Chapter 3: Six Days a Month — A Trucker's Long-Distance Love Story

The first thing Daniel noticed the next morning was that Elena had written first.

Good morning.

He was still in the sleeper when he saw it.

For several seconds he did nothing.

The truck was quiet except for the refrigeration unit of a trailer somewhere across the lot and the occasional compression of air brakes from drivers already beginning their day. Thin morning light found its way around the windshield curtains.

Daniel looked at the message again.

Good morning.

A small thing.

Almost nothing.

That was precisely why he liked it.

She had not needed anything.

There was no question attached.

No problem.

No request.

She had simply awakened and, at some point between opening her eyes and beginning whatever life required from her that morning, thought to write him.

Daniel typed back.

Good morning.

Then added a smiling face.

Then another.

Then praying hands.

Then a wave.

He stopped.

Looked at the collection.

Too many.

He knew that.

But text made tone unreliable, and Daniel hated being misunderstood. A sentence that sounded warm in his head could arrive on another person's screen flat, abrupt, or strangely formal once Google had finished rearranging it.

So he added emotion manually.

One symbol.

Then another.

Insurance against sounding colder than he meant.

He considered deleting two of them.

Sent the message instead.

He smiled.

Forty-seven years old.

Three daughters.

Fifteen years driving a truck.

Millions of kilometers behind him.

And apparently a good-morning message from a twenty-four-year-old factory worker in Mexico was enough to make him grin alone in a sleeper berth.

He pulled the curtain aside.

Arizona sunlight.

Another parking lot.

Another day measured by miles.

Daniel lived according to clocks that had almost nothing to do with ordinary life.

Drive eleven hours.

Work fourteen.

Seventy hours in eight days.

Thirty-four hours stopped and the clock reset.

People who did not drive commercially imagined trucking as movement.

The truth was that trucking was mostly time.

How much remained.

How much had been used.

How long until the receiver opened.

How long until traffic cleared.

How many minutes could be lost at a fuel island before an appointment became dangerous.

Time was a resource like diesel.

Waste enough and everything downstream changed.

Daniel understood that kind of life.

Elena's schedule interested him because it operated with the same cruelty.

Three twelve-hour shifts.

Friday through Sunday.

Seven in the morning until seven at night.

Travel on either side.

A child before and after.

Food.

Bath.

Sleep.

Repeat.

Different machinery.

Same theft of hours.

Yesterday, three days working and four days off had sounded generous.

Then Elena had explained what the three days actually looked like.

Now Daniel understood the trick.

The calendar said four days free.

Her life said otherwise.

There was laundry.

Food.

Mateo.

Errands.

Transportation.

The things postponed during the factory days because there was no space left for them.

Time was never merely time.

There was always something already waiting to consume it.

Daniel knew that too.

He reached for the phone again.

That was becoming a problem.

He wanted to know everything.

Not in the way men sometimes said that when what they really wanted was access to a woman's body.

He wanted the map.

Where she lived.

How she got to work.

How long it took.

Where Mateo stayed.

What she wanted to do at the factory.

Why she had left engineering school.

Which music made her turn the volume up.

Which food she ordered twice.

What irritated her.

What made her laugh.

Daniel had always believed knowing someone was simply the accumulation of accurate information.

Enough facts.

Enough time.

Enough attention.

Eventually the person became legible.

He had not yet learned how wrong that could be.

* * *

Elena asked where he was going.

Phoenix, he told her.

Then Santa Paloma.

He needed to inspect the remodeling at his apartment and make a list of supplies to clean and disinfect the place.

Her response came quickly.

When would he be there?

Daniel read the question twice.

There were questions that were only questions.

Then there were questions a man could inflate if he wasn't careful.

He tried not to inflate this one.

Tomorrow.

Another message.

She seemed pleased.

Daniel looked through the windshield at the highway stretching west.

Tomorrow.

Yesterday she had been a stranger on Facebook.

Tomorrow they could theoretically occupy the same room.

That was the peculiar geography of the border.

People imagined international distance as oceans.

Passports.

Airports.

Customs halls.

For Daniel, Mexico could be the other side of a street.

A turn.

A bridge.

A pedestrian gate.

One country becoming another before the body had enough time to understand that anything important had happened.

He spent perhaps six days a month around Santa Paloma.

