Grant Halvorsen

You are standing in Amir Haddad's kitchen in Houston, and the tile is cold through his socks. The house is asleep. His knees hurt when he shifts his weight. His lower back has been a locked hinge since the afternoon, when he carried drywall up two flights. He is fifty-six and tired in a way no sleep reaches. On the counter his phone shows the page, the wheel, and the little gold button.

He did nothing wrong. His beard is soft under your palm and his hands are thick and scarred, and they would hold a level steadily for hours. But today a man on the crew said something about his English, lightly, and everyone laughed. The laugh stayed in you through the whole shift. It was small, and you carried it home like a nail in a boot. You are not leaving over a laugh, you tell yourself. You are leaving because the wheel is there, and because this body is only a body.

You press the button.

Blue light, and a mattress under your hip. Your thumb is stopped on glass, a few inches from your face.

Then it moves. It flicks past whatever he had stopped on, fast and steady, and you do not read any of it. Your eyes are dry. You have forgotten to blink, and you blink now, late.

The first thing that comes is the T-shirt, soft gray cotton gone thin at the collar. It hangs off the shoulder he is lying on. Memory comes through the cloth. It is a Saturday in a driveway, and a girl of six is on his shoulders with her hands over his eyes, laughing, while he pretends to walk into the mailbox. The joy in it is his. It tastes like cut grass.

The sheet is under your forearm, and the cotton is warm from a body that has been lying here a long time. A woman's side of the bed is turned down and empty, with the pillow still dented. A flash comes of her breathing, of years of that sound in the dark. Under it comes a small, old guilt he never says aloud, about the girlfriend before her. He still keeps a photograph of that girl in a folder on this phone. You are not scrolling toward it. You feel the weight of its being there.

The ring is cool on your finger. Through it comes a courthouse, steps of pale stone and a briefcase handle worn smooth. He has stood on those steps in a gray suit with a dark dotted tie, tightening his knot, rehearsing a sentence for a judge. He loves the work and hates what it does to his sleep. The suit's shoulders always sit right on him, because he had it tailored once, when the money finally came, and he was ashamed of how happy it made him.

He does not drink. You find that in the quiet of his mouth. He is a man who sat once in a bar with a glass of water and a client, and felt fine about it.

His body is heavy and warm. It is a soft belly, a lawyer's chair-bound thighs, a pulse that is calm and a little slow. His scalp is buzzed bare, and when you lift a hand to it, it feels like cloth. Your jaw is smooth, freshly shaved, and the pillow is cool against it. Nothing hurts, which after Amir feels like a held breath let go.

You lift the hand into the light. It is a different hand, pale and clean, with the ring. You turn it over. You look up.

"Hello, Grant," you say, quietly, to the dark.

The phone hums against your chest. Somewhere down the hall a child turns over in her sleep. You do not know whether this lasts a lifetime or until the next time the wanting comes.