What the air does out here
Porch Light Basin opens at Mile 91, and the roadhouse porch light beats the dark by a comfortable margin. The last valley runs on kitchens, porches, and this one roadhouse, with the holidays gathering at the far end. At full dark a black car nobody knows parks nose out, trailing bright grapefruit and cracked peppercorn over dark patchouli, with a flower in it the register cannot place. The driver signs, orders once, tips exactly, and is gone.
Who rides with it
The keeper, who reads the register upside down and says nothing. Supper regulars with standing theories. The driver of the black car. The name in the register changes every visit, always in the same hand, and the roadhouse files that under paid in full.
Pair it at the next stop
Bay Rum, Mile 73, promised the dressed-up evening would wait at the first porch of the Basin, and the roadhouse keeps that word nightly. Some Decembers the same car sits in the drive of the grand house at Rouge 540, Mile 106. Nobody asks there either.