Not continuously.

A day here.

A reset there.

A load that ended nearby.

An apartment he was fixing.

Enough that the city had started becoming familiar.

Not home.

Something adjacent to home.

He knew which roads punished a truck.

Which neighborhoods changed after dark.

Where to walk.

Where not to.

Where to eat.

Where taxis collected.

Where American dollars mysteriously altered prices.

He had learned the city as drivers learned every city: by inconvenience first.

Low clearance.

Bad turn.

No parking.

Steep road.

Narrow street.

Then, gradually, the other things arrived.

Food.

People.

A view.

A place he wanted to return to.

Now there was Elena.

He typed something about breakfast or lunch.

Nothing formal.

Maybe when he was there.

They could talk through Google Translate and embarrass both languages together.

She agreed.

Okay. Very good.

Daniel felt something tighten and release inside him.

Not excitement exactly.

Possibility.

He distrusted possibility.

Possibility made men stupid.

Still, he saved the thought.

Breakfast.

Lunch.

Nothing more.

* * *

Then Elena mentioned the refrigerator.

Almost casually.

She needed to go to the store, she said, but her refrigerator had stopped working, so she had not bought groceries that week.

Daniel stopped reading at the red light.

Read it again.

The refrigerator had been broken.

She was buying food meal by meal because anything left over would spoil.

That cost more.

Factory wages did not stretch far enough for inefficiency.

Daniel's mind changed gears.

It happened automatically.

"What is wrong with it?"

She didn't know.

The motor made noise.

It simply didn't cool.

"Have you cleaned the coils?"

Yes.

"Defrosted it?"

Yes.

"What brand?"

Didn't know.

"Model?"

Didn't know.

Used.

Bought a year earlier.

Daniel was already searching.

He knew he was doing too much.

He knew this woman had known him for less than forty-eight hours.

He also knew a refrigerator was a machine.

Machines had causes.

A compressor.

Relay.

Thermostat.

Refrigerant.

Coils.

A refrigerator did not become emotionally unavailable.

It did not promise to cool tomorrow.

It failed because something was broken.

Find the broken thing.

Fix it.

This made sense.

He asked her to look for the identification plate.

She sent photographs.

Not the right label.

He enlarged them anyway.

Looked again.

Searched model shapes.

Asked about temperature settings.

Asked whether ice formed.

Asked whether the freezer worked differently from the refrigerator section.

After several messages he finally wrote:

Sorry for interfering. I love solving problems. Addiction.

Elena laughed.

It's okay. Thank you.

Daniel set the phone on the dash.

That should have been enough.

Advice.

Possibilities.

Let her handle the rest.

Instead his mind continued working on the refrigerator while he drove.

He thought about grocery costs.

A child.

Rent.

Transport.

Factory wages.

One broken appliance multiplying expenses because every problem in a household on a tight budget did that.

People with money paid the cost of a problem.

People without money paid the cost of the problem plus the cost of not being able to solve it immediately.

A broken refrigerator became expensive food.

Bad glasses became headaches.

A missed work shuttle became taxi money.

A sick child became missed overtime.

A repair postponed long enough became replacement.

Poverty punished delay.

Daniel hated inefficient systems.

He hated this one more because now he could attach a face to it.

* * *

The conversation moved.

That was how talking with Elena worked.

No clean transitions.

A refrigerator became rent.

Rent became wages.

Wages became overtime.

Overtime became Mateo.

Mateo became the reason she could not simply take another job.

Elena told him there were weeks she became stressed.

This was one of them.

Rent due.

Refrigerator repair.

No extra shifts because she had no one to watch Mateo.

Daniel asked how much the rent was.

Then immediately apologized because he realized how personal the question sounded.

She answered anyway.

He compared it to his own apartment.

Joked that landlords saw a white American and doubled the number.

She laughed.

He kept returning to the refrigerator.

Could somebody inspect it?

How much?

When?

Send another photo.

Try this.

Check that.

He messaged people he knew.

That was another thing Daniel did without noticing.

A person told him about a problem and the problem entered his network.

Who knows someone?

Who can repair it?

Who sells one?

Who has one used?

What does it cost?

What is the fastest path from broken to functioning?

For him, care often took the shape of escalation.

He did not send flowers.

He opened contacts.

