The road opens a little after the bend. The lanes level out. The river keeps its line under the bridge.
No cars in either direction. The world is down to my windshield and what it frames.
I push the lever. The wipers drag and leave clean glass that fogs again at the edges. The heater fan rises a notch. The dash throws a low hum into the cabin, and the engine lays a higher one on top of it. Together they make a single steady note.
Far ahead, a green sign floats and takes a name. The letters don’t matter. The sign does. I follow its arrow.
The car gathers itself and goes. The lane markers stitch forward and vanish under the hood. My hands rest at ten and two. The wheel has a nick at the bottom where someone’s ring once scraped it.
Out where the highway starts to widen, there’s a shoulder that’s been plowed clean.
A rest area. A payphone long dead and standing anyway. A trash barrel with a lid that doesn’t fit. A picnic table with its top iced over, feet sunk, tilted.
I pass all of it.
Janet’s in early.
She shakes snow from her hood and hangs it on the chair back.
She sets her coffee down on the blotter, and it leaves a circle. She turns to go, then turns back, “ffft!” removes a tissue, blots at the circle.
The mirror gives me a strip of night collapsing into itself. The road ahead makes its easy promise.
A mile sign flicks by. Another. The needle steadies and holds.
I keep the line. The motor evens out. The glass clears at the corners.
Oncoming headlights rise and go by, one by one, each with its own short rush of air that taps the door and is gone.
Janet looks at my empty desk and the dead screen.
She takes the stapler from the corner of my desk and lines it with the edge.
She will send an email. Then another.
She will stand at the window and watch trucks grind past with their bed lights on. She will say, “Hmm,” to no one.
At break, she will tell someone I sounded fine. She will remember the wink and decide it was nothing. She will look at the clock and then not look for a long time.
The guardrail is far behind now. The house is a dark square on a block. The note is where I left it, folded once, ink puddled and smudged in one place where the pen caught.
The remote is useless without batteries.
Not me.
Cryptic truth. So beautifully written.