Dennis Wayne Pruett

You are standing in a kitchen in Denver with the coffee going cold, and Stephen Keller Doyle's knees are talking to you. Twenty-five minutes in him. The green eyes in the dark window. The goatee you keep touching, because it is not yours. The body is fine. Six-one, heavy through the middle, strong in the forearms. It does everything you ask. That is the trouble. You asked it for the fridge, the stairs, the work boots by the door, and it did all of it without wanting anything. You are a man in a nice house with a good pair of hands, and nothing in you is warm. Somewhere in his apartment a phone lights up with a name you do not know, a sister, and you let it ring out. You are not here to be his. You open the page. The wheel is already turning.

It stops.

Carpet under both knees, rough and cool. The edge of a mattress against your forearm. You are halfway to standing, and your body has just changed its mind. You come back down hard on both knees. A laugh is still in your mouth, leaving. The smile goes off your face mid-breath. Your forehead drops to the bedspread, and it smells of dust and detergent and sleep.

Then it comes, through what you touch.

The bedspread first: a woman's side, a morning years ago, her cold feet on his calves, and a love so settled it has no edges. The t-shirt, worn soft, gray, a hole at the hem that he keeps meaning to mend. He put it on in the dark so he wouldn't wake her. The sweatpants with their knotted drawstring. The carpet under your bare feet is the carpet of a house he is still paying for. Under your palm, the nightstand's cold edge. Keys there. A handle on a bus, a long wheel gripped for twenty-six years, his shoulders knowing every pothole on a route that ends past the casinos. Two kids in a back seat, then not. A girl from before, her name a small warm ache he has never told anyone. A prayer he said every night anyway, not very seriously, because his mother did. He gets to the amen early because the alarm clock says 5:14 and the uniform is on its hanger. The knees ache. The back aches. The heart is steady and tired and kind.

Your left hand lies on the bedspread, a plain gold band on it. You turn it over. You run it over your scalp without deciding to, and the hair is longer than you expected.

You lift your eyes and look straight ahead. You run your tongue across the gap in your teeth.

"Well," you say, quietly. "Hello, Dennis."

The clock keeps ticking. You wonder how long before the wanting comes back, and whether you will still be him when the light comes up.