THE CITY STIRRED TO LIFE AS JONAH DROVE HOME. THE STREETCAR on St. Charles tunneled through the dark, following its lone headlight. Jonah’s F-100 tooled alongside. He glanced at the folks packed into its illuminated interior. People were also bunched on the sidewalks, sifting in and out of bars, waiting outside restaurants. He turned into his neighborhood, and the streets grew dimmer, quieter. A group of kids sitting on the steps of a raised home stared at his truck as he passed by.
We are always just arriving.
Luz’s words looped in Jonah’s mind. That means—Jonah thought—you’re always leaving somewhere, too.
Jonah turned around and drove again to the auto shop. They still owned the structure and the land—well, Dex did. The titles had transferred to him after Pop’s heart attack. There were other shuttered businesses alongside—a barbershop, a grocery, a laundry—gray plywood sutured across windows and tagged with graffiti. Jonah’s headlights cut across a figure in a black hoodie spraying paint onto the auto shop’s facade. The kid didn’t startle, didn’t move. Jonah sat in his truck and looked at the place. It occurred to him that of all the graffiti plastered across the auto shop and the other buildings, too, nobody had painted over the X codes left from Katrina. The spray paint skirted around the markings. Jonah imagined an unspoken bit of etiquette between faceless taggers who knew one another only by their symbols and their brashness. I might paint over your shit, but we’ll leave that there alone.
The truck idled and Jonah breathed. Luz had asked if he ever thought about reopening the shop. He hadn’t really, not in earnest, not any more than a quick, fanciful daydream. But now he envisioned a future in which he cleaned the place up, got it running, made a good living. He did it for Luz in this vision. He could take care of her. They would be married, live in the house, raise a family together. It was clear. He was alone now, but he wouldn’t be. He might build a family with Luz one day, and the business would allow him to do that. There was so much Jonah had believed was forever lost to him. He shifted into gear and drove home on a wave of hope.