He reeked of enthusiasm and was drenched in effort, obliterating any chance of exuding an air of bad-boy nonchalance that, at least in the movies, drove girls like Michelle wild. In her email she’d suggested they hang out. No specifics, no potential date spots, not even a single exclamation point. Even still, he’d splurged his buckthorn earnings on preparations, casting himself headfirst into fantasies of sex and elopement. In his front pocket was a hundred bucks just for tonight, perhaps for a dinner they hadn’t discussed, maybe later a movie never mentioned, and—christ—he’d even loaded the truck bed with sofa cushions and sleeping bags, just in case she suggested they find a private place to park and dig into each other under the stars. He’d bought and was now wearing a crisp pair of black Wranglers, black Timberlands, and a too-small T-shirt that showed off the new arms he was so proud of, bronzed and oak-sturdy from the last two months of work. Like some James Dean wannabe, he’d even rolled up the sleeves to reveal the blotchy collage of stick-n-poke tattoos the skinnies had left on his upper arms. He’d sprayed himself in a cologne he couldn’t pronounce, and now cranked down the window to let the wind rinse the yuppie juice off him. After the first exhausting yet lucrative week of the buckthorn hustle, he had shaved his head, which, in the rearview mirror now, made his cranium look egg-shaped, delicate, suggesting none of the Marine Corps grit he’d been striving for. He’d washed and polished the truck, emptied out the ashtrays, vacuumed every cushion and crevice, and this was an absolute disaster. He ripped the pine tree off the rearview mirror and chucked it out the window.

Michelle lived forty-five minutes west, out in the sticks, in a trailer park set behind a new outlet mall, so Henry had ample time to stew himself into a panic. Each mile cast the landscape into a deeper shade of atrophy, as if, by contrast, to further highlight all of his infantile hacks at seduction, which were bound to snuff out any prospects of romantic success. Flanking both sides of the highway were stretches of scorched farmland, the horizon flatlining in the distance like a dying patient’s EKG, disrupted occasionally by a slouching farmhouse or grain silo. Weather-battered billboards advertised hunting gear, salvation for spared fetuses, recreational vehicles, talk radio, and fishing boats. One warned that, after the next exit, there wouldn’t be another McDonald’s for another thirty-seven miles. When he was five miles from the outlet mall exit and Michelle, the billboards took on a new glossy retail sheen, bold fonts shouting about the designer bargains and family dining options to be enjoyed in only four miles, three, two, and exit now for savings beyond his wildest dreams.