He put $1,400 down on a truck he needed eleven days a month and washed twice a week. The payment was $912. For nineteen months he covered it by moving money between three accounts on a schedule he kept entirely in his head, and by telling his wife the bonus was coming in March. There was no bonus, and there had not been one in March for three years.

The tow driver came at 5:40 a.m., which he knew because he was already awake. He ran two blocks in slippers, waving, then stopped waving and just ran, then stopped. Back inside he opened the manufacturer's app out of habit and found it still tracking: a small icon moving north on the interstate without him. He watched it for forty minutes.