Eyes black like moons, he drops two dollars thirteen cents into my hand—the exact change for the gallon of Milo’s, the twist-top bottle of blue gatorade, the family size Uncle Ray’s sweet heat barbecue chips in the plastic sack hanging off the hook of his long rough fingers. Money can buy happiness, he says. The fluorescents shimmer above him and the dusty gas pumps and the truck that smells like old truck and the lake. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Let’s go. We drink the tea right out the jug as we rumble down 11W. The windows down.

Every time we go down this road I think about that story, about the couple who flew through the windshield one night. When they found her, he was still in her mouth; when they hit the tree, she bit down around him until her teeth clacked. Dead as anything, as mud. When he first told me that story, he asked if I’d die like that, if it would be worth it, and I said something like Depends on how good her head was, but I was thinking about the woman, about her mother finding her like that, or anyone finding her like that, mouthful-dead. There exists a kind of love that’s worth that. A fistful of coins rattles in my shirt pocket. I hold the mouth of the jug to my mouth and in the driver’s seat he’s got an arm hanging out the window, he’s got his sunglasses on though the sun’s down red, he’s grinning at something I said or something he said or thought. I pass him the jug and he drinks where I drank.