At three in the morning Broadway is empty and lit and the snow is coming sideways off the Mystic. Casablanca Services runs its routes in exactly those hours, when Everett is packed close — triple-deckers shoulder to shoulder, driveways one car wide, no room anywhere to be careless. Clearing ground here is geometry: where the pile goes, which door has to open first, what a shovel has to finish that steel cannot reach. By the time the first shift is walking to the bus, the pavement is dark and wet and passable. That is the entire point of the night.