In one of those pieces I stood at the window again without lighting a cigarette, just watching the street for a shape that would mean I had been seen. Nothing came. A raccoon crossed as if it owned the asphalt. I went back to the couch and put my arm over my eyes and counted the fan ticks until counting became a kind of dark.
Morning arrived with a job attached. Light found the crack under the front door and then the whole living room, cruel and ordinary. I made coffee I did not want and drank it anyway because Monday requires a prop. The thought I had carried for years was spent, and the spending had not enlarged me. It had given me a walk and a drawer and a day with a name.
I stood at the counter and watched the clock on the stove, which was also wrong, which felt like a conspiracy of clocks. James would be in early. James was always in early. James would have a story about ketchup and a grill. I would have to stand in that story without flinching. Flinching is a tell. I practiced not flinching at the coffee, which had gone lukewarm in the cup, a small cold thing I could control.
I dressed like a man who had changed oil, not lives. In the bathroom glass I practiced the face James would need. Same old. Car trouble. Stayed in. The pebble of the lie sat on my tongue. I swallowed it.
I shaved. I missed a strip near my ear and left it, a small ugliness that would make me look like a person who had rushed, which was safer than looking like a person who had planned. I packed a lunch I would not eat. I checked the lock on the drawer as if a lock were a personality.
Under the sill, a last look at the street. No unmarked cars. No tape. No neighbor with a casserole of questions. A kid waited for a bus that did not run on Saturday and then remembered it was Monday and looked embarrassed at the empty curb. If they had it, I told myself, they would already be here. That sentence would become a prayer I said too often. Prayers do not make maps forget.