Caleb Nordstrom

You are standing in a cold stairwell with Anil Choudhury's knuckles aching from the rail. His shoulders are stiff from a day of crawling through ceilings. Forty-three years of knees speak up on every step. He has a good body, and it works. Still, something sent you back, and you know what it was: a woman's voice on his phone saying "Papa" to a man who isn't you, and the way your chest had no answer. The wheel is a page. You pay, you spin.

It is the middle of the night, a Tuesday. The page asks for nothing else.

Then the fork is in your hand.

The fork is halfway to your mouth, and the weight of a different body settles into your legs like water finding a new level. The kitchen light hums over the stove hood. A coat is on you, heavy canvas, and you are chewing something salty that you did not put in your mouth. The window is black. Your jaw is smooth. Your face shifts into dimples you cannot see.

You do not move yet. The container sits in your left hand, warm cardboard going soft at the corners.

The coat collar is rough against your neck, and a morning opens. A zip-neck sweatshirt, gray, the one he reaches for first. He pulls the jeans from the chair, the left leg inside out, and shakes it right. The sneakers by the door have laces he never unties. He stands at the bathroom mirror and combs his hair to the hard side, wet comb, the part exact as a ruler line, and he smiles at nothing because his dimples make him look like he is in on a joke. He is not. He is tired in a way he hasn't told anyone. The comb drags past the small ring in the cartilage of his ear, and he winces, as always, a little.

The fork is metal, thin, bent a hair at the tines. Through it comes a server room, the long cold aisle, a rack door swung open and cables fanned out like a spilled bouquet. He is patient there. He is good. Nobody at church knows he is good at anything; they know he brings folding chairs. A pew, a hymn, a man's voice praying for him by name on a Sunday, and the embarrassment of being prayed over in front of everyone. He prayed back, silently, for a wife, and then felt foolish asking for something so ordinary.

Under your feet the tile is cold through the soles. The trailer rocks faintly on its blocks when the wind leans on it. Sagebrush scratches the skirting. Keys lie on the counter in a pile of envelopes, and your eyes fall on them: a bank statement, the small number that is his, put away dollar by dollar, forty thousand and some, a number he checks like a pulse. Nobody else will touch it. He meant it for a house with a yard.

Your free hand rises without being asked and runs over your scalp, over the combed hair, flattening what is already flat. It is his habit. The hand knows it better than you do.

You swallow. The rice is cold in the middle.

You set the fork down on the counter. You look at your hands, turn them over, long fingers, a stranger's, clean nails. A little callus where cable cuts. They are yours now, and they do not know it.

You look up at the black window, and your reflection looks back with his green eyes, and you say, quietly, "Hello, Caleb."

The wind pushes the trailer. You wonder how long before the wanting comes back, whether you will still be him when the sun gets up over the sage.