The man tripped. I caught his elbow. Good Samaritan. The words even arrived in my mouth in case I needed them for a witness.
A woman passing with a dog asked if he was all right. The dog stopped, leash taut, nose working the air like it had a job. I sold it. Friend. Too many. I got him. She believed me because belief is cheaper than involvement. I almost took her instead. The thought was a flash, ugly and practical. The dog looked at me as if it knew. I let her go. One crime at a time is not morality. It is math.
“Easy,” I told him. “I will get you home.”
He blinked at me with wet eyes, grateful in the stupid way drunk men are grateful, which is to say he would forget my face if the night gave him a bed. I walked him toward my car. The lot behind the fence waited. The hole in the fence was a mouth. I did not take him through it yet. I took him to the bumper.
“You are a guest,” I told him in the lot, too early, the line arriving before the stage was set.
He blinked. “What?”
“Never mind. Sit. I will get you home.”
He sat on a bumper that was not his. The night smelled like wet leaves and old beer. Mira and Luis passed through the match flame when I lit a cigarette, a second of faces, then only smoke. I opened the trunk and saw vinyl and tape and the hole in my planning large enough to drive a life through.
He looked in.
For a moment he understood, or almost did, and then the beer took the understanding back. He laughed as if this were a prank his friends had paid for. I moved with the tape toward his wrists, the cartoon way, too loose, too much faith in television. He let me, still laughing, still a guest who thought the party had a theme.
I am new at this. The sentence did not comfort me. It only named the danger.
A car passed on the street beyond the fence, music leaking, bass like a fist. I froze. He hummed. The car kept going. The woman with the dog was already a story I would have to hope she never finished telling.