I went into a dive bar of sad men. Neon that had given up being red. A television playing a game nobody in the room had money on. I ordered a beer I did not want and sat where I could see the door. The bartender had a towel over his shoulder like a flag of a country with one export. He did not ask how my Friday was. That was why I had come in. I did not want a pity ending, a stranger crying into my shoulder, a confession swap. I wanted a clean line.
A man two stools down told a story about a boss. Another man told a story about a wife. The stories were loops. I drank enough to wet my mouth and not enough to slow my hands. The beer tasted like metal, or my mouth did. I set it down with a bill underneath and did not wait for change.
The men here were fixtures. They would be missed by the bartender if not by anyone else. Missed is a kind of camera. I left without finishing the beer. The bartender did not care. That was the point of the place.
On the block a younger man stumbled alone, one shoe arguing with the sidewalk. He laughed at a joke nobody had told. He put a hand on a parking meter as if it were a friend. His shirt was a color that had been bright once. He was the right amount of gone. Not a fixture. Not a cluster. A leftover.
I followed at a distance that could still be coincidence. My trunk was already lined. That is not fate. That is a choice you make in a hardware aisle and then carry around like a lunch.
He talked to a window. He talked to a hydrant. He turned toward the old park the cops killed years ago, the lot with the locked gate and the hole in the fence everyone uses. Trees that had been romantic in a different decade. Now they were just trees that hid a lot where nothing good was supposed to happen, which is why things happened there.
I almost called James. I do not know why that thought arrived. James would have brought a flashlight and a dad voice and ruined everything that needed ruining. I put the phone away. James was a chair and a cookie. This was a guest I had not invited yet.