Comal

By three you have lost count of the gates. Under a pecan on Comal, Lisa stops the trike and cuts the motor. Four old men are playing dominoes at a table whose short leg is shimmed with a folded map. The tiles click. Nobody looks up.

Wait, Lisa says.

The street is quiet. A grackle walks along the curb. Lisa holds up three fingers, then two, then one.

Three blocks away a door bangs, and another, and the street fills with shouting. A boy runs out ahead of it with one shoe untied. The old men look up, all four, and go back to their tiles. Lisa nods once. She leaves the motor off and walks the trike on into it.