ot a sensitive vehicle, the Pug, but the naked tires feel part of Giles’s flesh, and pulling away from the checkpoint, he feels every pebble that passes beneath. Sure, the guard had waved him through without checking ID, duped by the van’s paint job. But the checkpoint was always going to be the easy part, wasn’t it? Giles slows to a creep as he rounds the back of the facility. A figure leans on a wall, smoking between two lights. Giles wipes the fogged windshield. Yes, that has to be it: the loading dock. He tries to swallow his fear, but his throat is sandpaper.

He begins to pull in between painted yellow lines. The guard snaps awake, lifting both palms as one does to question an imbecile. He spins a finger, and Giles flinches at his error. He’s supposed to back in. Of course he is. You don’t load a van through the front. He wipes sweat from his face, shifts to reverse, and pulls back into the first leg of a three-point turn. This is bad. Oh, this is very bad. He’ll go a mile out of his way to avoid the public debasement of parallel parking. Now here, in the predawn dark, he’s got to back into a narrow slot while a wary guard observes? Giles checks the rearview mirror and sees the suspicious red eye of the guard’s lit cigarette. Giles shifts into reverse, grasps the wheel, and prays to the General Motors gods for a vehicular miracle.