Grant Halloran

Andre's thumb is still sore from a chisel that slipped yesterday, and that is the first thing you check in the dark of the Boston kitchen: the thumb, the bad one, which has been telling you about itself since you woke up in him. He has been yours for less than a minute of your own counting, and already you know he is no good. His hands are good. His life is a quiet shop and a coffee going cold on a bench, and he is a man who measures twice and then stands around. You wanted a man who could be hungry. This one is only careful. You look at the window, still black, the radiator knocking, and you do not say goodbye to him, because he is not in there to hear it. You open the page. The wheel is already turning.

Then the floor changes under your socks.

It is wood, old and cold, and you are sitting on the edge of a bed with your elbows on your knees, in a room gone blue with early light and one lamp left on. Your fingers are at your collar. The shirt is buttoned wrong by one; you can feel the extra fabric bunching at the throat, the tie hanging loose in two dark strips. Your breath goes in long and comes out sour. Whiskey, last night's and maybe this morning's, sits in the back of the mouth like a coin.

The shirt is the first thing that talks. Cotton, soft from washing, and against your shoulder blades it brings up a sleeve, then a hand pushing through it: him, in this room, an hour ago, angry at the iron he did not use. He bought it for an interview at a firm that never called back. He is twenty-eight and a student, and he is ashamed of both, and the shame arrives in your chest as warmth, not words.

Your right hand finds the trouser pocket and a lighter is there. Your thumb flicks the wheel without being told. Click, click. The metal is warm. He does not smoke, never did; the lighter was hers. A kitchen in the heat, her laughing, a candle on a cake, and then a different night, the ring coming off at this exact sink in his mind, the pale band left on the finger like a thing the sun forgot. You look at the finger now. There it is.

The sock is damp at the heel. Your nose aches faintly, the old break, set a little crooked; it comes with a flash of a pickup truck's dashboard, a mouth full of blood, his brother's laughing, twelve years old. The lamp hums. Somewhere under the bed is a bottle he has already counted. Your ribs lift and fall and are strong, and your knees want to stand, and the whole long body has the dull tiredness of a man who has been losing slowly and politely for years.

Your hands come up in front of you. You turn them over. The tan line gleams. They are not yours, and they are yours.

You look up, into whatever is looking back.

"Okay, Grant," you say, and his voice is rougher than you expected. "Let's see how long you last."

Nobody answers. Somewhere a thumb is already wondering when.