Gilbert Quintanilla

You have been at this screen since the dark went thin outside, and the night was nothing. You scrolled until the scrolling stopped meaning anything. Then you found the page with the wheel on it.

You have wanted this all your life. Every film where someone wakes in another body, every thread at two in the morning, every private what-if. You did not believe it. You paid anyway. The wheel turned, slowed, and clicked on a man.

Now the road is under you. It is bright daylight, white glare, and the car has drifted a foot toward the line. You pull it straight in one smooth motion. Your hands come off the wheel and settle lower and wider, and the turn signal ticks on for an exit that is not his.

He is a skinny man. His ribs press the seatbelt, his shoulders are narrow, and his knees are bent up against the dash. There is a toothpick in your mouth. Your tongue finds the gap between your front teeth and presses into it, and the toothpick rolls across it.

The wheel is warm and sticky under your palms, and memory comes through it. It is his Sunday morning: a house on posts, a rusted tin roof ticking in the sun, the red dirt yard staining the cuffs of everything. His wife stands at the screen door with coffee. His kids are shouting somewhere behind her. He loves them with a tired, plain ache. He says he'll be home by dark.

The gray T-shirt gives you the morning he put it on. It was soft from washing, and he pulled it over his head and the collar caught his moustache. He smoothed the moustache with one knuckle. The khakis come with it, the belt notched one hole tighter than last year. He is a man who lost weight and did not decide to.

The key ring swings against your knee. Your thumb finds the ridged fob, and a whole other year opens. It is a hotel bar, a lanyard hanging off a chair, the fourth drink and then the fifth. Under the sales smile he drinks heavily, and he is careful about it and tells no one. A woman's name is in there too. She is the one who got away. He carries her like a stone in a coat pocket, and he has never said it aloud.

Your wedding band turns under your thumb, plain and warm. Your ears ring faintly, as they do for a man who drinks. Your shoulders ache from sitting too long, and your stomach is sour and empty.

The blinker keeps ticking. The exit rises ahead, and it is not his. Nothing in his hands knows where it goes, and only yours do.

You lift your left hand off the wheel and turn it over. The ring catches the light. You look up into the mirror, at his brown eyes and that gap-toothed mouth.

"Hello," you say, and the voice is rough and warm and not yours. "Hello, you."

The exit slides closer. You do not know how long he lasts, or whether the wanting comes back in an hour or a year, or whether you will be him tomorrow.