Dennis Kruger

You are standing in a kitchen in Toronto, in Suresh Nambiar's slippers, and the kettle has clicked off twice without you pouring it. Four minutes. The moustache is still strange under your thumb. The knees are good, the belly is warm and soft, the house smells of cardamom and his wife's absence, and none of it is wrong. That is the trouble. Something in the hallway drawer was waiting for you: a folder of his, neat, with a date on it, an appointment he'd made for himself and kept putting off. You read one line. You put the folder back. You closed the drawer gently, as if it could hear. You did not want a body that already had a verdict in it. So you open the laptop and the wheel is already turning, and you press down before the kindness of the kitchen can talk you out of it.

Then the aisle.

Your hand is on a case of canned tomatoes, mid-lift, and the motion is wrong, a half-inch off, so you set it down and do it again slowly. Right. Corner, edge, slide. The window throws low gold across the floor. The pallet jack stands between you and the cartons like a closed gate. Your leg is bouncing. You did not tell it to.

The shirt cuff is rolled twice and it is gripping your forearm, and the cloth gives you a morning: a dark bathroom, a razor drawn up the jaw in three careful strokes, the scalp done last, because he'd rather do it fast than look at it. He buttons the collar and thinks, Lord, get me through the delivery. It is a real prayer, said every day like a man paying a small bill.

The tie, cool silk under your fingers, gives you a woman laughing in a parking lot, rain on her coat, and the sick, bright feeling of watching her walk to a car that isn't his. Years ago. He still drives past the street.

The keys at his hip are heavy as a fist. Touch them and it is a stockroom at six a.m., the owner's voice on the phone saying the numbers, and the number under all the numbers, a hole he hasn't climbed out of. He does the sums on the drive home. They never come out.

The ink on your arm is warm and tight. The chevrons give you a sand-colored morning, a truck, a boy beside him saying his name, and a silence he has carried in his chest ever since like a stone in a coat. He counts things now. Cases, doors, exits. He checks what doesn't need checking.

Your back aches in one precise place. Your shins are lean and tireless. Your jaw is smooth. The earpiece hisses with a voice asking for the manager, and you know, because his throat knows, what he would say.

You lift your hands. Freckled, long-knuckled, the veins standing up. You turn them over. They are not Suresh's soft ones, and they are not yours, and they are steady.

"All right," you say, in his dry flat voice, to no one. "Let's see how long this one lasts."