At the house I lined the trunk in the garage with the door down. I took my time. Smoothness felt like competence, the same lie bleach had told. I stood back and looked at the work and saw a hole large enough to drive a life through. I closed the lid. I went inside and washed my hands even though I had worn gloves. Washing is a ritual. Rituals are how you pretend you still have rules.
James almost caught the laugh the next day. It escaped at my desk, a single wrong note in a cubicle song. His head appeared over the wall, comb joke already loaded, coffee already a microphone.
“Share with the class.”
“Nothing. Remembered a joke.”
“You never remember jokes. That is your whole brand.”
I shrugged. Brand. Logo. Van. The words stacked until I had to look at the spreadsheet like it could save me. He waited. I did not give him the joke. There was no joke. There was a trunk lined with vinyl I had smoothed with my palms the night before, as if smoothness were the same as readiness.
Thursday I almost went to his house. He mentioned the chair again, the extra plate, the boy and the soccer. I said maybe and meant never. A man with kids and fourteen years of the same job is a map with too many roads leading back. I wanted a clean line. I wanted someone who would not be missed for an hour.
Friday the house started talking, the pipes and the fan and the drawer I did not open. I left after work without changing, office clothes into downtown, because changing would have felt like putting on a costume and I needed to believe I was still a person running an errand.
Downtown on a Friday is a different county. People moved in clusters, phones out like cigarettes used to be. Music leaked from a doorway that wanted to be a club and was only a room with a cover. I have never loved crowds. A few of them are trying to cure something. Most of them are consuming. Keep your head down, I thought, and then I lifted it anyway, because looking is how this started.