Page 73 of Roadrunner

He was quiet, watching me.

“I’m coming back,” I said. “I want you to know that. I’m not disappearing again.”

He looked at me. “I know.”

“How do you know?”

“Because you bought a plane ticket and sat outside the clubhouse for three days before you came in,” he said. “People who are going to disappear don’t do that.”

I looked at him.

“They just disappear,” he said.

I turned back to the view. It was an accurate thing to say and it landed the way accurate things do when you’d rather they hadn’t.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You’ve said that.”

“I’ll probably keep saying it.”

“You don’t have to,” he said. “I told you. I know.”

We stood on the ridge for a long time. The morning light moved across the valley below us. A hawk appeared somewhere to the left and rode the thermals without effort, banking wide slow circles above the canyon.

I watched it.

“The motorcycle,” I said.

He glanced at me.

“Is it still in boxes?”

Something crossed his face. “Yes.”

“Still waiting?”

He looked back at the view. “Still waiting.”

We stood on the ridge until the morning got warm enough to mean it. Then we walked back down the trail the way we’d come up. His pace at the front. Mine behind. The desert waking up around us.

At the truck, he held my door.

I got in.

He walked around and got behind the wheel and we drove back toward Marana without talking much, the way we’d always driven. The mountains going blue at the edges. The desert doing what it always did.

Like no time had passed.

Like all of it had.

I flew home on a Friday.

Arthur met me at the door. He looked me over the way he always did when I’d been gone. Head to toe. Quick and thorough.

“How was the trip?” he asked.

“Great.” I left it at that.