I lasted eleven minutes in the waiting room.
Balloons were taped to the chair backs with masking tape that had already given up at the corners. Matching shirts. A boy kicking latex until it bobbed and then kicking it again because nobody stopped him. His father never looked up from a phone. The television on the wall was selling a truck that would not exist on this lot. Complimentary coffee sat in a carafe that had been hot at nine and was a rumor by noon.
I did not wait for my own keys. Sitting still made the thought get loud, and the thought had been loud for years, and Saturday had finally offered me a van with a logo on it. I walked out into the heat and the smell of hot asphalt and the sound of a pressure washer somewhere behind the service bays.
The shuttle was already idling. Light brown. Dealership letters on the door that had faded from too many washes. The sliding door stood open like an invitation that did not know what it was inviting.
Luis was already talking before my belt clicked.
“Not too far, you said. That is what they all say. Then Maple eats twenty minutes and I am the liar.”
He laughed once, easy, a man who had driven this loop until the streets were weather. Receding hair. Coffee gone bitter on his breath. A wedding band that had stopped being jewelry and become a fact. I sat behind him and a little right, where the wide mirror gave me his neck and the cracked phone in the cup holder and the clipboard riding the dash at a crooked angle.
He glanced at me in the mirror, checking whether I wanted conversation or silence. I gave him the office smile, the one James gets on Monday when he asks if I saw the email.
“Office nearby?”
“In town.”
“I did phones once. Eight months. My wife said I looked like a plant nobody watered. This is better. You drop them off and they are not your problem.”
He smiled when he said problem, to show he did not mean it. I smiled back because that is what a passenger does when a stranger offers a joke and you are trying to remain a person.