I saw the bottle on the passenger seat beside him.
It was a fifth of whiskey. Brown paper bag peeled down around the neck.
The seal was unbroken.
I stood next to the passenger door and looked at him through the window. He hadn’t seen me yet. He was sitting with both hands on the steering wheel and his phone pressed between his ear and his shoulder. His eyes were closed. His lips were moving.
I knocked on the glass.
He jumped. He looked at me, and his face did something I’d never seen it do in all the years I knew him. It crumpled. Not into tears. Into shame, plain and complete, like a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar.
He said something into the phone. Then he reached over and unlocked the door.
I opened it, picked up the bottle, and sat down in the passenger seat with it in my lap.
