The morning began with music. A portable Alexa device sat where he could reach it, the only one he needs, and "Roam" ran through the RV in stretches as rswfire moved through the small choreography of a Sunday — coffee poured, awful coffee, so gross he said so out loud and drank it anyway. The dehumidifier had been running twenty-four hours. He lifted the reservoir and found it full, water pulled out of the coastal air overnight, and held it up as evidence. This is how much water accumulates. The machine was working. He said it the way a person says it when a purchase has justified itself.
The receipt went up on the wall. The night before, his vape pen charger had stopped working, and the store had nothing to replace it, so he had bought cigarettes instead — nine dollars each, a number he only registered later, reading the paper in daylight. He had rolled his own for so long that the retail price arrived as genuine surprise. He quit that day. The receipt stayed visible, taped where he would see it, a price tag converted into a reminder. This is a difficult space but I will master it. The tobacco itself went into the trash pile forming near the door, alongside a broken monitor bound for the dumpster down the way.
The song kept playing, and partway through it he named what it was attached to. The last time he danced to it was with Oliver. He said he did not miss him, that he could listen to the song now, that he could not before — before Oliver took his cat. He said he needed the break from her, finally. He said he loved that cat and would miss him, and that he was glad he had Bailey. These cats, he said, have helped him set his priorities straight more than once. The music continued. Nothing in the room stopped for it.
Then the arithmetic. February 24th was the start of the journey; April 11th, his birthday, was the departure. He counted forward, corrected himself, counted again — forty-seven days, then a hundred and seven, then the number he was after. Sixty days on the road. It's working. I love this life. It's getting easier. There were challenges, he said, but that's life too. What he wanted was to leave and just go and explore. What stood between him and that was a list.
He went outside to look at the camper from a distance, and from that angle the tilt was obvious. Not a level camper. The site had cleared out some — a few occupants left, most of them due to go by five — which meant there was room to work. But the slide had groaned coming in and out, and when he inspected the mechanism he found the rack and pinion, sealed where he could not reach it. You can't get inside of it, so what are you supposed to do. I need to find out. There was a camper place nearby. Not today, Sunday; tomorrow was the dentist; Tuesday, then. They should know. After that, level the rig properly and set up the Level Mate Pro — he had seen videos, it tells you how many inches you're off, then it's just Lego bricks and you're good to go.
A convertible went past with its top down, and the sight rerouted him to the Jeep parked nearby. This one is different, sort of automated, and he had not figured it out yet — he needed to read the book. He had run soft tops for decades, across a lot of Jeeps, and this remained his favorite vehicle ever. It might rain. He would love to take the top off anyway. He said he wished he knew more Jeep people, and that he wanted to take it off-road someday, on ground set aside for it, being respectful of nature.
The rest of the day laid itself out plainly: the dumpster, the store, chili because chili is easy and he likes it, and hoop earrings if he could find them — small ones. No more monitor. No more cigarettes. Sixty days behind him, and the question he put to the road ahead was not whether but what: what the next thirty and sixty days would look like.