Chapter 5: The Cab

He drove me to Park Point and we didn't talk.

He held me on his leather sofa until the clock said it was time for his steel door, and I let him.

The next night I broke nine city rules at once and took him to work.

Truck 14 has one passenger seat, bolted to the floor, with a cracked vinyl cover and a cup holder full of old salt.

Emlyn climbed up into it in his camel coat and buckled his seat belt.

"Is this permitted?" he asked.

"No."

"Will you be fired?"

"If Dewey finds out, he'll make me cry and then he'll cook for you."

He looked out at the ghostly streets while I ran the route.

I put the blade down on Superior Street and the snow rolled off in a white wave.

He pressed his forehead to the window.

"I've never seen it from this side," he said.

"What side?"

"The side where somebody cleans it up."

At ten to four I turned the truck up Skyline Parkway.

There is a gravel pull-off high above the harbor where the road dead-ends at a guardrail.

The whole lake lay below us, a black plate under the moon.

I killed the headlights and left the heater going full, and the cab filled with a dry, ticking heat.

Out on the ice, something boomed.

It was a deep, long, rolling sound.

"That's the lake," I said. "It does that."

He listened to it.

"I thought you'd be angry," he said. "About the Hall."

"I am angry."

"You hide it very well."

"I'm not hiding it. I'm sitting here working up to it." I turned in my seat.

"She looked at me like I was a coat she'd already decided to throw out."

"She does that."

"She said I'm a convenience."

"You are not." He said it so fiercely that I looked at him.

"You're the only thing in my life I ever wanted and didn't have to be told I could."

Something shook loose in my chest.

"Come here," I said.

"Vinnie, the seat belt."

"Take it off."

He unbuckled, and I got a knee on the bench and crawled over the console.

This is a lot harder than it looks, in a pair of insulated bib overalls.

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