He searched marketplaces.

He compared prices.

He found a used refrigerator for sale.

Eight hundred pesos.

He sent it.

Elena refused immediately.

Not rudely.

Practically.

Why buy another if hers could be repaired?

The current one was not destroyed.

Something had failed.

Repair it.

Daniel smiled at the screen.

That answer pleased him far more than it should have.

She wasn't asking him to replace it.

She wasn't hinting.

She wasn't turning hardship into opportunity.

She wanted to fix what she already owned.

He found that attractive.

Not beautiful.

Attractive.

He told her so in a safer way.

She handled things well.

Elena corrected him.

She did not "handle things well," she said.

She had simply learned to organize the week around the amount of money she earned.

That sentence stayed with him.

Daniel drove in silence for several miles.

Organize the week around the amount of money she earned.

To Elena it was ordinary.

To him it was evidence of character.

Twenty-four.

A two-year-old son.

Twelve-hour factory shifts.

Rent.

Transportation.

Food.

Medical care.

No refrigerator.

And she was not complaining about the unfairness of the universe.

She was calculating.

This this week.

That next week.

If not now, later.

Adjust.

Continue.

Survive.

Daniel understood survival disguised as routine.

He had spent years doing versions of it.

Long absences from home.

Missed time with children.

Driving through exhaustion.

Sacrificing presence for provision and then wondering whether children remembered the provision or only the absence.

Elena did not seem to romanticize sacrifice.

She simply accepted that Mateo came first.

Yesterday she had told him she would go without something before letting the boy go without.

Today he could see how literal she had meant it.

Daniel typed carefully.

He told her that most people would have difficulty managing everything she was managing.

She had his respect.

Elena thanked him.

Daniel looked at the message longer than necessary.

Respect.

That was where the danger began.

Beauty attracted him.

Respect changed his behavior.

* * *

Earlier she had mentioned her glasses.

Scratched.

Almost a year old.

She needed another examination.

Then he learned she did not drive.

Bus to work.

Taxi when she was late.

Taxi when she needed to collect Mateo.

Daniel asked where she lived.

She told him.

A hillside neighborhood on the far side of Santa Paloma.

He opened the map.

Of course he did.

The map gave him what conversation could not.

Distance.

Roads.

Time.

Factory.

Home.

The route between.

A clean blue line appeared across the screen.

Simple.

Almost elegant.

Daniel zoomed in.

Then farther.

The illusion broke.

The road bent up through packed houses and uneven streets.

Concrete gave way in places to dust and rough shoulders.

Blocks were not blocks so much as interruptions in a hill.

The clean digital line did not show the climb.

It did not show a woman carrying groceries.

It did not show heat radiating off concrete.

It did not show a tired child who wanted to be carried.

It did not show the consequence of missing a shuttle by three minutes.

From above, Elena's life was a route.

From the ground, it was friction.

Walk farther.

Leave earlier.

Pay taxi.

Lose money.

Arrive tired.

Still work twelve hours.

Daniel dragged the map between her neighborhood and the factory.

He could see her life becoming geography.

But he also understood that geography from a screen was dishonest.

Maps made hardship look flat.

Elena lived it vertically.

Hill.

Bus.

Factory.

Home.

Mateo.

Repeat.

He sent a screenshot.

Elena explained the work shuttle.

She had to catch it early.

Otherwise taxi.

But either way, she had to get to work.

Work came first.

Daniel understood.

He admired that too.

Perhaps he was admiring too many things.

He didn't examine that thought closely.

* * *

Around midnight their conversation moved to relationships.

Daniel asked the question directly.

Why wasn't she in one?

Elena answered with the kind of clarity he liked.

Men she had met recently did not want anything serious.

Sex.

A good time.

Then gone.

Daniel cursed the male population on behalf of the male population.

Elena laughed.

But she was serious.

People treated sex like something meaningless.

Daniel agreed.

To him it wasn't meaningless.

Sex belonged inside something.

Commitment.

Loyalty.

Mutual obligation.

He began describing the life he considered ideal.

Long term.

Marriage if possible.

Equal effort.

Equal love.

Stability.

Security.

A home where needs were met.

Children educated.

Something left behind for them.

He asked if he was close.

Elena said yes.

Something like that.

Daniel continued.

