Garte heard the door and looked up from the rota he was working on to see a girl meandering towards the bar. It was the clerk from the Frittte store, he didn't know her name.

"Oh, is Sylvie not here?" she said.

"No, she's on her break."

"Oh," the girl said, and just stood there chewing her gum and twisting a piece of hair around her finger.

"Can I help you?"

"Well." She paused. "There's this man outside my window. Yelling. Big guy. Should I be worried?" No anxiety showed on her face, but the fact that she was here suggested that she was worried. "Sorry. I, like, didn't know where to go."

"Isn't he just one of the strikers?"

The girl shrugged.

"Is he doing anything? Intimidating you? Damaging property?"

She shook her head. "He's shouting 'right to work'. What does that even mean? I've already got to work, you know?" She sniggered.

"Oh," Garte said. "This could be bad."

"Is it bad I just locked the store and came here out the back?"

"What? No. Your safety is more important than keeping the store open."

"Oh right," she said, sounding like this was news to her.

"Sounds like strike breakers. There could be trouble," Garte said, glancing towards the door, wondering when Sylvie was going to be back.

The girl tried to blow a bubble with her gum but it burst. "Just another day in Martinaise, right?"

Garte nodded.

She took a rolled up magazine out of her back pocket and put it on the bar. "I finished reading this. You can have it if you like."

Garte looked at the magazine, it was one of those pop culture ones. "Oh. No thanks. But Sylvie might want it."

At that moment Sylvie came back in.

"Sylvie! Are you all right?" Garte asked, suppressing the urge to go hurrying over to her.

"Yeah, why?"

"Where have you been?"

Sylvie frowned. "Just down to the canal. I don't think I was too long, was I?"

"No no, that's not what I meant. No trouble?"

She shook her head. "No. A lot of shouting over by the docks. I don't like the sound of it."

"It's strike breakers, whatever that means," the girl from Frittte said. She turned to Garte. "You reckon they're gonna have a fight or something?"

"I don't know. Maybe." Garte said. The girl looked at him with wide eyes and he wondered if he should have lied and said of course not.

"Well, you just stay here as long as want," Sylvie said. "I hate to think of you all alone in that shop."

"Yes, stay here. I… am here," Garte said, for all the good that would do. He felt like he should be able to do more in a situation like this. Could he really defend this place and the people in it if things really went south? He was a pacifist—not a coward, as some people liked to say—but attackers rarely took such things into consideration. Goraçy had gone home after preparing breakfast, and Titus and his crew weren't in. Although whether they would make things better or worse, he wasn't sure.

"I don't like this at all," Sylvie said, wrapping her arms around herself and rubbing them. "Can we lock the doors?"

Garte opened his mouth, then paused. "I suppose so," he said. There might be customers, but they could always knock. He went over to lock them. Sylvie started to tidy up, while the girl from Frittte plonked herself down on a bar stool and leaned on her hands, looking instantly fed up in that way of teenagers everywhere. He wondered if he should give her a job to do, then decided against it. He wasn't her boss.

From under the bar he pulled a well-thumbed paperback, Native Birds of Insulinde, and placed it in front of her. "Here, you can read this if you want."

The girl looked at it. "Looks boring," she said. Instead of picking up the book, she took off her Frittte hat and turned it over in her hands. "Might read it later."

Now that the three of them had fallen quiet, they could hear the noise from outside, strikers and strike breakers taking up chants or just plain yelling.

"How long is this going to go on for?" Sylvie said.

"Ugh, it's been going on forever already," the girl from Frittte said with a sigh.

"It'll go on until they come to an agreement," Garte said. "The Union wants more rights for the workers. The company thinks they have enough rights as it is."

"Glad I didn't join the Frittte union. My friend said you don't need to if your boss is nice."

Garte and Sylvie exchanged a look. Sylvie looked like she wanted to say something, but perhaps not in front of her own boss.

"You might want to have a think about that by yourself," Garte said, not just on Sylvie's behalf. The girl was young, early teens probably, around the same age he was when he started working here. Although he didn't remember ever looking or feeling that young.

"Where is this nice boss of yours?" Sylvie asked.

"Dunno. Doesn't come round much," she said, snapping her gum. "Your boss nice, Sylvie?" Her voice was innocent but she was smirking.

Sylvie glanced at Garte. "Well, he's okay."

Garte decided he would say nothing and take okay as a compliment. He'd been called worse by employees.

"They should just, like, talk about it," the girl said, pointing her thumb over her shoulder.

"Seems like they can't do that without arguing," Sylvie said.

The girl from Frittte scoffed. "And adults say teenagers are stupid," she said. She took her gum out of her mouth and shamelessly stuck it under her bar stool. Garte felt like he exercised great restraint in not saying anything about that either. "Oh yeah Sylvie, I brought you a magazine. It's got all the modern hairstyles in it."

"Thanks," Sylvie said. "Do you need it back for the store after?"

She shook her head. "It's an old one they told me to throw out. Dunno why they send us so many magazines if no-one buys them."

"We might get a sudden rush on visitors, you never know," Garte said. He looked towards the doors. Not even any of the locals had come in this morning. Maybe they were scared away by the noise. Maybe they couldn't afford to eat or drink out so much if the main breadwinner of the family was on strike. Maybe they couldn't afford to eat. This strike affected the whole town. And it wasn't as if many people here had much leeway to be affected by things.

Sylvie had sat down beside the Frittte clerk and they had the magazine open in front of them, discussing each of the hairstyles in detail. This was a foreign isola to Garte. Children weren't so bad, he thought. And Sylvie seemed like a natural with them. Just one of the many things he liked about her.

The girl pulled a face and suddenly she and Sylvie were laughing uproariously. Despite everything that was going on out there, they could still find a distraction. Still find some little piece of joy. Life went on. You had to assume life would go on, and make plans under that assumption. Garte went back to working on the rota.