I put the phone face down again. The security guard completed a loop and started another. He stopped to talk to a kid on a skateboard. The kid left. The guard did not look at the van a second time. Once is curiosity. Twice is a report.
I wanted a cigarette and did not light one because smoke in a company van is a story, and I was already carrying too many stories. I wanted water and did not leave the seat because leaving the seat was how people got remembered by cameras. I did not know if the lot had cameras that worked. This town patches cameras the way it patches roofs. Still. I stayed in the logo.
A couple argued over a parking space two rows over. Their voices carried and then died. Nobody called anyone. Nobody looked at the light brown van with a man in it who was waiting for a white shirt. Conflict in a lot is scenery. I had counted on that without knowing I was counting on it.
I rehearsed the covering line again. Held up. I am covering. Short. Bored. Luis would have said it with a laugh. I did not have his laugh. I had a smear. I would have to spend it in the next ten minutes or the smear would dry into something a person could name.
Heat built in the cabin. Bleach and old coffee and the ghost of lemon cleaner. I cracked the window an inch. Mall noise leaked in. A laugh. A car alarm that gave up after four chirps. Someone yelling a name that was not Mira and not Luis and not mine.
Time stretched. Time always stretches when you have already done the irreversible thing and are waiting to do the next one. I counted cars leaving. I counted cars arriving. I lost count and started over because counting was the only prayer I had.
When the doors opened and a white shirt came through the glass, I put my hand on the key and felt the whole day lean forward with me.
Short brown hair. Phone never away. Mid height, the kind of person you would lose in a crowd and then find again by the tilt of her head. She paused on the concrete apron and looked for a logo, not a face. Faith in branded metal. That is how Saturdays work until they do not.