Gregory Allen Brennan

Ernesto's knuckles ache on the seam of the work glove, and the line hums, and the spin is already paid for. Nothing is wrong with him. That is the trouble. Nineteen minutes of break, the thermos going cold, his broken nose whistling a little on each breath, and I could do this body in my sleep and so I do not want to. I have been tired of being sure of him since the first hour. Somebody in a corner office is about to be sure of something, and I would like to be there for it.

The wheel clicks. Warm light. Dusk glass.

I am standing, one hip against the edge of a desk, a pen in my right hand and pages in my left, and my mouth is open on the middle of a word. The window is full of the city going blue, towers with their lights coming on. A lamp glows to my left. The breath in my chest sits low and wide, a belly's worth of it.

The pen first. A man's thumb turns it a quarter-turn on its own, click, a habit older than this room. Then the paper. A page edge under my finger, and I am in a conference room with a hard chair, twenty-six years old, and a man has just said no to the whole company in one syllable. The fear of it is his. It tastes like pennies. He took the no home, and told no one.

The shirt on my back is soft with washing, the cuffs rolled to the forearm. It brings the morning. His wife's hand flat on the bathroom door, her voice asking if he would eat. He buttoned from the bottom, always the bottom, thick fingers patient on each small button, then the belt, brown, the third hole where it used to be the second. He stood a second looking at nothing and said the short prayer he says, two lines, the same two, over the sink. Faith in him is plain and daily, a handrail. I feel it under my palm and do not know what to do with it.

The watch is heavy on my left wrist. Under it the ring. The ring gives me a kitchen, a girl of eleven refusing peas, a boy at the table pretending not to listen, and his wife laughing with her head back, and the ache that goes through this chest is so big and so ordinary that my knees soften. Mine, I think, and know it is not, and it is. His.

My feet hurt in good shoes. The carpet is deep. My lower back holds a low dull note from sitting too long, and the shoulders are broad, built for carrying. Somewhere under the pleasure there is the thing his mouth does when nobody is looking. I lift the pen hand toward my teeth before I know it and find the nails bitten to the quick, ragged, the one thumb raw. His shame. I put the hand down.

I lay the pages on the desk. I turn the hand over. Smooth palm, the ring, the pen-callus on the middle finger. I lift my eyes to the glass, where a bald man with green eyes looks back, and I say, softly, "Well. Hello."

The city glitters. Somewhere a wheel waits, and I wonder how long before I want it.