He clocks out at the shop about half an hour later, and offers Kyeo a ride home in his weatherbeaten pickup truck. "I'm worried you're going to judge me because there are crushed beer cans on the floor. You should judge me for that, but I wish you wouldn't."

"I wouldn't dream of it."

Puzzled blinking. 

"Well, get in, then."

In Kyeo gets.

The factory foreman has a four-bedroom unit in a duplex with a shared driveway; when he gets home there's a car parked in it, and he knocks on the neighbor's door to demand they move it. This descends into a shouting match about whose fault it is that the dogs got out of the backyard. 

He remembers Kyeo a couple minutes later. "Kid! Lemme show you the guest room. I'm not sure there are sheets on the bed, and I feel like you're constantly judging us, but whatever, good deed's a good deed."

The guest room has a queen bed that's indeed presently sheetless, and a closet full of ski gear.

"I'm not judging you at all. Are there sheets somewhere I should put on the bed?"

"Oh, that's good of you, young man. I'm going to put the sheets in the wash. They have stains on them. From Cherry when she's on the rag, and from sex."

"...okay."

"Then I'll introduce you to Cherry, but I want to start the laundry first. The dryer can take three hours to get things properly dry. Piece of crap. I could fix it but when I get home from work I mostly just want to play Overwatch."

Off he goes.

Huh. Maybe while the clothes are in the washing machine Kyeo will see if he can figure out how to fix the dryer. He has nothing else to do.

The problem with the dryer is that the pipe through which damp hot air is pumped out of the garage is full of lint.

Well if he can see how to detach and reattach that he will empty the lint into the nearest trash receptacle.

It has screws.

Can he find a screwdriver?

He can! The garage is actually the cleanest and most orderly part of the house.

Then he will fix the dryer!

His host finds him at it a while later. He has a beer can in one hand and a woman behind him in a bright pink sundress, with a fairly horrendous tan. "This is Cherry. Cherry, this is Kyeo, he's crashing in the guest room until he gets his first paycheck. He's from Ibyabek, he's used to working on spaceships."

"Huh," Cherry says. "Well I wouldn't have guessed it'd take a spaceship engineer to fix the dryer."

"I coulda fixed it, I'd just rather not."

"I'm not an engineer, I'm in the military, but I've done some spaceship assembly work before."

"Well, if you make yourself useful, I've got no complaints about you staying," says Cherry. "Only alternating weeks we have my daughter, and don't you sleep with her or steal her underwear or anything."

"I'm not going to do those things."

"Good, then. We're ordering Burger King for dinner, do you want a cheeseburger or a regular one?"

"- whichever is more convenient."

"It's just what I tell the computer, it's exactly as easy either way."

"Regular."

A regular burger apparently comes with lettuce and tomato and a bun and little packets of ketchup and mustard. These are handed to Kyeo without explanation. They eat while watching sports on the living room TV, which dominates one wall.