    I didn’t have to blink through my buffer to know who he meant. “Vikram Ramaddy? What’s he been doing here?”
    “Trying to get the Co-Op to buy you out.”
    The wrench slipped out of my grip and clattered on the pourform floor. “He... what?”
    Marolo’s face crumpled. “Oh. You mean, you haven’t talked with him?”
    I took a deep breath to keep myself from screaming. “No,” I said, my voice level as the ocean on a windless day. “I don’t believe I have. Though I’m sure as hell about to. Probably with a cricket bat.” I let out that breath, drew in a longer, deeper one. “Did he make an offer to you?”
    “Not as such,” said Marolo, taking a step back from me.
    I gave him a glare. “Marolo, did the vice-chair of the Santee Anchorage Distillers Co-Operative give you an offer on this place? Or is this some new kind of zen aggression?”
    “It’s nothing like that,” said Marolo. “He just came here yesterday, took a look around, made sure our payments were up-to-date, asked what I thought about the cane harvest–”
    “Wait.” I held up my hands. “What about the harvest?”
    Marolo waved his hands like he was shooing a fly. “Other producers are having problems getting the cane they were contracted. But that’s because they’re idiots who work with idiot growers. Remember that guy in Bangsar? The one who flooded his fields with raw sewage because he thought it would help the soil?”
    “The guy who lost a foot to sepsis, yeah. What about him?”
    “Those are the growers Vikram’s dealing with, and it doesn’t affect us, because we grow our own.” He let out a slow breath, his body curling around his midsection. He gave me a smile. “That, by the way, is one of things I’m glad I don’t have to worry about. Nothing’s threatening our supply of cane.”
    “No, but Vikram Ramaddy is threatening my calm and placid mind. What did he say ?”
    Marolo cleared his throat, and some of the tension returned to his spine. “He was worried about the future of this distillery because of certain rumors he’d been hearing. Rumors about people not showing up to work, about slowed production, about…” His eyes flicked at me, then looked as far away as possible.
    I put my hands behind my back and rocked back and forth on my feet, my work boots squeaking against the floor. “About?”
    He opened his mouth, closed it, then blurted, “About the state of your mental health. He was worried that all of this work, here and in the plant, it was all too much pressure, and he wasn’t sure you’d be able to meet your obligations to the Co-Op. And if that happened, if I saw any signs that you were going to crack, then he and the other owners would be happy to make sure we all kept our jobs and kept this place running by making a takeover offer under Article Thirty-Three.”
    I stopped rocking. “Article Thirty-Three?”
    “You know it, right?”
    “I have the entire Co-Op Charter memorized, and I am intimately familiar with Article Thirty-Three.” I bent down and picked up the wrench, put it back into the toolbox.
    Marolo exhaled and relaxed. “I really thought you’d be more upset.”
    “Oh, I am,” I said, looking at all the other wrenches and screwdrivers and spanners in the box and wondering how I could use each of them to murder the other members of the Co-Op. “However, I am a professional, so I’m not going to let my anger take charge of my actions. Not until I’m sure I can legally punch that crab-bearded motherfucker into the middle of the ocean.”
    Marolo nodded. “That sounds more like you.”
    “He actually invoked Article Thirty-Three?”
    Marolo gave a half-shrug. “Well, like I said, it wasn’t an