“You’re full, that’s all,” Henry says. “Now finish it.”

“I can’t, Pa. I think I’m sick.”

“Sick, huh?” He turns the key. “Guess your surprise will have to wait then.”

The wrong part of Junior’s face narrows. Henry wanted the boy’s lips to seam with intrigue, not his eyelashes to zipper into suspicion. A familiar glare. Ever since November, the boy has grown stingy with his eye contact.

“What surprise?” Junior asks.

“Wouldn’t be much of a surprise if I told you, now would it?”

Saying this, Henry is reminded of some thigh-slapping sitcom dad, and the comparison pleases him. To drive this wholesome image home, he tousles Junior’s hair. It’s stiff with grease and an odor follows, as if the rustle has released spores of unwashed scalp into the stale air of the truck cab. Very soon he wouldn’t just bathe the boy, but scrub every last inch until Junior’s hide was glowing, tender and squeaky-clean as a newborn.

They drive west and deeper into the dusk, a grand smudging of jackfruit and amethyst. The sky is so pretty it’s noteworthy, and it’s a shame he’s got nobody to note it to. The boy is too busy chomping at the cone like he’s been told to respond to Henry’s nudge. Not sharing this sunset, not marveling in tandem doesn’t make it any less pretty, though. Might even go so far as to call such a sight beautiful, and such an observation strikes him as strange. Out of character. Can’t even begin to remember the last time he’d taken a moment to inject meaning into something as routine as the sun’s daily retreat.

Best guess it’s because tonight is different from the last six months. Not only thanks to Junior’s birthday, but also the very real, within-arm’s-reach prospect of comfort. The dose of hope for tomorrow’s interview doesn’t hurt either.

Last week, after opening the email invitation on a public library computer, he’d decided that the day before the job interview, Junior’s birthday, they would splurge. They were owed a slender excess. Not quite sure whether it’s funny or sad how sustained deprivation turns even the most commonplace amenities into luxuries. In a motel tub, they will bathe themselves, braise themselves under torrents of hot water for as long as they please, till they’re pruney and choking on steam. They will have curtains to close and a deadbolt to lock, ensuring them a long, deep sleep on top of actual mattresses and bundled under clean sheets, undisturbed by the fear of a midnight knock knock against the truck’s windshield.

The prospect of comfort. A crumb of hope. It’s funny, not sad, he decides, that that’s all it takes for him to wax poetic.