I stayed perched right where I was, feeling like time had stopped. But it hadn’t. It wouldn’t. Next I would lock this place up and drive my truck down Charter Street and cook a delicious dinner in a well-appointed kitchen. I would have a stiff drink and a smoke and then lie in bed awake for hours and hours. But I was going to sit in this dark building for a few more minutes first.
The temperature that night in Mike and Melanie’s house was going to be perfect, where you cover up with a sheet but you don’t need a blanket. My bedclothes would be freshly laundered. My truck was running smooth as ever. The calluses on my fingers had returned. I lived in the United States, in Florida. I was healthy. Overnight, people would drive the length of the peninsula and get where they were going. The loose cats would fight each other and survive. When the sun came up tomorrow, children would learn math and go fishing and search for lost toys.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
John Brandon’s three novels are Arkansas, Citrus County, and A Million Heavens. He has spent time as the Grisham Fellow in Creative Writing at University of Mississippi, and the Tickner Writing Fellow at Gilman School, in Baltimore. His work has appeared in Oxford American, GQ, Grantland, ESPN the Magazine, the New York Times Magazine, McSweeney’s, the Believer, and numerous literary journals. He now lives in St. Paul, and teaches at Hamline University. This is his first story collection.