Curtis Bellamy

You are standing at a register in Philadelphia, in Anthony Rinaldi's body, and you have been him for less than a minute. The cleft chin itches under your thumb. The stubble is a coarse little lawn. A customer says something about a lottery ticket and you hear nothing, because what sent you back is already decided: he is too easy. Nothing in him pushes back. His weight sits where you put it and his tiredness is a rented tiredness, and some part of you wants a man who has refused things. You tap the phone under the counter. The wheel turns.

It is a hedge, green and close-cut, and the sun is on the left side of your face. You are mid-stride gone still, one boot lifted and set down. A small plastic handle is in your right hand and a thin cord runs from it to a dog the color of wet bark and honey, nose in the leaves. The air smells of cut privet and hot concrete. It is the middle of the morning and this man is out walking a dog, not driving. That is odd. Maybe he is between runs, maybe home on a reset. You do not know.

The dog looks up, ears flat. It knows. The leash goes slack.

The handle is warm, ridged under the thumb, and your thumb finds the lock button without being asked. Something comes up through it: a pet-store aisle, a woman at the counter saying *she's small, she'll need a harness*, and the feeling of being ashamed at how happy a small dog made him. Her name is Dolly. He picked it because it was the first thing he said out loud.

The shirt is soft and thin against your back, gray, washed to nothing. A sleeve edge brushes your arm and it gives you this morning: standing at a mirror, the jaw scraped smooth with a cold razor, because he shaves every day, even when no one will see, a habit from a dispatcher who once told him a clean face gets you waved through. You see him pull the shirt over his head and pat the crown, where the hair has thinned, and wince, and put on the green cap and then take it off because the dog doesn't care.

The denim shorts have a seam that rubs. Your calf feels the cool of the air on the ink. You don't need to look. *Elijah.* A date. The memory is a hospital hallway, a long one, fluorescent, and a nurse's shoes squeaking, and a feeling so large it has no edges. You do not get the end of it. It closes like a door held gently. He has no children, the facts say, and the tattoo says why you should not ask.

The boots are heavy, resoled twice. Through them comes a truck stop at first light: diesel, the hiss of air brakes, coffee in a paper cup, his thumb working at his thumbnail. Your teeth want to find the nail. They do, and the edge is already ragged. He is forty-six and his knees tell you so, the left one especially, from a thousand climbs into a cab. His back is stiff from the seat. His stomach is quiet. He quit drinking, and your mouth remembers wanting it, a dull habit like a pulled tooth. Sunday comes, a folding chair, a hymn he sings flat, a pastor's hand on his shoulder. He believes it. That belief is in the body like a bone.

You wind the cord around your hand twice. The dog watches. You step off at a stride longer than his, and the dog has to hurry to learn it.

You lift your hand and look at it. Brown, broad across the knuckles, nails bitten to the quick, the cord printed white across the palm. You turn it over. It does not feel borrowed yet, and that is the part that frightens you.

You look up and say to the street, "Come on, Dolly."

She comes. Your thumb is already at your mouth. You wonder how long before you are bored of her, of this knee, of the quiet. It could be years. It could be before the corner.