We drive on. The sun has lowered into the nest of pine trees on the valley’s far ridge top. Yellow light comes through in broken rays.

So it looks like all the stations are closed, he says.

I guess so.

You had any place in mind where you wanted to put the car?

I shake my head.

He nods to himself. I see.

If you pulled over at a pay phone I could take a look at a phone book, I say, trying to keep my voice from breaking. Maybe I could get an idea that way.

He purses his lips and ponders over this. Problem is they stopped putting phone books in pay phones because people kept ripping them out.

Really?

Sure.

For a moment I take this in.

You mean even here? I say weakly.

Even here.

The truck jerks over a pothole, clattering something against the cab back, a thump behind my seat, then lifts me for a moment off the vinyl and then we round a corner and my weight shifts against the door and the plastic handle presses into my arm.

He seems to be waiting for me to say something. The sky has gone from afternoon blue to early evening orange, as if a fire burned on the far side of the west bordering mountains. A scent reaches my nostrils that smells like ash but it is probably my imagination and only pollen or pine or city soot.

He comes to the suburbs and loops back towards downtown. He says nothing. It is as if this were a normal action. We pass some car dealers, their cars in ordered and abandoned rows. All places I have seen before, nowhere to put my car.

I look out the window, scrunching my eyes so they will not tear.

From the corner of my vision I feel his measured glance. Familiar storefronts pass on either side.

I tell him: Do you think if I left the car in front of a station somebody might steal it?

For a moment he seems to ponder this, then finally shakes his head.

Let’s just pick one then.

We pass one and another and another, but none feel right. He does not press me to make a choice.

None of them feel right, I say.

I know what you mean.

We near another one with dirty windows and a crowd of old cars stuffed haphazardly into the lot before it. Maybe they would be too busy on Monday and would not appreciate finding a stranger’s car there unannounced. Or maybe they would love it, and charge me whatever they wanted to. I can imagine myself walking up to them in the morning with my car parked like that, looking like an idiot. But that is tomorrow.

What about this place? I say.

Could be.

But do you think it would be okay with them to leave it here?