Esteban Cardenas

You have wanted this for years, and tonight it is only a page. The evening has gone flat, the scrolling has gone nowhere, and the screen is the only bright thing. There is a wheel on it. You have read about this your whole life in threads at two in the morning, in films you watched twice, and you never once believed it could be bought. You pay. You spin. The wheel slows on a man, and the room you are in is gone.

Heat comes first, a pan's heat on your face. You are standing, and your right arm is mid-circle with a spoon in it. The stirring stops, because you stop it, and it starts again the other way, because you want to feel that it is yours. The window is bright with a flat afternoon. It is a Wednesday, and he is awake and fed at an hour when you are not. A kitchen this small has the tiredness of a man who gets up early.

The shirt hangs loose on a narrow frame. It is soft and washed thin, and it is the first thing that gives him up. The cotton moves against your shoulder blades and you are in his hands at dawn, pulling it off the chair, the fourth day he has worn it. Then the jeans, stiff at the knee with dried plaster. He stood on one leg in the dark of a hallway, hopping, so as not to wake the youngest, and then remembered the youngest does not live here anymore, only on weekends. The remembering was an ache in the chest, the same ache every time, and it still came as news.

You salt the pan. The salt falls from your fingers in a pinch they know without being told. You do not taste it, because he never does, he has been trusting his hands for years. The spoon handle is warm, and through it comes a job site, sawdust hanging in the light and a framed-out wall with the studs bare. A crew listens when he talks, and he is good at it, he is paid well for it, and none of that has ever made the house feel less empty. Under that, thumbnail against cuticle, he picks and picks at the skin until it stings. You notice you are doing it now.

Your arm is heavy at the upper edge of the sleeve, where ink sits under the cotton, the cross and the praying hands. The memory comes through the fabric: a chair, a needle, his mother's rosary wrapped around his wrist, and a promise made in a church that smelled of wax. The counter is cold under your hip. A plate is set out on it, one plate, and your hand reaches up without asking and takes down a second one. You set it beside the first. You do not know why. The reason is in him somewhere, a wife, a table, three children's voices, and it will not come. You only feel it, the habit of a hand laying a place for people who will not walk in.

Your breath is shallow and quick. His ribs are narrow and his legs are tired from stairs. The vape sits in the pocket against your thigh, a small hard weight, and your thumb already wants it. He does not drink. He stopped, and it cost him something, though you cannot reach what.

You lift your hands and turn them over. Rough palms, a split nail, skin bitten raw at the edge. They are yours now. You look up at the window, the low gray light on the brick across the street, and you hear yourself speak. The voice is lower than you thought it would be, and the gap in his teeth whistles the word.

"Okay. Hi."

Somewhere the wheel is still there, waiting. You do not know how long this lasts, a night or a year or the time it takes the pan to burn, and you are already wondering when the wanting comes back.