Brendan Quigley

You are leaving Peter Dolan, and the reason is a small one. It is the afternoon in New York, and you are standing at a school gate with a dozen other parents, holding a juice box that is not yours to hold. A boy you have never met runs at your knees and says "Dad," and the word goes through you like a fork in a socket. He is not wrong. You have spent less than a minute as this man, and you already know the boy will want something from you tomorrow, and the day after. You wanted a life. You did not want a schedule.

So you thumb the wheel open with the gap-toothed man's hands, still warm around the juice box. Somewhere a Tuesday turns over.

Now there is granite under your shoes, and you are mid-step.

The stair edge comes up a half-second wrong. Your foot lands short, your knee jolts, and your whole weight catches in a body that was not expecting you. Then you do it again, slowly. Heel, edge, level. Then ten more steps, each one tested and each one fine, on stairs this man has gone down for years without once checking.

Overcast light, flat as paper. Cold in the nose, wet leaves somewhere. A briefcase handle in your right fingers, leather worn smooth and slightly tacky. Your left hand is at your wrist, thumb against a watch crystal.

You touch the handle and a hallway opens that is not yours. A girl of maybe four, in the doorway of a bedroom, holds out a drawing. It is a brown rectangle with a gold dot, and she says it is his briefcase. He says it is the best briefcase he has ever seen. His chest goes warm and heavy, and the feeling is his, not yours. The briefcase was a gift, though not from her. The gift came from the partner he nearly did not become.

The watch under your thumb is steel and cool. A courtroom surfaces: a long table, a client's sleeve, a verdict read, and the dry mouth of a man who will not let his face move. Thirty-five years live in how he stands, in the ache at the base of the neck from bending over paper, in the left knee that complains on descents. Your feet are flat, your shoulders are narrow but sturdy, and the buzzed scalp feels the wind like a bare bulb.

The shirt collar is stiff with starch. That sends you to this morning: a bathroom mirror steamed at the edges, his dimples deepening as he practiced a smile he did not feel. He worked the shirt on sleeve by sleeve, with the cuffs last. A woman's voice in the next room asked if he had eaten, and he lied, and she knew. He knotted the navy tie three times before it sat. The vest buttons went up from the bottom, one after another, each small click a promise to be someone steady today. He thumbed a vape from the pocket, took a pull on the porch with the storm door swinging, then pressed it back into the lining. His fingers were already hunting for something that was not there. The ring. He turns it when he is afraid, though there is no ring on this hand now. The habit survives in the fingertips, circling the base of a bare finger.

The rosary is somewhere too, in a drawer, in his mother's voice. He prays badly and means it.

You lift your eyes, then drop them to your hand. You turn it over. Palm, knuckles, palm. Your thumb keeps circling a finger that holds nothing.

You look up, and say it quietly into the cold. "Well. Hello, Brendan."

Nothing answers. Somewhere under the breath and the pulse sits the next spin, the question you can feel but not answer: how long does the wanting stay quiet this time?