Darius Whitlock

You are in Javier Mendoza's kitchen, before the light, with his thumb pressed hard against the cold edge of the counter. He has been yours for less than a minute and already you know the trouble: the dimples are a joke you can't land, and the beard keeps asking to be touched. Somewhere in this body a landlord's voicemail sits unplayed. You didn't take him to be between jobs. You took him because the wheel said so. Now his stomach is a fist, his phone is lit, and you are tired of having a man's problems handed to you with his face. You open the page. The wheel is already turning.

Then the roll of plastic is in your hands.

A garage door stands open on a gray street, one stoplight burning green over nothing. A line hums. Clear tubing pays out between your fingers, cool and slick, and your right hand has done something wrong. It caught the line a half-inch too late. You do it again, slowly, and it comes out right. Then you do ten more, each one checked, though this job hasn't needed checking in years. The body doesn't know why. You do.

You are small and dense, five-four, all of it useful. Your calves burn in the good way of hours on concrete. Your shoulders are loose, your lower back has a dull ache, and your braids tickle your neck. Foam plugs bounce against your sternum on their cord. The jaw is bare and smooth.

The work shirt hangs heavy and soft against your back, and it gives you a morning. His hands, not yours, button it in a dark room. Left sleeve first, the cuff rolled twice. A girl's voice from the bed says *you're gonna be tired*, and he says *I'm always tired*, and it's tender. Past her, a small child's shape sleeps in the next room, one foot kicked out of the blanket. He stands in the doorway longer than he has time for. The feeling is a quiet, enormous *mine*.

The glove tucked in your back pocket is stiff with old resin. Through it comes a night shift, a foreman's flat voice, rent due. Money is a number he checks on his phone and then puts away. Under your boots, the floor remembers a sweep of years. A woman before the girlfriend, with a laugh he still hears and a door he closed gently. He doesn't drink anymore. He misses it on Fridays and says nothing.

Your fingers curl and your knuckles crack by themselves, thumb over each in turn. You didn't ask. The hands know their own habits.

You lift them and turn them over. They are broad, scuffed, and warm, and they are not yours. You look up, past the line and the green light, and say, low:

"Okay. Let's see how long you last."

Under it the question is already there, how long before the wanting comes back.