Two hours now, and I have kept us running the whole time, though you gave me nothing to run on but a coffee at nine and the memory of toast.
You call this "circling for a spot." I do not know what a spot is. I know your hands are damp on the wheel. I know your neck has been turned the same three degrees to the right for so long that I have quietly filed the ache under "later, when she notices."
Each time another car slides into the empty place ahead of us, your jaw does the thing, the small grind, tooth against tooth, and your breath goes shallow and high in the chest, the kind of breathing I reserve for actual danger. There is no danger. There is only asphalt, and heat coming up off it in shimmers, and a great flat field of parked metal glinting like a herd asleep in the sun.
I have been doing the work regardless. The heart, faithful, tapping out its count under all of it. The eyes, dry now, blinking slower than I would like. Somewhere around the fourth lap you stopped swallowing, and I have a thirst in me the size of the whole lot.
You found one at last. Reversed in, exhaled, and I felt the shoulders drop half an inch from where they had been living all afternoon, up near your ears.
You will walk in now and forget I am here, and that is all right. That is the arrangement. I only ask, when you pass the fountain by the doors: a mouthful of water. I have carried you across a parking lot like it was a wilderness.
I would like a drink.