Of course he continued.

Being able to walk down a street and know no one could simply take your partner away.

Knowing you had each other's support regardless of circumstances.

A house maintained by both people.

Both cook.

Both clean.

Both wash clothes.

A team.

Each fills the gaps the other cannot.

Elena added:

And cared for at home.

Knowing you'll be okay.

Daniel stopped typing.

There it was again.

Alignment.

Not identical lives.

Not identical personalities.

But similar architecture.

He had spent years meeting women who liked pieces of the life he described.

Security without responsibility.

Affection without accountability.

Freedom without obligation.

Or perhaps that was merely what he told himself after things failed.

Elena, however, kept answering with things he understood.

Unconditional.

Team.

Children first.

Work.

Character.

Nothing free.

Effort.

The same words.

He knew enough not to confuse shared vocabulary with shared meaning.

At least he believed he knew enough.

But it was difficult not to feel something happening.

He asked if she had questions about him.

Elena said she learned from how he expressed himself.

Daniel smiled.

Had he answered questions before she needed to ask them?

Yes.

She added the little embarrassed face.

Daniel felt absurdly pleased.

He wondered whether he was talking too much.

Almost certainly.

Then Elena said her head hurt from looking at the phone without her glasses.

She was going to sleep.

Good night.

Daniel typed:

Good night. Until tomorrow.

He paused.

Added one smiling face.

Not four this time.

He was learning.

She answered.

Until tomorrow. Good night.

He stared at the words.

Until tomorrow.

Another small thing.

Another thing that should not have mattered.

It did.

* * *

At eight-fifteen the next morning, she wrote first.

That was when Daniel knew the previous day had not been accidental.

Not that she wanted him.

Not that there would be a relationship.

Nothing that dramatic.

Only that he had occupied enough space in her mind to survive sleep.

He liked that more than he should have.

They talked about photographs.

Des Moines.

Mazatlán.

Places.

She asked where he was going.

Phoenix.

Then Santa Paloma.

When?

Tomorrow.

She sent the smiling face.

Daniel invited her to breakfast or lunch.

She agreed.

Then came the refrigerator again.

By noon Daniel had transformed a casual conversation into a repair project.

By early afternoon, he was preparing to send money.

He knew how that looked.

Even to himself.

Too soon.

Far too soon.

He had known this woman for barely more than a day.

He could hear one of his daughters if she knew.

Dad. Seriously?

He could hear friends.

You don't know her.

Correct.

He did not.

But he knew the refrigerator was broken.

He knew she had a child.

He knew she needed food to keep safely.

He knew the repair inspection was a few hundred pesos plus whatever parts cost.

He knew she had rent due.

He knew she had already said she would wait if necessary.

And he knew that the money required to relieve the immediate problem meant less to him than it meant to her.

Daniel's morality around money had always been simple.

If a small loss to him prevented a large suffering for someone else, why wouldn't he do it?

People complicated generosity because they feared being used.

Daniel feared being used too.

He simply hated becoming the kind of person who refused to help more.

He asked for the information needed to transfer funds.

Then, knowing exactly how suspicious that could sound coming from a man she had known for one day, he sent identification of his own.

See?

This is me.

Not a fake account.

Not someone asking for information while hiding himself.

Elena sent what was required.

Then immediately said she would repay him when she got settled.

Daniel answered:

Take as long as necessary.

No worry.

That mattered.

He wanted it to matter.

Not a transaction.

Not leverage.

A refrigerator.

A young mother.

A repair.

Nothing more.

He believed that completely.

At the time, it was completely true.

* * *

Elena looked at his identification.

Missouri.

Kansas City, Daniel explained.

She examined his old photo.

Then told him he looked good without the beard.

Daniel grinned.

He asked which she preferred.

Short beard?

Long?

None?

He knew he was fishing for compliments.

He did not care.

She said he looked good without it.

Daniel felt fifteen years younger.

He told her how far he had driven over his career.

Millions of kilometers.

Forty-eight states.

Every Canadian province.

Elena seemed genuinely impressed.

She had not traveled much.

Mazatlán.

Nearby places.

That was mostly it.

Daniel had crossed a continent so many times that states blurred together.

Elena had lived within a comparatively small geography.

And yet, listening to her, he did not experience her world as small.

