I will not stay in that room with you. The hours are not entertainment. They are a door I already shut.
After, I showered until the pipes knocked. Hot water, then hotter, then a temperature that made thinking smaller. I watched the water run and told myself it was only water. The bathroom filled with steam until the mirror became a cloud. I did not wipe it. I did not want a face.
I dressed in clothes that had never been in a van. Jeans. A shirt from the drawer that still smelled like the detergent on sale. Socks. The ordinary costume of a man who had changed oil, not lives.
The pipes knocked once more after I shut the water, a house complaining in a language I usually ignored. Tonight I listened. Listening was safer than thinking about the room down the hall. I had shut a door. Shutting is an action. I clung to actions.
I stood under the window with a cigarette and the sash cracked. Mira was still a weight in the house I would not turn into a paragraph. The fan ticked. The town went on being a town. A dog barked at nothing. A porch light came on two streets over, then off, a nervous habit.
The smoke went out the gap and the night came in. Cut grass. Someone’s dryer vent. A faint fried smell from a kitchen that had cooked too late. I smoked the cigarette down to the filter and lit another because my hands needed an assignment.
The van had to vanish. Luis and Mira together, far out, fire that would look like carelessness if you only drove past. This county is built for driving past.
I worked in gloves I found under the sink, yellow, the kind you buy for a toilet and then feel too fancy to use. I waited for the televisions to turn the block blue. Living rooms became aquariums. That is when people stop looking at driveways.
I backed out with the headlights off until Maple forced me honest. My hands were steady. That was the part that scared me. Shaking is human. Steady is a tool.