He had planned a bit. A pause, a drum roll — something staged, something with timing. He said so out loud at the top of the recording, and then discarded it in the same breath, because the news was already in the room and there was no reason to make it wait. Why do that when I've been approved. Morning light, indoors, the phone held in his hand because the selfie stick had turned out to be the wrong one — some mismatch of thread or clamp he didn't diagnose, just named and set aside. The hardware failed and the recording continued anyway, handheld, slightly unsteady, entirely functional.
rswfire was in it — he said the word himself, Euphoria, capitalized by inflection, still inside it rather than describing it from outside. He had applied to more than one lender and been approved by more than one. The bank he'd asked them to try came back with what he called a very good rate and deal, and he had a theory about why: they knew the RV was paid off. The other place didn't. He said it plainly, the way a person says a thing they have already worked out — the paid-off vehicle as collateral, as leverage, as the reason the numbers came back the way they did. Two lenders, compared. One chosen. The institution engaged on his terms, for his purposes, and then set down.
Behind him and above, Oliver was in position — a perch, some elevated spot in the room the cat occupied habitually. rswfire noticed the frame didn't include him and moved the camera to fix it, narrating the adjustment as he made it: he's up if you can look in the middle, yeah, there he goes. He watched to see whether the cat would come to him. He guessed not, then guessed again about the angle of the animal's body, then kept working the shot. I'm going to see if I can get him in there. Here we go, here we go. And then, direct address, to the cat: Oliver, Oliver, we're going on the road, dude. We're going on the road. Yes we are. You're going to love it. The cat was not consulted and was also not optional. He was a term of the plan.
Somewhere in the middle of the excitement, rswfire caught himself and started tightening. I get that I ramble too much or whatever — a note about format, about what the recording was for, about shaping the transmission for whoever would receive it. He was calibrating the medium while standing inside the event, which meant the event and the documentation of it were being built at the same time.
Then the architecture came out, enumerated aloud. First, he made the decision — he stated it as complete, already behind him. Second, get an RV — approved, dated, arriving. Third, there was a third, like, once you have the RV — and here he stopped. He did not fill the gap. He did not improvise a plausible third step to keep the sentence moving. He said he would think it through and post something later, and left the slot open and labeled. The step existed. It was simply not yet articulated, and he declined to pretend otherwise on camera.
He closed short, as promised. So next week, guys, that thing's going to be in my driveway. The driveway is the last detail — a fixed address, a paved place beside a house, the precise square of ground where the vehicle that ends fixed-address living would first come to rest. He named the timeline and named the location and then named the plural.
We're doing this.