I dreamed

The blue SUV is parked in my chest, engine running, and someone's asked me to give it a name before it leaves. I say Kevin because it's the first word that turns up, and the whole house sighs like I've finally paid a debt I didn't know I owed. Kevin's headlights are the exact colour of the dew point on the weather report, 9.9, and I keep checking his plates even though I know I'm not allowed to look, and every time I look they're just the number ten, repeated, stacked like a barcode.

Someone at the door — the trapper, maybe, or a shape wearing the trapper's silence — tells me the front door and the driveway are arguing about whose quiet it is. I try to referee and my mouth fills up with Caesar's autograph, two million dollars of ink, worthless as a whistle. Kevin idles. He knows the shortcut. He's always known the shortcut. I wake up still counting to ten and the number won't stop being clean.