The left turn lane stretched for hundreds of yards, as if to allow you time to change your mind.
I put on my signal.
The run-up to the guard booth was long, too, trimmed with agave and rocks.
Amy squeezed my hand. “You do know how to woo a lady.”
I said, “Wait’ll you see what I got lined up for our third date.”
The guard checked my driver’s license, raised the barrier arm. “Ahead on your right.”
I lifted my foot off the brake.
The visitors’ lot was already crowded, slack-faced folks trudging between the cars, like the breakup of some awful tailgate. They knew enough to get here early.
I killed the engine. In an instant, suffocating heat slammed through the windshield.
I turned to Amy. “Ready?”
Easier to ask her than myself.
We got out and she took my hand and we joined the back of a discontented line, shuffling toward the door, out of the sun and into a scratched, boomy concrete room. Clearing the metal detector required that she let go of me, but she was waiting for me, hand out, when I came through, and she held on to me as I approached the booth, the impassive face behind Plexiglas.
I felt her walking close beside me, and I felt her fingers tighten on mine as I formed the words:
Clay Edison, here to see my brother.