Declan Mahoney

Ramón Escalante's apartment is dark and the whole building sleeps. You stand at his kitchen window in Tokyo with his gap-toothed reflection in the glass and his thick belly against the sink's edge. The rice cooker's light is the only green thing in the room. He has been yours for under a minute. His knees already complain about the cold tile, and the stubble on his jaw is going to itch for a week.

Nothing is wrong with him, and that is the trouble. He works. He breathes. You stand in a stranger's kitchen at the wrong hour, and what you want is not here. You want somewhere with weather you have not felt. You open the page, and the wheel is already turning.

Light, and then the heat takes you. You are standing on concrete with a strap in your hands.

It is a ratchet buckle, steel gone warm in the sun. Your thumb is already on the release. Then the rhythm breaks: you pull wrong, the tongue slips, and the webbing sags against the tire. Your hands stop. You do it again slowly, and correctly. Then ten more times, each one checked, because something in the body wants proof.

Miami is white haze and diesel. Behind you, a diner sign hums pink and green in daylight. A puddle by your boot holds a piece of sky.

The flannel is soft with washing and sticks to your shoulder blades. Its sleeve is rolled to the elbow, and the cuff holds the rolling like a habit. You smell laundry soap and old sweat.

Then it comes, and it is his, not yours. A morning, a small room, a girl's voice calling from the next room, laughing at him about the shirt. He pulls it from the chair because it is clean enough. He rolls the right sleeve, then the left, badly, the way he always does. He grabs the cap off the doorknob and feels, for no reason, lucky.

The jeans are stiff at the knee. They hold a memory of a long drive at night, a gas station and a bad coffee, and him thinking *I could do this forever* and not knowing whether that was comfort or a warning. The boots pinch at the left heel. Your mind goes to his father, a man who taught him this strap on another truck and said *check it like it owes you money*. That is why he checks, and why the checking hasn't stopped.

The cap's brim is frayed against your forehead. Under it, your hair is a heavy curl. Your brow feels strange, one thick line pulled low over your eyes. When he squints, it all moves together.

His body is heavy and warm, soft at the middle and strong in the back and forearms. His shoulders ache from yesterday's load. Your thumbnail goes to your mouth without asking, and you find the edge already bitten ragged. It tastes of salt and rubber.

You let go of the strap. It hangs. You turn your hands over, calloused, sunburned, a little shaky, and not yours. You lift your eyes.

"Okay," you say, in his voice, low and a bit rough. "Okay. You're new."

Somewhere a wheel waits to turn. You don't know how long this one lasts. You close his hand, and open it, and feel the wanting not yet come.