Outside, missing shingles flashed tar paper in the sun. Brick that needed pointing. A grocery with two letters gone from the sign. A dog ran a chain and barked as if we had insulted the yard. From a moving car this town still passes. Up close it is patches and good enough.
My right hand was in my jacket pocket. The folding knife was cheap, bought two towns over on a Thursday I told myself was nothing. The blade was still closed. I kept it closed with my thumb so it would not click. I had never spent this thought. Fantasy is cheap. It does not require a sink. It does not require a story you can tell a cop. It only requires a Saturday with idle time in it, and a man who will not stay where you put him.
The van smelled like lemon cleaner and old thermos coffee. The radio was low, a station that played songs from years when people still believed in choruses. Luis took Maple without asking if I wanted the scenic way. There is no scenic way. There is only the way that gets you home before the next pickup.
Pickup. The word sat in my mouth like a coin I had not meant to swallow.
“You been with them long?” I asked, because a silent passenger is a remembered passenger.
“Since the last manager. The new one wants balloons in the waiting room. Says it feels like family. Family is my wife asking why I am late and a kid who thinks a shuttle is a toy. Balloons are tape and helium. Different thing.”
He checked the mirror again. Not suspicion. Habit. The kind of check you do when you have almost hit a bicycle once and never forgotten the sound.
We passed the courthouse flag hanging limp. We passed the station with two cruisers in the lot, noses out, ready for a town that rarely gave them anything but fender work and noise complaints. I counted them because counting is what you do when you are trying not to feel the knife.
Luis’s phone rang.
He did not look at it first. Safety, or the performance of safety. He thumbed it onto speaker and dropped it back without taking his eyes off Maple for more than a blink.