Evan Kowalski

You are leaving Vincent Tran in a kitchen with the light off. His knees ache at the fridge door, and he has been him for less than a minute, and already you know what's wrong: his body works fine and none of it is for you. A man you don't know has a tired back and a tired mortgage, and the quiet in his apartment is the quiet of people who will want you in the morning. You can hear his wife breathing through the wall. She is asleep and she thinks you are him. That is the thing you would not say out loud. You do not want to be looked at by someone who is sure of you.

The wheel is already open on the phone. You press it with his thumb.

Then the weight of him is gone, and you are heavy somewhere else.

Face-down. Cotton against the beard, a pillow gone warm and sour under your cheek, one arm hanging off the mattress so the blood has pooled in the fingers. Your breath is ragged and wet, and in a single pull it goes even, because you have taken it in hand. The arm draws itself up. The body rolls onto its back and the hands fold at your chest, neat as a saint on a tomb. He has never slept like this in his life. You can feel that: the muscles don't know the position.

Streetlight comes through a gap in the curtains and lies across the sheets. The carpet beyond the bed is littered with things. A cigarette pack. A foil wrapper. Clothes dropped where they came off.

Your hand moves to the sheet and bunches it, and the sheet gives you something.

It's the cheap cotton he bought after the last set wore through, and he stood in the aisle doing arithmetic on his phone. Then the bed itself: a girlfriend's side, cool and empty, the dent of her still in the mattress. She's on a night shift, or she's gone. The feeling that comes with it is guilt like a stone in the mouth. There is a recent ex, and her name is in his body somewhere, a tightness under the ribs when he thinks of her. He texted her last week. He did not tell the girlfriend. That is his, and it's heavy, and you carry it without wanting to.

You touch the pajama shirt. Soft, washed to nothing, the cuffs chewed. A flash: the morning he put on scrubs, navy, the V-neck tugged down, the drawstring knotted twice because it keeps slipping. Then the jacket over them, the zipper's cold teeth, the canvas bag strap settling into the same groove on his shoulder it always finds. The cargo belt through the loops, pulled tight on a body that's too thin for it. He is a home health aide. He knows how to lift a woman out of a chair without hurting either of you. He knows the kitchen of a client named Mrs. Alvarado, the pill organizers lined up on the counter like little doors, Tuesday's slot stuck, his thumbnail working it open. He loves her. He would never say so.

There is a pen on the nightstand. Your hand goes to it before you tell it to, and clicks it. Click, click. The sound is his entire nervous system.

Your nose breathes crooked. You can feel it, the bridge set slightly wrong, a knock from when he was nineteen and a man in a parking lot swung. Your lungs are scraped. The nicotine wants something from you, a low itch behind the teeth. He never drinks. His mother, a rosary in a drawer, the Mass he still goes to in the back pew and tells no one about. All of it comes up warm, and none of it is yours.

Twenty-seven years, a skinny frame, calluses across both palms from lifting and wiping and holding. Your ribs show when you inhale. Your feet are cold in the socks.

You lift your hand into the streetlight and turn it over. The knuckles, the pale ridge of a callus, the pen still pinched between two fingers. It's a good hand. It will do whatever you ask.

You look up.

"Hello, Evan," you say, and his voice is rougher than you expected, lower, a little hurt.

You do not know how long he lasts. Maybe until the sun. Maybe until this body's hunger comes back to you, the wanting that always arrives, and you reach for the wheel again.