He was awake enough to be a problem when the lid went up. Eyes wide in the dark. Tape at the mouth now, because I am a slow student but I do enroll. I got him out. He tried to stand like a man with a job. I did not help him find dignity. I left him the way this county leaves appliances, at the edge, where the pavement forgets its purpose. I cut the ankle tape with the knife from the glove box, not the new one, a cheap blade that had already been in a different story. He could shuffle. He could not sprint. That was the math I was willing to own.
“Hobby,” I told him, and heard how the word died in the air. He made a noise behind the tape. I did not translate it. I got back in the car and left him in the weeds with the pills still in my pocket, because even a joke deserves a clean exit.
The hobby was a joke. I said it out loud to the windshield. The windshield did not argue. Instinct had been a driveway at noon. Everything since had been a man in khaki pretending he had a craft. The park had been elbows. The lamp had been headlights and moths and a body that went slack too soon. Power had not arrived. Proof had not arrived. What had arrived was a trunk that would need burning and a costume that itched.
Mira’s eyes were not a joke. They rode in the passenger seat without sitting there. Brown that knew how to look at a van and make a Saturday into a religion. I drove with both hands on the wheel and did not remember two of the turns. A light in a kitchen window. A gas station I did not enter. The turtleneck still scratching as if it wanted to be a confession too.
When I got home I stood under the window and smoked until the filter bit me. Across the street the missing shingles held their shape. Tar paper like a closed eye. No unmarked car. No knock. The street was a street. That should have been enough. It was not.
If they had it, they would be here.
I said that and did not believe it. Belief is a luxury you buy after the trunk is empty. I went inside anyway, khaki still on, pills still in a pocket I would empty into the toilet like a man erasing a purchase. The bathroom fan was loud. The packet sank. I flushed twice. The water took the prop and left me with the night.