A new weight met his shoulder. Al had shifted, slumped closer. A woozy, almost smitten expression dripping over him. He mumbled something. Only the second time around did the mutters take shape. Twice now he’d told Henry how much he loved him.

“Love you, too,” Henry said. It hung funny in the air, and so he added, “man.”

A meaty hand, still pinching a Kool, slid over to Henry’s knee. The cigarette was jutting upward when the fingers dipped, squeezed into Henry’s inner thigh, then caressed.

Henry didn’t recoil. Didn’t speak. Maybe it was the sense of completion that relinquished his will. Let come what may, whatever. Maybe it was the booze or drugs or money or their combative chemical reactions that fired a rush of blood below his belt, where he again stiffened against the brick of cash in his front pocket.

Al’s fingers had begun crawling deeper into Henry’s lap. They met an obstacle, the cash, and paused, as if rallying to mount this inch-high hurdle. Henry shifted, neither closer nor away, just deeper into the sofa, lowering the threshold. Al’s fingers took their cue, stepped onto the brick one by one. They stroked the cash beneath the denim. When they met the slight rift between the brick’s edge and Henry’s cock strapped rigid against it, they tittered, playfully tracing this rousing boundary. Al nestled closer, released a sigh pumiced hoarse by exhaustion or longing.

“This what rich must …” Al started. “I mean, fuck.”

Henry waited.

Al gathered himself by kneading the cash and Henry, the rift between them imperceptible now. “Just saying,” Al whispered. “This is what it must feel like to be rich, huh?”

Henry scoffed. He reached for Al’s head and pressed his own back into the cushion. Eyes shut, chin lifted skyward, he said, “Nah.”

“No?”

“No,” Henry said. “This is what god must feel like.”

$12.40

A night without sleep.

From the motel, Henry had driven miles and miles, sinking the gas gauge needle into the red to bring them to this remote riverside park. Its parking lot sits at the bottom of a steep wooded gully, blocking it out of view from the main road. After mummying Junior in the covers, as if to both entrap heat and subdue the tremors, Henry took off the suit jacket. Hung it on the handgrip over the busted-out passenger window. A headless ghost hovering in his periphery over the course of all these stretched-thin minutes that keep compounding into one hour after another. Hours meant and needed for rest instead wasted away on squirming and writhing and souring the truck cab.