Not Too Far

Luis’s handwriting on the clipboard kept catching the sun. Mira. Food court. A time that was already a lie.

Five minutes, I had told her. Five minutes is how long a person waits before they start inventing explanations. Traffic. Luis being Luis. A drop that ran long. She would stay by the doors because she had been told to stay, and people like being told if the telling comes with a van.

I passed the grocery with two letters gone. I passed the dog on the chain. I passed the courthouse and did not look at the flag. My hands were clean. That was a sentence I could say out loud if I needed to. My hands were clean.

The mall rose out of the heat like a brick promise. I was not there yet. I was on the last stretch of road that still belonged to houses and yards and Saturdays that had not been spent. I kept the van in its lane. I kept my face in the mirror ordinary.

Behind me, in a garage that smelled like bleach and oil, a moving blanket was doing a job blankets are not sold for. Ahead of me, glass doors and a white shirt and a voice I had already stolen.

I drove toward the mall. The clock on the dash was Luis’s clock. It was wrong by four minutes, the way work clocks are wrong, and I used that wrongness like a blessing. I could still be five minutes. I could still be a smear of his voice. I could still arrive as a logo and not as a man.

The thought that had been a driveway was becoming a route.

I took it.