Dale Westbrook

You are standing in a mechanic's shop in El Paso with grease in the creases of knuckles that are not yours, and you are bored of being strong. Ricky Dale Navarro, three minutes old on you, can lift an engine block and cannot sit still. Nothing is wrong with him. That is the trouble. Your phone is already open to the page with the wheel, and the thumb that presses is thick and scarred and sure of itself, and you let it.

Then the shop is gone and the sun is on the back of your neck.

You are standing at the open back of a brown van, one boot planted, one leg out, a cardboard box sliding under your palm. Your hand did something wrong a half second ago, a grip too early, the corner catching the shelf. You feel it correct. You do it again slowly, and it is right. Ten more motions follow, each one checked by a man who is no longer there to check them.

Heat comes off the concrete. A subdivision, new brick, pale lawns, a brown pickup in a driveway with the sun on its hood. Your breath is easy. Thirty-eight years sit in the lower back, a low steady ache, and in the knees that know every step of this van.

The shirt is stiff with sun, a heavy cotton collar against your neck, and it gives you a morning. A kitchen with the light off. A woman's hand on his shoulder in the dark, warm. He buttons the shirt from the bottom, because he always has, left sleeve first, the cuff snapped flat. Three small voices argue about cereal behind him. He pulls on the shorts, the cargo pocket heavy with a tire gauge he never uses. He sits on the edge of the bed to lace the boots, the left one first, double-knotted, and she says *Go, you'll be late,* and he is not late, he is never late.

The scanner at your hip is warm. Under your thumb it lights, and you feel him pressing the same key a hundred thousand times. A tired pride comes with it. He keeps a ledger in his head of what he owes and what he has, and the sum is small, and he is not ashamed of it. Sunday comes, a pew, a hymn he sings flat, a girl on his knee tugging at his tie.

The ring on your left hand is thin and slightly warm. When your thumb turns it, a whole night comes back: a hospital hallway, a small one in his arms, a prayer without words, pure relief.

The box edge bites your palm. You set it down.

You lift your hand and turn it over. A pale band of skin circles the finger under the gold. A paper cut on the thumb. A stranger's hands, calm, and they are yours.

You look up, past the houses, at the ordinary morning.

"Okay," you say, in his voice, low and gravelly. "Okay. Hello."

Somewhere, already, the wanting starts to stir. You do not know how long you get to be him.