Al whipped out of the trailer park, away from the strip malls and freeways and city to the east, and instead steered them westward, hurtling in the direction of the cornfields, the plains, the pines. Henry was stewing. All he wanted was an answer. A date, even a rough time frame for when they could get to pressing and pushing the next batch—whether in a single delivery back in the city, or just selling baggies, even single tabs, to friends, coworkers, neighbors, schoolkids, whatever. The last two months of these fifty-, sixty-hour weeks of flipping kitchens and digging holes were breaking him in two, but nowhere close to even. And now with a baby to feed, and so, yeah. In this case, the ends absolutely justified the lowdown, junkie-hustle means. Then again, when didn’t they? The means, he meant. Not that he could turn this question to Al, who’d been blathering nonstop this entire time, pausing only to bring the pip’s stem to chapped-scabby lips and set a Bic’s flame under the charred glass orb, inside of which shards tinkled and smoldered, and Henry was so goddamn exhausted and frustrated that he didn’t turn down a hit.

The smoke was chillingly familiar. A frigid chute down his esophagus and into his lungs that detonated microscopic crackles of lightning past the pores of his skin. The meth kicked in quick if not instantly, and soon enough he was bobbing along to the anxious rant streaming out of Al. Yammering on and on about none of it being his fucking fault. He weren’t losing any sleep over it, not on him to spoon-feed or babysit. Grown-ass men ought to know their own doses, and but none of this couldn’t get pinned back to him—to them—right, dude?

“Yeah, no,” Henry said through gritting teeth. “Course not.”

His chin went back to nodding in vigorous accordance to everything Al had to say, because Al had something Henry wanted, needed for his family, and so he had to time this just right. Patience. Tact. Cunning. He clamped his jaw, resolute, solid. Then Al hushed mid-sentence as if choked. At last a wordless moment, and so this was Henry’s chance.

When he said Al’s name, he got shushed. An index finger went from Al’s lips to the rearview mirror. A pair of headlights was growing, closing in from behind, and, rather than overtaking the Bonneville, lights suddenly rinsed the cab in crimson. Then cobalt. Back to red, flashing over and over. Al slapped on the right-turn signal, cranked down the window, stuffed the pip into the seat cushion, eased onto the brake, then started telling either himself or Henry or nobody in particular to fuck him, fuck him, no—be cool. It was cool. Everything gonna be fine, okay? Right? He took Henry’s hand. Squeezed. They hadn’t spoken since or about the night after Red Lobster, and then the Bonneville stopped.