It was dense.

His life covered distance.

Hers covered responsibility.

He knew highways.

She knew how to make one paycheck occupy seven days.

He knew border crossings.

She knew which bus she could not afford to miss.

He had seen mountains, oceans, snowfields, cities.

She knew which pediatrician she would pay extra for while choosing cheaper care for herself.

Daniel did not think one life was larger than the other.

Only differently measured.

* * *

Later she told him about being robbed while carrying Mateo.

Phone taken.

Fear.

Near the bridge.

Daniel's attention sharpened.

She had been with the baby.

That part bothered him.

He imagined it too easily.

Elena on the street.

Child with her.

Someone approaching.

No control.

No route out.

She told him the phone had not mattered.

Mateo had.

Since then she disliked anyone walking too close when she had her son outside.

Daniel understood.

Or thought he did.

He described how he moved through Santa Paloma.

Daylight.

Known streets.

Lit areas at night.

Taxi in unfamiliar places.

Awareness.

Always awareness.

He told her about corruption he had encountered farther south.

Police.

Stops.

American plates.

The strange vulnerability of being identifiable as foreign before saying a word.

Elena told him about her father.

A former U.S. resident.

Legal trouble.

Years incarcerated.

Daniel answered without judgment.

He had made mistakes young too.

Seventeen.

Trouble.

Consequences.

Elena responded simply.

Young.

People make mistakes.

They grow.

They mature.

Daniel stored that too.

She did not seem interested in making a person's worst event the complete definition of the person.

He liked that.

Another item.

Another piece.

The collection was growing.

* * *

They talked about seafood.

Daniel sent a menu.

Elena said it looked good.

"When we meet, we'll go there," he wrote.

"So you'll have to wait."

Excellent. ☺️

Daniel looked at the road.

When we meet.

He had written it naturally.

Not if.

When.

He wondered if she noticed.

He wondered if he should correct it.

He didn't.

* * *

Then the refrigerator stopped being theoretical.

Elena sent an update.

The repairman had come.

A small part related to the ignition had been changed.

Refrigerant added.

It was running.

Daniel sat up straighter.

"Working?"

Yes.

Cooling.

He asked again because Daniel did not trust success until it survived confirmation.

Really cooling?

Another message.

Yes.

She could finally buy groceries again.

That should have been enough.

Then a photograph arrived.

The inside of the refrigerator.

Ordinary shelves.

Ordinary food beginning to reclaim them.

Nothing beautiful about it.

Daniel enlarged the photograph anyway.

Cold air could not be photographed, but he could see what the image meant.

Milk would stay milk.

Leftovers would survive the night.

Groceries could be purchased for the week instead of one meal at a time.

Mateo could open the door tomorrow and find food there.

Daniel felt a small rush of satisfaction so clean it almost embarrassed him.

Problem.

Action.

Result.

Evidence.

Relief.

There.

That sequence made sense.

He could do something with that.

The refrigerator worked.

Elena's week became easier.

Daniel had helped.

Simple.

He asked whether the money had been enough.

A lot, she answered.

Daniel put the phone down.

For a few minutes he felt something difficult to name.

Satisfaction wasn't right.

Pride wasn't right either.

Relief, perhaps.

A problem had existed.

Now it was smaller.

He liked reducing burdens.

That was how he had always loved people, though he would not have used that word for Elena yet.

Fix the car.

Pay the fee.

Bring the food.

Take the late shift.

Solve the paperwork.

Make the call.

Drive the distance.

People told each other they cared constantly.

Daniel preferred verbs.

* * *

Elena asked whether he was still driving.

He sent a picture of the landscape.

Four more hours.

She asked about his legal driving limit.

He explained eleven hours.

Seventy per week.

Delivery windows.

Sleeping at customers.

Being awakened when they were ready.

She asked whether he traveled alone.

Always.

No one had accepted his invitation to come along.

Elena said traveling that way sounded wonderful.

Daniel glanced at the empty passenger seat.

Company would be welcome, he told her.

She misunderstood the translation.

He tried again.

Company.

Someone there.

She understood.

The conversation turned to snow.

Then beaches.

Elena liked snow.

But she liked the beach more.

Daniel told her his eventual goal was to retire near water.

The sentence passed between them without significance.

Neither could know what the beach would become later.

