Mario awoke in a sweat, and his hand went instantly to his pocket, for the tiny box there. His fingers wiggled into the box, feeling the hard edges of the ring. His heartbeat slowed to three-quarter time.

He checked the side mirror but it was fogged to hell, just a gray canvas of rain. Warm summer rain, no relief from the heat, and inside the truck it was worse, muggy, like sitting inside your own mouth.

Still, he was glad his brother had volunteered to go down and inspect the mainline this time. Sewer funk stayed in your clothes and your hair for days. Antonia wouldn’t be angry, but it’d dirty the moment he planned.

Mario stretched back against the reclined seat and closed his eyes. He tried to imagine what Antonia would look like when he knelt before her. The proposal was the only part of the wedding — the marriage — that the husband owned entirely, and he planned on making his good. Classic was the way to go. The ring, the kneel, a declaration of love, and then the simple question. Understated. Dignified.

It’d be the last thing she’d expect from a blue-collar schmuck like him. Antonia deserved better, everybody knew. College-educated, a good Catholic, and beautiful to boot, but she’d put all her chips on him, and after seven years of playing the game, he was ready to pay up, and big.

That’s if if his brother would stop playing around and finish the job. Mario looked at the clock and tried to figure out how long he’d been asleep. Math was never his talent: by the time he finished subtracting, he was three minutes off.

Almost an hour. Jesus Christ. He clicked his radio.

“Big brother, come on back.”

Nothing. Either he’d run into some kind of trouble in the sewer, or his radio was dead.

“Doing the best I can, Antonia,” he said aloud, and cracked open the door.

He was instantly wet when he stepped out of the truck. Fifteen slogging steps took him to the open manhole, where his brother’s safety cable ran taut into the blackness.

“HEY!” he shouted, cupping both hands to his mouth, and almost choked as rain gathered around his palms. He jerked on the safety cable, and almost fell on his ass when it gave way instantly. No slack at all. Three blocks away, lightning struck.

Mario pulled again, and the cable came. No safety harness, no eye-bolt. Just an abrupt, ragged tip. Jesus Christ.

Mario crawled to the open manhole, and this time he couldn’t bring his voice above a whisper, the sound almost drowned by the rain. “Who’s down there?”

There was something like a voice, shouting from a distance, barely audible over the sound of the water sluicing fast and heavy into the blackness below.

Mario dug into his pocket, pulled out the ring-box, kissed it, and pitched it into the open bed of the truck.

“Mother Mary, protect me.” His voice shook but his hands didn’t, grabbing the only weapon available — a wrench — as he slung himself onto the ladder.

His feet hit the sewer floor and he knew he’d made the biggest mistake of his life.

The safety lights had been knocked out. The water ripped around him, knee-deep. Mario clutched the ladder as he felt his footing wash away. His wrench dropped into the water and he watched it go, a seven-pound wrench pulled off like a paper boat. A bigger hole elsewhere, creating a current.

His eyes lost the wrench when it banged against something up ahead, something crouched and growling and darker than the darkness around it.

The silhouette said “crocodile,” but it was too broad. The way it curled itself into the darkness felt too intelligent and alive: it lacked the dead coldness of a reptile. His brain made a second guess: dragon.

His mama used to tell him, There’s something in the sewers.

The thing roared.

There’s something in the sewers, don’t go down alone.

Mario felt his grip loosen, and the thing actually smiled — teeth terrifying and worse was the wisdom behind the eyes, the knowing —

Don’t go down alone.

The sewer water surged, pulling him free, carrying him toward the thing. It HISSED, gaped its fanged chops, and reached for him with fingered claws.

But the water was faster. Mario coursed past the beast and down into the black mouth of the tunnel itself, a tunnel Mario had never seen on any schematic before.

Across town, Antonia sat in her tiny Brooklyn walk-up and stared at her cellphone. Mario was hours late. She’d prepared his favorite tortellini with marinara. She thought that might make things easier on him, but…

He wasn’t answering his phone. On the fourth try, she left a message.

“Mario, it’s Antonia. I hadn’t heard from you tonight, so I don’t know if you are at work, or… I just don’t know, I guess.

“I’m calling because…” Her voice caught, and it all came out at once. “I’ve waited almost seven years. I’m still waiting. And I can’t – I can’t wait anymore.

“Please don’t call me. It’s only going to make it harder for both of us.

“I – I’m sorry, Mario.”