‘Hold on,’ she said to Hal. She looked at Maps. ‘It says go straight.’ Danna looked up and ahead. ‘It’s a toll road here.’

‘I know,’ Hal said. ‘Which is why I got confused. We didn’t rent the – the thing, the whatever –’

‘What thing –’

‘The pass, the special pass that beeps. For tolls.’

‘They can bill by plate,’ Danna said. ‘There’s a whole bill-by-plate lane,’ she said, pointing to it, ‘right there.’

Hal followed her point, but he was making the face he made when he didn’t want to have things clarified or simplified, when he wanted to be confused, when he wanted to shame Danna with his confusion. ‘Where?’ he asked, squinting.

‘The – the far lane, there,’ Danna said. She pointed harder.

‘Fine,’ Hal said, pissed. He looked over his shoulder, disengaged the emergency brake and put the car in drive. He hung a hard left and floored the gas. The car rocketed across all four lanes. Lots of people honked.

In minutes they were kissing. Sometimes they got their wires all – it was stupid. Why was it so hard for them to hear each other? Sometimes it felt like they’d never met before.

‘Do you sometimes feel like you’ve never met me before?’ she asked him, breaking the kiss. He tried not to let her. ‘Do you ever feel like we don’t know each other and we’re strangers?’

‘No,’ Hal said, so simple. ‘Do you?’

‘I don’t know,’ Danna said. ‘I think it’s the driving.’

‘I made one fucking mistake. Because you weren’t navigating. Because you fell asleep. And I’d never begrudge you sleep. But I asked you to navigate.’

Danna knew Hal was right. Only babies could get away with falling asleep anywhere. ‘Two mistakes, right next to each other. Two bad mistakes.’

‘Nothing bad happened.’

But she felt like something bad had happened, even though it was, to be fair, objectively true that nothing had. In moments like this one Danna felt like something was growing out of her brain. Like she’d never know a moment of surety, or quiet. The might’ves were always branching, branching, carrying ugly blooms: the fear of missing something obvious, the fear of everyone but Danna knowing some great truth about what her life really was.