Balloons

I looked at the house I had walked out of that morning as a man with a Saturday to kill. The garage door was down. The curtains were the same. The world had not rearranged itself. That was the part the fantasies never mentioned. You spend the thought and the lawn is still the lawn.

I put the knife down on the seat where it could not fall. I wiped my palm on my jeans and left a dark smear I would have to solve later. Later was a country I had just entered without a map.

Luis was not asking questions.

The sliding door was still locked from the inside. The child latch had been a detail I noticed the way you notice a fire exit in a theater, without believing you would use it. Now it was a fact. Now everything was a fact.

I breathed until breathing was something I could do on purpose. The mower stopped, then started again on a new strip. The kid with the basketball missed and swore. A dog two yards over barked at a squirrel and then forgot why.

The phone buzzed again. The screen said a name I would learn soon enough. Mira, waiting by glass doors with a pretzel smell in the air and a belief that branded metal meant safety.

I had eleven minutes in a waiting room with balloons. I had a ride that was not too far. I had a voice on speaker and a driveway at noon.

I had done it.

The shaking did not mean I wished it back. The shaking meant my body had finally caught up with a decision my head had been making in secret for years. I sat with that until the engine tick counted out a kind of clock, and then I understood the next problem was not moral.

The next problem was a van in daylight, and a body in a seatbelt, and a woman at a mall who still believed a light brown shuttle was coming.