Daniel Ferris

Terrence's thumb is still on the trackpad when I decide. He has been Terrence for less than a minute, and already I can't stand the beard. It is a good beard. It itches anyway. The lab is quiet at this hour of the morning, a hum of fans, a half-finished tolerance stack on his screen. He is an engineer. I could be one too, if I wanted. Somebody in the hallway laughs, and I realize it is the laugh I came back for: the one I heard on my last body's phone, a man calling his brother, and I have not been able to put it down. Nothing is wrong with the body I have. It simply doesn't hold that sound. I click the wheel.

The road is dark and the wheel is under both hands, ten and two, leather warm, the dash glow on my knuckles. The car drifts a foot toward the line. I pull it back in one smooth motion, and my hands come off the wheel, then resettle lower and wider, and my thumb hits the signal. Tick, tick, tick. An exit that isn't mine.

I don't know whose it is. The body does, a little.

The jacket first. Canvas, soft at the cuffs, and the left sleeve brushes my wrist, and the morning comes up through the fabric. A kitchen, a small girl's shoe in his hand, the lace knotted wrong, and his patience, a deep ordinary patience like a floor under him. He zipped this jacket to the chin for her because she said it looked like a spaceman's. I didn't feel the zipper. He did.

The wedding band is cool against the wheel. When my finger turns it, I get a woman laughing at a sink, wet hands flicking water at him, and under it a plain gratitude so large it has no edges. Then another woman, older in the memory, standing in a doorway with her arms crossed, and a tight careful feeling, an old grief that has been made polite. The ex-wife. He is kind to her on purpose, every time.

My jaw is smooth. He shaved before leaving, a small vanity, and the razor memory comes with the sting of the aftershave he hates and wears anyway because his daughter likes the smell. My nose and cheeks feel hot, as if the sun had been on them, though there is no sun. Freckles. He was teased for them at nine, and at fifty-seven he's stopped minding.

The seat holds my back like a hand. Fifty-seven years sit in the lower spine, a dull knowing ache, and a knee that complains when the clutch of a memory pulls. My shoulders are strong from lifting a laundry basket up two flights of backyard stairs, wet leaves slick on the concrete, the late light gold on the railing. His body is average and tired and dependable, and it does what he asks without being asked twice.

Something in the footwell shifts against my shoe. A small backpack, a monster on it with one eye. His chest tightens. I almost cry, and I haven't cried in any of the bodies.

Tick, tick, tick. The exit sign slides up green and wrong.

I lift my right hand off the wheel and turn it over. Freckles run up the back of the wrist. The ring is plain gold, worn thin on the underside. This is a hand that has held a child's head in a fever. I look up into the mirror, and his brown eyes look back, mine now.

"Hello," I say, and his voice is lower than I expected, gentle even when it is a stranger's. "Let's see how long you last."

The signal keeps ticking. I do not know whether I'm still him by the next exit.