Tape. I had it in the khaki pocket that was supposed to look empty. Wrists. Ankles. I almost did the cartoon knots again and stopped, because the park had already graded that homework. Tight enough that his hands went still. Not tight enough that I would have to explain a color later to a room I did not want. He moaned. I hit him, not hard, an open hand on the side of the head that was more punctuation than violence, and asked him to stay asleep, which is a stupid request. Please is a word I have heard too recently. It sounded wrong in my mouth. I swallowed it and did not say it again.
Getting him to the car was a hallway without walls. His heels left little commas in the gravel. The turtleneck tried to strangle me from the inside. Khaki whispered. I popped the trunk and the lining looked too clean, a stage set. I folded him in the way you fold a coat you do not respect. He fit. That was the worst part. People fit. The lid came down with a sound that was too ordinary, the same sound groceries make.
I sat in the driver seat and did not start the engine. My hands on the wheel were a student driver’s hands. The streetlamp kept working. Moths kept voting. I started the car. Gravel. Peel out. Silence in the cabin so complete it rang. From the trunk, nothing at first, then a thump that could have been a knee. I called him a dick, then had nothing else to call him, then had nothing else to say. Names are for people you plan to keep.
I did not take him home. Home was Mira’s eyes and a bed that had changed religions. Home had a window that watched a roof across the street and a man named James who would ask how the weekend was and expect an answer that fit in a cubicle. I drove under the limit. I took turns I knew and then a turn I did not, because maps are how you get found, and I had already learned that from a van.
The lot was not quite a lot, not quite a field. County leftover. Weeds through cracked pavement. A chain that had given up being a gate. I will not be more precise. Precision is how you get found. I killed the lights before I stopped. The trunk hummed the way it had hummed after the park, a mechanical complaint that did not care about my review.