Anthony Raymond Verrilli

You are standing in a Chicago stairwell with a security guard's keys in your fist, and you have already decided. Daniel Kwan Cho has been yours for two minutes. His knees are fine, his shift is easy, the radio on his belt says nothing. Nothing is wrong with him. But two minutes in, you caught your reflection in the dark of the monitor, a small, calm man with a good jaw, and you felt nothing, not even the wanting to be somebody else. That is what sends you back. The wanting has gone quiet, and you do not trust the quiet. You open the page. The wheel is already turning under your thumb.

Then the dash is glowing on your knuckles.

The car drifts a foot toward the line. Your hands, his hands, bring it back in one smooth pull, and then both come off the wheel and settle lower and wider, because you do not hold a wheel the way he does. The turn signal ticks on. It is for an exit that isn't his. You did that. You are three miles from a home you have never seen, on a dark highway, in a seat that is warm from someone else.

The ticking is loud. Your breath comes in through a nose that has been broken by nothing, just lived in. The corduroy is ribbed under your thighs and the flannel sits soft on your back, and the first thing it gives you is the morning. It is his thumb working the buttons, bottom to top, because his oldest daughter once told him he misbuttons from the top. The shirt is green because his wife bought it, and he wears it on Mondays so she will see it when he leaves. The cuffs are rolled twice. His forearm is cold where the ink is, fine geometric lines he got at thirty-one, and nobody knows what it means to him, not even her. It means a number of nights he did not drink. It means the cigarettes he stopped at forty. You feel the shame of having wanted one an hour ago, and then the pride of not.

The wheel under your palms is worn smooth at ten and two. Through the leather comes the boys in the back seat, years of them, kicking his seat, and the baby's cup that rolled under it and is still there, your heel touching it now. Three kids, maybe four, the number slides. A woman's name sits behind his teeth, warm, and another name behind that, colder: the one before, who still texts him, whom he has not answered. The ring is tight on the left hand and turns when you turn it. He is tired in a way that lives in the lower back, a stocker's ache, cases lifted and shelved, forty pounds at a time until the lumbar gives a small hot complaint. His hairline is thin; you feel the air-conditioning on the scalp. He has been dyeing it himself in the bathroom sink and told no one.

There is money put away, not much, enough that he checks the number when he cannot sleep. There is no God in the car, only the road and the dull good ache of a man who is going home to people.

You lift your right hand off the wheel and turn it over in the green dashboard light. The ring catches. The palm is callused where the box cutter sits. You look up into the mirror and into whoever is there.

"Hello," you say, in his voice, lower than you thought. "Let's see how long."

The signal keeps ticking. The exit is coming up on the right.