Mac was never able to grasp the root of his exile.

He drove the city in typical looping patterns, the entirety of his possessions strewn about the car. Cooper was vehement, his rage barely suppressed. He would have advanced to physical means, but for Mac's inadvertently superior size.

Sybil had reported to Cooper attempted intimacies on Mac's part. Mac felt deeply confused to find his own denials hollow. Of course he wasn't guilty, and Sybil had done some strange things. But just his being there in the living room made him feel the center of a huge stroke of misfortune. For having seen.

In the middle of the ejection process Mac raised a consideration. Cooper instructed Mac to stand there a minute. He went back inside the trailer. Mac heard shouting. Screw the money: Sybil's sentiment.

Cooper returned and resumed the eviction.

Mac started to head out 165 north, but pulled over.  Out here the trees blocked the stars, even with the pavement raised some twenty feet over the flood plain. Why they called it a highway. He crossed the median, and went back. He needed gas anyway.

There was a new station under construction on Thomas, near the interstate, and he was surprised to see it open, all the lights on. They hadn't finished it. There was no booth, nothing but pumps and a canopy. Yet cars were going in and out. He investigated.

Credit card only. “Any time day or night, any day of the year.” But no cashier, no live person. And no go for anybody who only had crumpled bills and change stuffed in his pockets. No cash possible.

Some people in a hurry just left the receipts hanging. Twisting in the breeze.

Mac spent the rest of the night driving, nursing the long train of injustice, showing up for work when the hour came. Cooper didn't appear until after ten and they began their practice of not addressing each other forevermore. Until lunch.

Cooper gave Mac half a barbeque sandwich from Hendrix's on Trenton in the west city. Then he began to kid around in the normal manner, tit jokes for the fourth time, with the same "Mitsubishi!! Mitsubishi!!" punch line. Mac thought he detected a message.

"So I can put my stuff back in the trailer?"

Cooper acted like he didn't hear.

"Hey Coop. I didn't do anything."

"Of course you did. She told me. I'm just glad you made sure the baby was out of the room. Appreciate it, man."

"She was acting weird, is all I know."

"I believe that. And if she hadn't been my wife, I would have done her too, plus worse. I don't blame you."

Nothing Mac said got through. Then, when Meyer was locking up for the day, Mac made one last attempt. "No," Cooper said simply, sullenly. "And don't ask again, man."

In Mac's sincere formulation, the banishment seemed evidence of universal disorder.