Adrián Quiñones Villanueva

The captain's knees ache before the sun is up. You are standing at the rail of a boat you will never take out again, and the old man's body holds the cold in its hips like a debt. Less than a minute you've had him. The scar through his eyebrow itches. You wanted a body that could do something, and he does: the rope, the weather, the slow competence of sixty-two years. But the first thing you felt in his chest was nothing, a quiet harbor, and the quiet is the reason. Nobody in him is hungry. You are. The wheel is already open in your head, the little page, the card in your palm, and you spin.

Fluorescent hum. The board clicks to 48, and your knee, which was bouncing, stops on the same click. You are in a plastic seat, third from the door. A paper cup of water has gone warm between your fingers. You set it down square on your knee, then fold your hands, because they would not stay still otherwise. You do not look up when a name is called.

The flannel is soft with washing, and it gives you the morning first. His thumb pushes a button through its hole, then another, and the sleeve cuff gets rolled twice because it always slides. His wife stands in the kitchen light and says his name the short way, Adri. A kid is yelling about a missing shoe. Somewhere in him there is a fear he carries like a stone in a pocket.

The ring turns under your thumb, and a whole afternoon comes up. A porch, a lockbox, a couple who wanted a house he could never afford himself. Hands that fidget with keys, with pens, with the hem of a shirt. He is never still. Under the shirt, the belly sits warm and soft on your thighs, a dad's body, tired in the lower back. The tattoo on the upper arm throbs faintly where the sleeve presses, bold lines and faded color, and you feel the needle and the nineteen-year-old he was, laughing. You taste no cigarette, no drink. He never wanted them. He prays sideways, to something, at red lights.

The pants hold keys, and with them comes a girl from before, years ago, a laugh in a car, and a small guilt that is only memory now. Under it is the number he cannot say: the account that says almost nothing. Why is he here? The memory slides away from you, half-given. Something about a form, a fee, a hearing.

You lift your hands. They are broad, tan, the ring bright. You turn them over, and the fingers twitch on their own.

"Forty-eight," you say, softly, in a voice that isn't yours, and you wonder how long you get to keep it.