Xavier Review 35:1

“I’m sorry… I know… I always do this.”

“That’s it up there.”

“What?”

“Turn now.”

“Oh– ” Cairo cut the wheel. Any harder, and they would have fishtailed. Branigan leaned forward as though to get a better look at the triangular gulley that would have swallowed them had her reaction time been slower.

There were no other vehicles turning off at the exit. So once they cleared the shoulder and made it back on the off-ramp, Branigan could sit back and monitor the incremental slowing of his heart. He felt like a passenger inside himself, who in turn was a passenger inside this car. And he wondered how many other layers there might be to this, not just inside himself but out. Breathing, heartbeat—involuntary systems. The whole world was on auto-pilot.

As the trees thickened around them, he could tell Cairo was making quick glances between him and the road. His impulse to yell about her driving had calmed now, and he lowered his window to let in the fresh pine air.

Cairo was driving extra carefully now, almost to a fault, and Branigan made a conscious effort not to mention this either. She slowed to a complete stop, putting the car in park when they came to the end of the exit ramp. This time she turned fully toward him and waited for him to look back.

“It’s left, isn’t it? We go under the interstate?”

Branigan checked the printout again. “Yes,” he said. But his thoughts were on the trees. He wondered how long their scent would last inside his pine box.

Neither he nor Cairo had much to say as the car rounded the curves of the highway, but the silence wasn’t uncomfortable. Branigan even considered asking Cairo what was on her mind, before dismissing the idea. He thought he knew already. She would be thinking about her driving. Perhaps these cut-over tracts of land that punctuated the forest and stretched out to a distant tree-line. Maybe she was planning the new life she would make for herself once he was gone.