Esteban Rafael Quiroga

Kevin Minh Tran's knees ache on the Houston carpet. He is a tall man, and I have spent less than a minute in him. I already know what is wrong with him. He is too long and too soft, and the beard itches under my fingers. Nothing is wrong with him at all, and that is the trouble. He does what I ask. He has a good chair and a good phone, and nothing in him pushes back. I wanted a body that argued, and I did not say that to anyone. The wheel is already turning on the screen. The hum behind my teeth goes up, the light at the window goes thin, and Kevin is gone before his name finishes in my head.

Water is running over my shoes. My arm is out, and a sponge is in my hand, heavy and slick against a car door. The hose hisses at my feet. It is evening, and the garage light is a yellow smear on the stucco. Cold air comes up from the wet concrete. I am shorter now, and the ground is closer. My thumb is tucked, and my wrist keeps turning small circles of its own accord.

The flannel is soft against my back, and it opens something. A closet, a quiet house, a woman asleep on her side. He buttoned the cuffs and then rolled them, left sleeve first, because the left wrist is the one that sweats. He chose the old brown boots on purpose, to stand somewhere that wasn't an embassy. All day he had been in a gray suit on stone steps with flags hanging, saying yes in three languages. Tonight his job is to wash a car badly and be nobody. The jeans are stiff at the knee, and a bad hip hums under the belt. My right leg is bouncing, and I did not tell it to. It has bounced through every dinner he has ever sat at.

The sponge gives me more. Her voice calls him *Esteban* from the kitchen, and a boy is laughing about a goal. A daughter is angry about a door. He has two children, and his chest goes warm and tight at the thought of them. The ring on my left hand is cool against the sponge. Under it lies a long marriage, and I feel the quiet of it and the way he never once says what he wants. In the glass of the car window a dark mass of long hair and a short gray-flecked beard looks back at me. His green eyes are tired and kind. Beneath that sits a drink he will pour soon, and then another. There is a small altar of a mass card in a drawer, and his mother's rosary. Some prayers he says only in the car.

The water keeps running. I let go of the sponge and lift my hand. It is small, brown, and wet, with a wedding band on it. I turn it over, then back.

I look up and say, in his low voice, "Well. Hello, Esteban." It is not a greeting. It is a question about how long.