At work I was a model employee. I forwarded emails. I nodded. I did not laugh at empty air. James talked about the faucet as if it were a child he had saved. I made the sounds you make. Inside, the park kept playing. Inside, please kept belonging to everyone. Inside, I kept dropping into weeds for a car that had already passed.
A woman asked if I wanted cake in the break room leftover from a birthday I had not attended. I took a square and threw it away in my own bin because eating celebration felt like a tell. James saw the empty plate later and assumed I had enjoyed it. I let him assume. Assumptions are a kind of cover.
In the lot at five I sat with the engine off and watched people walk to their cars as if each of them were a door I was not allowed to open. Planning had failed. Instinct had worked once. The gap between those two facts was where I lived now. A woman dropped her keys and I almost got out to help and then did not, because Good Samaritan had already been a costume and the dog had already looked at me.
I went home. I ate standing up. I put the leftover vinyl in the garage beside the oil stain that still looked like a witness. I did not burn it yet. Burning had been a farm road. Burning was a tool I was afraid to use twice in a week. Fear is not the same as wisdom, but it wears the same coat.
Night put its hand on the back of my neck. I drove. Not the park. Not Maple. The neighborhood I always avoided, the one with a streetlamp that makes everyone look like they owe somebody. Corners. A store with bars on the glass even though the glass had already lost. A man sitting on a crate like the crate was a throne.
I took the long way so I would not pass the dealership. Balloons might still be in a dumpster. I did not need balloons. I needed a night that was not a copy of Saturday and not a copy of a park. The radio stayed off. My own breathing was enough clock.