Hector Valdivia

You have been on the page for an hour, and nothing is on it. It is a flat bright Saturday, the kind of day with no plans in it, and you have scrolled through everything twice. Then there is the thread you always end up in, the old one about waking up as somebody else. You have read a thousand of them, and watched every film where a stranger turns his head and is someone new. You have wanted this for as long as you can remember, and you never expected to find it for sale. A wheel. A button. You pay, expecting nothing, and you spin.

Then you are driving.

The road is dark and the dash glows green against knuckles that are not yours. Your hands sit at ten and two. The car has drifted a foot toward the line, so you pull it back in one smooth motion, and the body does it without asking you. Both hands come off the wheel and settle lower and wider. Your right thumb finds the stalk, and the signal ticks on for an exit that is not his.

The leg is already bouncing. The right one, heel jittering against the floor mat, and you could not stop it if you tried.

The wheel is leather, worn smooth at the top, and it gives you him. Wide hands, Friday, the end of a long week. A mezzanine walkway above a roaring floor, forklifts beeping below, a clipboard held against his hip. He is good at this. Forty trucks a night, and every driver knows his name. He never raised his voice in twenty years, and it made him feared and loved in about equal measure. The ring on your left hand is warm from the dash light. Touching it with your thumb, you get her: a kitchen, her laughing at his terrible singing, flour on her wrist. Two kids stepping over each other's shoes in the hall. The ache is gentle and it is his, a love so settled he never says it aloud.

The seat holds your back, and the shirt against it gives you this morning. The blue collar, buttoned with fingers that know the holes by feel. The navy pullover over it, because the warehouse runs cold. The sleeves pushed up twice. Khakis, belt on the second notch, since he has gotten thinner. The brown shoes, resoled, because he hates to throw things out. He stood in the bathroom and rubbed his thin crown, sighing at the scalp. He touched the patchy gray beard that never filled in and decided, again, to leave it alone. The freckles, which his mother used to call constellations.

The money is in there too, quiet. Savings, a house with equity, and no one knows how much he really has. He still buys the cheap coffee. Rosary beads hang from the mirror and click against the glass. Mass on Sundays, the kneeler hard against his bad knee. A glass of wine at parties, never more. He is tired in a way that sleep does not touch, and his shoulders ache from carrying a floor on them.

Your hands are on the wheel. They are lined, with a pale band of ring-skin under the gold. You turn one over. The palm is dry and the knuckles are bony.

The exit slides past in the headlights. You look up into the mirror, at brown eyes and freckles.

"Okay," you say, in his low voice. "Hello."

The signal keeps ticking. You do not know how long he is yours, whether this lasts until the next exit or the next year, or when the wanting will come back.