A destination.

A wedding.

A symbol.

A future Daniel could plan faster than Elena could inhabit.

Today it was merely water.

He asked if she had a passport.

No.

She wanted to arrange the paperwork through the factory.

Daniel asked questions until he understood.

Then he said something almost unconsciously.

He would remember that.

Elena asked why.

Because, he wrote, if he ever asked her to go somewhere, he would know she needed it.

There was a pause before she answered.

Traveling through the United States would be wonderful.

Daniel smiled.

There it was again.

A future hidden inside an ordinary sentence.

Not theirs.

Not yet.

Just a possible road.

He was good at roads.

* * *

Then Daniel asked the question that had been bothering him since the night before.

How had she found him?

He had accepted the friend request without thinking.

Then her photograph appeared.

Again.

And again.

Every few posts.

Enough that curiosity took over.

He had opened her profile.

Then the questions had started.

Who was she?

Why him?

Fake account?

Someone connected to the ex?

Some elaborate trap?

Elena laughed when he explained.

No conspiracy.

Curiosity.

She saw him.

Added him.

Then said hello.

Daniel laughed at himself.

So simple.

He told her he was glad she had.

That was true.

More true than he wanted to admit after forty-eight hours.

He told her he had nearly given up on Santa Paloma after everything that had happened with his ex.

Then, because restraint had never been Daniel's strongest quality, he explained himself.

People thought he had thick skin.

He said what he felt.

Sometimes it ended badly.

He gave a hundred percent even when he knew someone might take advantage of him.

He tried to do the right thing because he wanted to live on the correct side of his own conscience.

Elena called him deep.

Daniel laughed.

He had barely started.

Then he wrote something that surprised even him.

He wanted to know more about her.

But he did not want her to feel suffocated.

He did not want days without her messages or photographs.

But he also did not want to dominate her time.

He wanted to help with her burdens.

He did not want her to feel obligated.

All of this, he admitted, had developed since the previous night.

He stared at the message after sending it.

Too much.

Obviously too much.

He should delete it.

Too late.

Elena answered.

Thank you for seeing it that way.

Then:

What do you want to know?

Daniel breathed out.

Everything, he thought.

He did not type it.

* * *

A few minutes later he told her the truth about risk.

Any decision contained risk.

He could spend months protecting himself and still choose badly.

Or he could give everything to the option he hoped would become worthwhile.

That was simply how he operated.

One hundred percent.

Daniel did not yet understand that this quality, which looked romantic at the beginning of relationships, could become terrifying later.

He did not understand how difficult it would become for him to distinguish persistence from pressure.

Or support from entanglement.

Or commitment from refusal to accept loss.

Today, giving one hundred percent sounded noble.

Elena seemed to think so too.

He returned to the principle he had already told her.

Actions proved whether previous words had been true or false.

Words came first.

Actions verified them.

Simple.

Then he finally asked what he wanted to ask.

What was she looking for with him?

What did she expect?

What did she hope this could be?

Daniel watched the screen.

Three dots.

Gone.

Three dots again.

Elena answered:

They were getting to know each other.

They should spend time talking.

See where it could go.

Daniel read it carefully.

No promise.

No rejection.

No fantasy.

A reasonable answer.

Exactly the answer he should have wanted.

He typed:

Agreed.

Then stared at the word.

Getting to know each other.

See where it could go.

A road without a destination.

Daniel usually hated those.

For Elena, he was willing to drive one.

* * *

The next evening he asked about her work schedule again.

Friday through Sunday.

Twelve hours.

No life those days, she told him.

Leave early.

Home around eight.

Eat.

Shower.

Sleep.

Daniel pictured it.

He asked when she ate breakfast.

9:14.

Lunch.

1:44.

Daniel smiled.

Precise.

He understood precise.

He told her he would avoid bothering her during the times she needed to rest.

Elena said messages didn't bother her.

She answered when she could.

Sometimes she appeared online because supervisors messaged her about part numbers or meetings.

Daniel told her that made perfect sense.

At the time it did.

Years later, online indicators and unanswered messages would become loaded with meaning.

Today an unanswered message meant only:

She's working.

It was incredible how innocent information could be before history touched it.

* * *

They discovered more similarities.

More differences.

Her temper.

His patience.

Her music.

