The driver, just inside the doorway, can the see the speckled heads of Koi fish –though he doesn’t know that’s what they’re called- peeking up beneath lily pads and the pond’s rippling surface. The air is thick with mildew.

The hitchhiker is half-way up the stairs. He nearly took the driver by the sleeve out of eagerness, but retained enough sense to pass it up in the last instant. He triumphs at the top, turning around to take in the gilded-but-rotting grotto and to goad the driver into hurrying up and joining him.

The driver has never like being rushed, and he isn’t about to let himself start now by having this half-wit tell him where to go and how fast. Taking a look over his shoulder as he strides up the last couple of steps, the driver realizes that palaces like this, as poorly constructed and gaudy in décor as they may be, are made for people like the hitchhiker: the gullible, perhaps those dangerously wanting to believe.

The driver would never express this opinion aloud. It’s not that he cares much for politeness or harbors an overriding concern to have others like him. The reason is as plain as a favorite saying of his dear old Ma: “Opinions’ll only git ya in trouble.” That was the only political education he ever received or needed, and it’s seen him through his first twenty-two years of life just fine.

This hesitation to express an opinion causes the driver to appear to be tolerant of those he has every right to hate. It is this convenient, though unintentional, veneer of tolerance that allows him to blend in with the model of difference-accepting, freedom-loving American from which he looks no different. Only deep down, the driver’s profound contempt for everyone grants him a live-and-let-live indifference. He is happy to watch everyone rape, kill, slander, betray, and fuck their neighbor, as long as none of the muck winds up on his shoes. That plan had served him well up until sixteen hours ago.