Hardware

I shut the trunk on a guest who was still humming. The park stayed dead. The hardware bag was still on the back seat, receipt in it, basement written in a clerk’s mind if anyone asked. I started the engine. I did not look at the hole in the fence. I looked at the road, and the road looked like every other road, and that was the lie I needed to drive on.

The humming in the trunk was not a song I knew. It was not a song at all. It was a man still believing the night was a joke that would end with a couch and a glass of water.

I had bought tape for this. I had lined a trunk for this. I had smiled in a rear glass and killed the smile. Now I had a guest, and a park, and a Friday that had finally stopped talking in the house and started talking in the dark.

I drove toward the locked gate and the hole everyone uses, and I told myself that planning had begun, even if the plan was only vinyl and a word I had said too soon. Guest. The word sat in the cabin like a second passenger.

The trunk hummed. I kept both hands on the wheel. Ten and two. Student. Citizen. A man coming home from a hardware store with a basement to finish, if anyone asked, if anyone ever asked, if the dog ever told the woman what it had smelled on my hands.