Danny Keegan

The man I am tonight has a bad back, and it is the reason I am awake at all. Kevin Dombrowski, eighteen, heavy, a line cook with burn-shiny forearms. For under a minute he has been mine, and already the ache lives in my lower spine like a hot spoon. I stand in a kitchen that is not mine, in the middle of the night, with the stove clock green and the apartment asleep around me. I have lifted a stockpot with these arms, and my phone is lit on the counter, and the page is open. I could say I was bored of him, but it was smaller than that. Standing here, I wanted to be thin enough to feel the cold. I wanted a body that had not yet been worn down by anyone. My thumb comes down.

The dark road arrives with no travel and no warning. Two hands are on a wheel at ten and two, dash glow on the knuckles. The car has drifted a foot toward the line. I pull it back in one smooth stroke, and my hands come off the wheel and settle lower and wider, because they are mine now. I put the signal on for an exit that isn't his. The ticking fills the car.

The engine hums up through the seat into a lean, narrow spine. The hoodie is soft with age against my back, and the memory comes sleeve by sleeve. A cold room before dawn, the hoodie off a chair, the work shirt with DANNY stitched over the pocket buttoned wrong, then buttoned right. His mother's voice calling up the stairs, tired and kind. He ate standing, toast over the sink. The hoodie smells like copper wire and old rain.

The hollow marble steps outside a rowhouse door arrive through his boots, still on the pedals. They are worn into a shallow bowl by a hundred years of feet, and he always steps in the middle without thinking. Then the ceiling: a half-finished ceiling, conduit overhead, his arms burning from holding a drill up. His journeyman said, "Slow is smooth, kid." Pride sits in him like a coin.

His fingers find a ring on the key chain, a thin plain ring, and turn it. Something comes hard: a church basement, a funeral, a grandfather's hand pressing it into his palm. Don't lose it. He is eighteen and has almost nothing, and this he has kept. His knuckles are chapped and his fingertips are calloused. His jaw feels the thin patchy beard, itchy, a vanity he thinks nobody sees. Nothing hurts. My knees go on and on without complaint.

I lift one hand and turn it over under the dome light. Freckles run up the wrist. The ring turns once between my fingers all by itself, and I let it.

I look up into the dark glass, into someone's blue eyes. "Hi, Danny," I say, and my voice is lighter than I expected.

The exit comes up green and white. I do not know how long you last, Danny. I do not know when the wanting comes back.