Frank Dolan

Before anything, there is Isaiah's alarm going off in the dark. It is early in Denver, and the apartment smells of cold coffee and the machine oil that never washes out of his cuffs. For under a minute I have been twenty-five and strong, with stubble I keep rubbing and brown eyes in the black phone glass. He could lift and he could run. Nothing was wrong with him.

Then I'm sitting on the edge of his bed with the thumb of his left hand in my mouth, and I know I'm leaving. The reason isn't the body. A voice came out of the hallway, a woman's, or something like one. It said his name, Isaiah, the way you say it to someone you've known all your life, and I answered to it before I could stop myself. It felt like being recognized. I don't want that. I want to be a stranger in a stranger's life. I press the wheel.

Sun, all at once. A hard roar in my right ear and a deadness in my left, where the earmuff has slid off. The mower bar is warm and vibrating under both palms. Cut grass is stuck wet to my shins. The engine drops a note, catches, and I'm standing halfway down a lawn in Miami with the whole green day around me.

The earmuff is crooked. I lift one hand and settle it back over my ear. My hand knows exactly how, and I feel that knowing arrive before I do.

The grip is cracked rubber, taped once, and the tape is gone gummy. It gives me a Saturday. He's on the back step with a roll of electrical tape in his teeth, and the feeling is plain stubbornness: you don't buy a new one when this one works. Then the shirt against my back, black and thin and washed soft. He pulled it off the chair in the dark at five, because the fryer shift is tomorrow and this is the day he's got. I get his arm through one sleeve, then the other, and the pants with the button that has always been a little loose. His wife's voice comes from the kitchen, low and teasing, that he'll mow in his good ones someday. He felt happy and didn't say so.

My thumb goes to my mouth. The nail is already bitten to the quick. Heat comes up through the soles of his old sneakers, and the lawn is spongy underfoot. His knees hurt a little with the push, and his lower back gives a dull, steady ache. The shoulders are still strong from years of lifting baskets out of oil. I get that too: the fry station, the baskets rising, the hiss, the timer, a boy half his age calling him Mr. Frank. He is sixty-four. He quit cigarettes in a church parking lot after his daughter cried in the passenger seat. Praying has the feel of a handrail for him. He has two grown kids. There's a girl from before the marriage whose name he keeps folded small in a drawer in himself, and I leave that drawer shut.

On my forearm, under the sun, the old ink: bold lines, faded color. It's the one thing he did young and never regretted. The wedding band is warm on my left hand, and I turn it once with my thumb.

I let go of the bar and look at my hands. They're thick, freckled and sun-worn, with the nails chewed ragged. They aren't mine. I turn them over. The dimples are there even when I'm not smiling; I can feel them sitting in his cheeks.

I look up and say to the green air, "Well. Hello, Frank."

The engine idles under me, patient. I have no idea how long this one lasts, or when the wanting comes back.