Howard Haverty

You are standing in Grant Halloran's kitchen in Dallas, and the coffee has not finished. The morning is still gray. He has a broken nose, and it whistles a little when you breathe through it. You have been him for less than a minute, and already you know what is wrong. Your thumb keeps going to the edge of the counter and finding nothing there to do.

It isn't that he's bad. He is twenty-eight and his knees don't hurt. But eight spins ago you were Glenn, in a house in the high desert, with silver hair and dimples and a hand that closed around things like it owned them. Then you left him. Standing here, you have an old, stupid thought: there was a brother. Glenn kept a phone number for him and never used it. You were in Glenn when the number came up, and you remember your thumb hovering over it. You never pressed it, because Glenn never did. That is what sent you back. Somebody ought to find out what that silence is.

The page loads. The wheel turns, and it is not a long wait.

Then the coffee is gone, and so is the kitchen.

Your breath goes from ragged to even in one pull. There is weight under your ribs and a mattress against your chest and cheek. Your arm hangs off the edge, heavy. A thin streetlight cuts through the curtains. You draw the arm up. You roll onto your back and your hands fold at your chest, a posture this body has never once slept in.

The sheet is under your fingers, and it gives you a flash. It is a Tuesday in a classroom, the last bell, the chalk dust, the hush of thirty empty chairs. He likes the hush. He likes it more than the noise.

The T-shirt is soft at the collar. It has been washed a thousand times and is his, and the cotton hands you something small. A woman is laughing in a car with the window down. She was years ago, and she is the ex who still matters. He drove her to the airport and said nothing, and he has been saying nothing since. The ache of it is old and dry and settled, like a stone in a shoe.

On the nightstand, by your elbow, is a toothpick. Your fingers find it without being asked, and it goes between your teeth. The wood is bitter and familiar. Your jaw works it flat. A memory arrives with it. He chewed one at his father's funeral, and he put it in his pocket before the Kaddish. The Hebrew sits in his mouth like bread. He has never drunk and never smoked, and he wanted something for his mouth to do.

Under your heels the sheets are cool. This body is fifty-four. The lower back complains when you shift, a slow dull note, and the belly rises and falls, soft and warm. His shoulders are strong from carrying boxes of books. You know that without being told.

You hold your hands up in the streetlight. They are thick across the knuckles and rough at the pads. They are Glenn's brother's hands. You turn them over, and you look past them into the dark.

"Howard," you say, trying it. "Hello, Howard."

He has a brother who doesn't call, and now you have the phone that wouldn't. The wheel is somewhere behind you. Whether this lasts a week or until the toothpick is splinters, you can't tell.