The park did not give me what I came for.
I drove with the trunk humming and a cigarette burning too fast. Locked gate. Hole in the fence. Dirt that remembered other mistakes. I parked where the trees made a wall and the road above was a rumor of headlights. I sat with the engine off until the tick counted out a kind of courage I did not trust.
I got him out. Awake enough to be a problem, drunk enough to be a joke. My bindings were stupid. Television had sold me a cartoon of tape. The tape had believed the cartoon. He kicked. He laughed. He called me a name that belonged to a friend, then a name that belonged to a bartender, then please, which belongs to everyone.
The lot was smaller than it had looked from the road. Dirt. A picnic table with one bench gone. A sign about hours that had not been true in years. I had pictured a stage. I got a forgotten place that did not care whether I succeeded. Places like that are honest. I was the one lying.
A car passed on the road above, music leaking, and I dropped into the weeds like a man praying, except I do not pray. Gravel bit my palms. The guest rolled and made a sound that was not a song anymore. I put a hand on his shoulder to keep him in the dirt and felt how little control a hand is.
When the music faded I hunted for the feeling. Power. Proof. The inside of a night that was not a driveway. I got elbows and breath and a mouth saying please in a voice that sounded like too many people at once. I stopped. Disgust, not triumph. Stopping is not mercy if the trunk has already been a room.
I will not draw you a map of what I left there. I poured water on my face from a bottle that had been rolling under the seat since winter. The water was warm and tasted like plastic. Television is bullshit. That is the review.
He was breathing. That is the line I will give you. Breathing, and then not my problem in the way I had wanted a problem to be mine. I got back in the car with dirt on my knees and tape still stuck to my fingers. The vinyl in the trunk was a joke. The shovel I did not need for any garden I owned was a joke. The hardware store had been a cathedral for a religion that did not take.