James would ask how the weekend was. The sentence arrived fully formed, the way office sentences do. I practiced answers under my breath. Same old. Car trouble. Stayed in. The balloons were still taped to chairs somewhere. Mira’s eyes were still asking a question I had answered. Luis’s laugh was still in the van that was not a van anymore.
I told myself this was the beginning of a hobby. Hobbies have rules. Hobbies do not leave you on a farm road with two phones in your pocket that do not belong to you.
The phones were heavy in a way plastic should not be. I switched them off. It felt like a move. It was a switch.
A dog barked at a farm I could not see. I gave it a wide berth. Dogs remember. People forget. That is the unfair math of a county like this.
I passed a closed stand that sold corn in season, the painted board still promising sweetness. I passed a church with a sign that had a joke on it I did not read all the way. Jokes on signs are for people who still think language is a comfort. My feet hurt in a specific way, a blister starting, a reminder that I had treated my body like a tool and the tool was filing a complaint.
Home looked the same, which was an insult. The porch light I never used was still off. The garage bay was empty of van and full of the shape of one, a rectangle of cleaner concrete where the van had sat, a darker ring of oil that had always been there and now looked like a witness. I stood in that emptiness until standing felt like a confession, then I went inside.
I put the phones in a drawer in the kitchen, under takeout menus and a flashlight with dead batteries. The knife went back into mineral spirits. I washed the gloves and hung them as if they had only met a toilet. I finished the cigarette under the sill and watched missing shingles across the street do nothing heroic. They only stayed missing.
I slept on the couch. The bed had changed religions. Sleep came in pieces, the kind of sleep that is really just waiting with your eyes closed. Once I woke sure I heard a sliding door. Once I woke sure I smelled bleach. The house offered only the refrigerator and the tick of the same fan.