“I’ll pass.”

“You’ll pass?” The man is disconcerted by the driver’s seeming displeasure in an establishment built for just the opposite. He tries one last time to intervene.

“Hey buddy, ya gotta lighten up a little. Didn’ ya read the plaque out front? This here’s a ‘house a mirth’, a place ya come ta….”

The driver doesn’t remain seated long enough to hear the remainder of the boy-girl-child’s protest. He leaves the money on the bar -where it’s sat for one or two hours, the darkness and non-stop chatter has further warped the driver’s sense of time- and heads back, wobbly, into the blaze of an extraordinary gray late-morning. While his eyes adjust, all objects are submerged in daze of murky brightness.

There comes the shape of a long, luxury sedan. No, that is not his car. Next comes the familiar profile of pickup, but its finish –or what he can make out of it beneath a tinge of rust- is not the right color. Finally, he staggers upon its twin, parked slightly askew at the end of the row: a slightly better-cared-for model. Despite the blurry befuddlement of stepping out into a gray Rocky Mountain afternoon, he can tell that the car has taken a beating from the journey so far. The driver turns his gaze from the bowed dual-fender of his pickup to the jagged tree-line of the pine clearing. The snow-covered crests directly to the east, miles away but imposing all-the-same, does not fill him with hope. He turns back to the dutiful, smiling pickup and gives it a sigh, letting his shoulders fall forward and his chest draw inward. The driver is drunk with exhaustion.

He collapses into the driver seat, and the molded leather greets him like a pet. He is out before he can even register the slam of his door or the clink of a beer bottle as it falls from his hand.

The driver does not know what has awoken him: he’s still in the stage between sleeping and wakefulness. The sun seems brighter, though it is no less hidden than before. The hitchhiker has leapt into the seat next to him. It’s then that the driver recalls how it was the hitchhiker rushing into the car that had awoken him. The driver tries to speak.