The fog always settles over the street this time of night, just after 2:30 am. The neighborhood is asleep. Most won’t notice the little red Ford putter down the street, whining in a voice only a manual transmission can speak. The car is almost polite in its movement, gliding along damp pavement, its headlights cutting the fog, seeking the little mounted box on a pole. 
	Most drivers for hire go straight home after the bars have closed and the last drunken reveler has weaved to their front door, keyed a lock, and put another night behind them. Their last sight is the little red car that delivered them, departing with finality.
	Most passers-by don’t see the box on the pole. The driver rolls up to the sanctuary, obscured by thriving, scented vegetation. He shuts off the engine and gets out. 
	Sage. That’s what that is. Pungent almost year-round, he now associates the smell with the thrill of discovery and the joy of reading. 
	His luck is good tonight. There’s a hardbound copy of a 1998 Robert Parker novel. He hasn’t read this one. The joy of the find. He sets his slightly used copy of Catch-22 into the new gap and returns to the car. 
	Through the pandemic, this little box kept him alive. His business suffered, of course, as fewer and fewer partiers ventured out. Oh, the lifers found a way, and they still called. But ever since that period, the after-parties and raging til sunrise has mostly stopped. 
	There’s a favorite gas station across town, a Chevron that keeps its bays well-lit, staffed by employees who don’t mind his parking at a far pump to borrow the light. If someone calls, he might go, but they better have a good story – better than Parker’s anyway, because it’s now after three in the morning, the fog has settled like a blanket over the town, and that perfect quiet is a gift he can’t refuse.