The garage door came down. Luis stayed behind the van’s shadow like a secret the building had agreed to keep until Monday. I sat in the driveway for one more breath with the windows cracked and the bleach riding with me, a chemical ghost.
Maple was ordinary. The light loved me.
I drove toward the mall with my hands at ten and two like a student. My mouth tasted like metal. I was not sorry. Sorry is a word for when you want the old Saturday back, the one with balloons and leftover nothing. I did not want it back.
I wanted the doors.
I wanted the woman who was waiting there with a phone in her hand, still believing the next face she saw would belong to Luis.
Dispatch called again while I was on Maple. I let it go to the quiet. The phone buzzed against the rag in the cup holder like an insect in a jar. I did not look at the preview. Looking would make me a person who answered, and persons get caught in the net of other persons.
A light turned red. I stopped. A woman in the next lane had a dog in the passenger seat with its head out, tongue like a flag. She did not look at the van. The logo did the looking for her. When the light went green I took the intersection at a legal speed and felt, stupidly, proud of the legality.
The mall was still minutes away. Minutes are a currency. I spent them counting my own pulse in my throat. I spent them watching missing shingles slide past, tar paper shining, a town that had been patching itself for so long it had forgotten what whole looked like.
I told myself I could still turn around. I could put the van back in the garage and sit on an overturned bucket until Monday made a different man of me. I did not turn around. Thought is not action. I had learned that today in the most expensive way possible.
The bleach smell was in my hair now. I cracked the window wider. Hot air shoved in. A song on the radio found a chorus and I turned it down because joy felt like a witness.