The bungee cord caught the cardboard flap and tore it the rest of the way off. Marcus held the speaker by its orange strap, the thing about the size of a good cantaloupe, and looked at the cliff-grinning man now face-down in the truck bed. He tucked it under his arm the way he'd carry beer to a tailgate and reached back for the cooler with his other hand.
He set it on a flat rock next to the lighter fluid, orange strap looped over a pine knot, and the LED ring went from blinking to solid the way a held breath lets go. Renee had both shoes somewhere in the pine needles already - her bare feet lifting dust on every downbeat, the song the one she'd made him play seventeen times on the drive up. He turned the volume up one bar and she threw her arms out like she was trying to catch the whole dark treeline.
The rain came sideways for twenty minutes and stopped like someone had turned a valve. When they got back the picnic table had a dark waterline across it and the speaker sat in the middle of it, the charging port cover puckered up at one corner, a lens of water pooled in the rubber cup. Marcus tilted it toward him with two fingers and the water ran off onto the wood. He tucked the cover back down with his thumbnail and picked up his pack.
He pressed the button and got one flat chirp, the LED blooming red twice and going out like a coal someone stepped on. He held the button down until his thumb blanched and the fire popped and still nothing - and then he turned the thing over and held the underside toward the flames where the molded letters read IPX5 and he moved it closer and read them again. Renee pulled her knees up to her chest on the log and stopped turning toward him every few seconds the way she had been. He set the speaker face-down on the picnic table and left it there, orange strap hanging off the edge, and reached for his beer.
He pressed the speaker into the foam until the orange strap coiled on top like something that had given up. The wet tent went in beside it, rolled too fat for its bag, canvas dark and cold against his wrist. He found the quick-start card under the driver's seat - folded twice and soft at the creases, and smoothed it once against his thigh before he put it in his jacket pocket, the inside one, where he kept his wallet.
The mile markers came and went in the headlights, green signs bleached to pale lime and back to dark. Renee's cheek had pressed a small oval of fog onto the passenger window - her jacket bunched up under her ear, one sock half off. Marcus put his hand on the volume knob twice and took it away both times, and the truck filled up with nothing but the wet hiss of the tires on blacktop. The orange strap was just visible in the rearview, draped over the cooler lid, moving a little every time he hit a seam in the road.
