He picks me up at exactly 7 PM in a car I've never seen before.
Not a limo. Not a town car. A beat-up Honda Civic that looks like it survived the early 2000s by sheer stubbornness.
I stare at it from my apartment window. Then at my phone. His text from five minutes ago: I'm here. And yes, that's really my car.
I grab my jacket and head down.
He's leaning against the driver's side door, wearing jeans and a worn Columbia sweatshirt. No suit. No designer anything. He looks young. Normal. Like the man I met in Vegas before I knew who he really was.
"Nice ride," I say.
"It was my mother's. Before the MS got bad. Before she needed the facility." He opens the passenger door for me. "I keep it because it reminds me that I wasn't always—" He stops. "It reminds me who I used to be."
I slide in. The interior smells like old leather and faint lavender. There's a rosary hanging from the rearview mirror.
"Your mother's religious?" I ask as he gets in.
