He sat in the car for twenty-two minutes.
He knew the number because he had looked at the dashboard clock when he pulled into the drive and cut the engine, and he looked at it again when he finally decided to go inside, and the number between those two times was twenty-two. He sat in the dark with the engine off and his hands in his lap and looked at the house — the specific, lit-up quality of it, the kitchen light and the sitting room lamp and the particular, domestic warmth of a house that looked from the outside like a house that contained a normal evening.
He thought about staying in the car.
This was not a serious thought — he was aware it was not a serious thought — but it had a specific, understandable appeal. The car had no history in it. The car was a contained and neutral spac
