The car is pulled forward and Van shifts in her seat. There is discomfort in having been conditioned to sit so still, for the sake of God. Some sound startles her and now her knees are apart—a harlot’s gap.

The soap and water drip down like holy water.

Rain sometimes contains hydrogen peroxide, Van’s male boss once told her. The dripping is like seminal fluid, or the first milk, colostrum, which contains peroxide too. In the small office kitchen her male boss had whispered in her ear, colostrum helps the immune system of babies.

The chemicals, the foam, disinfectant, air and water, hydrogen, the spermatozoa, the weak immune system of newborns, oxygen, and the long strips of cloth moving all of these things around.

The 540i, forest green, continues forward. Van’s head leaning back, she watches the car wash attendant in the rearview mirror.

There is soap and then it’s gone, the water returns, hitting the car, pounding the car with air, drying, and then the dirt. She has paid $1 extra for this dirt service. She’s paid a total of $6.

The dirt comes from the car wash attendant: mud and sand, grease and oil. He throws buckets of it on the windshield. It’s on the glass, on the windshield wipers, the green car. Van thinks of abandonment, of a man who left her only for the look of her hands, not for another woman, as her family had first believed, but to live the life he felt he deserved.

Van thinks of hourly wages—the average car wash attendant makes $11.49 per hour. She wonders what the dark-haired attendant might purchase with $11.49. His hair seems healthy, his hands seem youthful, and she thinks his name might be like hers (or how hers used to be) if his mother had chosen to reduce him to his most obvious quality.

Bruno buys eight caramel-filled candy bars for $11.49. Bruno buys a small piece of land near the car wash, a small square of it. He stands on the square with one foot; he has a strong core to balance, and he switches feet every few hours.

Get off my land, he could look at them and yell, this here is private property.

Van coughs and the phlegm makes itself known. Her nose is closed. The forest-green 540i is now brown and forest green, and the attendant, Bruno, seems more attractive than she had initially thought. Van removes all of her yellow hair, dry and brittle, but long, from the orange sweater. She watches Bruno notice this despite the layers of dirt covering the car. Van’s sore purple nipples don’t show through the orange sweater, but they are there, they both know this is so.