Daniel Kimura Reyes

Lyle's knees are the reason, though you would not say so. Sixty years of cold water have settled in them, and at the edge of the kitchen counter before dawn, with the Seattle dark still pressed against the window, you stand holding a coffee you haven't drunk and feel the old diver's hips grind like a gate. The cleft chin, the silver stubble, the belly that sits over the belt: all of it was fine a minute ago. It is only that he is slow. You asked him to be quick and he cannot be. So the phone is already in his thick fingers, the page already open, the wheel already turning its colors under your thumb, and you let him go the way you left the one before.

The click of the stop is a pen click, and then the floor is different.

You are standing with your arm out, a tape hooked on a stud, yellow blade running up the wood. Sawdust hangs in the lamp light. Your hand did something wrong a half second ago, a hook set crooked, and you pull it and set it again, slowly, correctly. Then you check it. Then the next one, and you check that too.

The vest is the first thing to speak. Its mesh is stiff with dust, and touching it brings his pride: the day the crew got their own, a joke about the color, a foreman's voice saying *Reyes, you're lead now*. The hoodie sleeve, rough against your wrist, gives you a morning in a dark kitchen, a wife's hand pulling the zipper up to his chin because he always forgets, and him letting her. The belt weighs on his hips. Hammer, pliers, the pencil in the pouch. A pen is in his other fingers, and without asking, the thumb clicks it. Click. Click. A memory comes with it, a bank letter on a table, the number printed there that he cannot say aloud, and the pen clicking all through the night while she slept. The debt sits in his chest like a cold stone, deep and patient.

Your ear is hot and thick when the hood brushes it. The cauliflower ear: a mat, a gym floor, a younger man laughing with blood in his mouth, and the pure joy of being good at something that hurt. Your jaw is smooth, shaved this morning in the dark, the razor cold. The ring turns under your thumb, and there is another woman, years back, someone he still thinks of in the car with the window down, a quiet ache with no blame in it. Beneath the ache is a plain wish for her to be well. A candle at a small shelf at home, a bowed head, incense. He was not devout, only steady.

The body is lighter than Lyle's by half. Your knees bend easily. Your back is tight but willing, shoulders loaded from years of lifting plywood. Your lungs want a vape; the want comes with a taste of mint and a gray breath behind the truck. Outside the open frame the casino sign burns against a blue that is almost morning, and men behind you shuffle lumber, and no one has looked up.

You lift your hand from the tape and turn it over. The ring catches the lamp. The palm is broad, scarred with work, a stranger's, entirely yours.

You raise your eyes and say, quietly, "Okay. Hello."

And somewhere under the sawdust and the hum, you already wonder how long before the wanting comes back.