His ignorance of it.

Her love of rock and metal.

Slipknot.

Horror movies.

Suspense.

She liked singing even though she said she sang badly.

Daniel told her he had not been to a dance club in almost as long as she had been alive.

She laughed.

He told her about salsa.

Merengue.

Cumbia.

Selena concerts.

She admitted she liked the dances but couldn't dance.

Another future activity entered Daniel's mind before either of them had met.

Dance.

Seafood.

Maybe walking.

Small possibilities accumulating.

He asked what irritated her.

She said there were many things.

She got angry quickly sometimes.

Daniel smiled at the phone.

Good.

Something imperfect.

He had begun to worry she was assembling too neatly inside his imagination.

A temper he could understand.

He had one too.

He simply believed his was managed.

Perhaps everyone believed that about themselves.

* * *

Before Elena prepared for work, Daniel asked about the hours again.

He wanted to accommodate himself around her schedule.

Not interfere.

She found that sweet.

That word stayed with him.

Sweet.

He wasn't often called sweet.

Reliable.

Difficult.

Direct.

Stubborn.

Generous.

Demanding.

A pain in the ass.

Sweet was less common.

He imagined her getting ready for the factory the next morning.

Bus.

Uniform.

Twelve hours walking a line.

Breakfast at 9:14.

Lunch at 1:44.

Home around eight.

Mateo elsewhere for the weekend.

Then do it again.

Then again.

Daniel wanted to make something easier.

Anything.

A sandwich waiting.

Hot water.

One less task.

He actually told her that.

It wasn't flowers.

Not chocolates.

Not a card.

Just removing something from the list.

Elena called it nice.

Daniel looked toward the dark highway.

He had told her the day before that actions showed love.

He did not love Elena.

Not yet.

But the machinery by which he would eventually love her was already operating.

Notice the burden.

Measure it.

Reduce it.

Remember the schedule.

Solve the problem.

Drive the distance.

Repeat.

The refrigerator had given him the first small reward for that machinery.

A photograph.

Cold shelves.

A problem solved.

Her relief.

That feeling was dangerous in a way he could not yet understand.

Making Elena's life easier made him happy.

Nothing about that felt complicated.

Not yet.

He had no idea how far he would eventually go to keep experiencing that feeling.

Or how much of himself he would eventually attach to whether he succeeded.

* * *

Near midnight, Elena told him she had to prepare everything for work.

Tomorrow she would tell him more about what she liked.

And what irritated her.

There were many things, she warned.

Daniel wrote back.

Fine.

He had time.

He would listen.

She asked if that was okay.

He said yes.

The conversation began to slow.

Daniel looked at the route on his navigation.

Santa Paloma tomorrow.

Thirty-four hours, perhaps.

His reset.

His apartment.

Cleaning.

Supplies.

And somewhere inside those thirty-four hours, maybe breakfast.

Maybe lunch.

Maybe Elena.

He had been coming to Santa Paloma for months.

Six days some months.

Fewer others.

Enough to know the roads.

Enough to rent an apartment.

Enough to complain about the hills and the taxis and the rent.

Until yesterday, those visits had been logistics.

A place to stop.

A place to reset.

A city on a route.

Now the same destination felt different.

Nothing had physically changed.

The highways were the same.

The border was the same.

The apartment was the same.

Elena had simply entered the map.

Daniel zoomed out until the route became one clean line across the screen.

Tomorrow.

He liked the certainty of the word.

Tomorrow meant he could drive there.

Tomorrow meant distance had an endpoint.

Tomorrow meant there was a chance that the woman whose messages had occupied two days of his life would become three-dimensional.

Voice without translation delay.

Movement.

Height.

Eyes that looked somewhere before answering.

A real laugh instead of jajaja.

He wondered whether she would be shy.

He wondered whether he would.

Probably not.

Daniel rarely had the good sense to be shy.

He set the phone down.

A minute later it lit again.

Elena.

One last message.

Nothing profound.

Nothing that should have mattered.

Daniel answered anyway.

Outside, trucks moved through the night toward destinations printed on paperwork.

Daniel had one too.

But for the first time in a long time, the place he was going mattered less than who might be there when he arrived.

Six days a month.

Yesterday it had sounded like a schedule.

Tonight it sounded like an opportunity.