Kevin Hsu

You are standing in a kitchen in Las Vegas in the middle of the night, and the man you are wearing has a glass of water in his hand that he has not drunk. Shane Pellerin. Thirty-three years old, a machine operator, shaved head, stubble you keep rubbing against your palm. Less than a minute in him. The cleft in his chin is something your tongue keeps finding. The house is asleep, the refrigerator hums, and the body is strong and wants nothing. That is the trouble. It wants nothing, and you want. You put the glass down without drinking, and the wanting is already the whole answer. You open the page. The wheel is waiting, and you pay.

Cold. The cold comes first, then weight: a body lower to the ground than the last two, thicker through the middle, standing at the end of a plastic handle with a cord running out of it. Early morning, the sky still blue-gray. Brick and a porch light. A hedge, and a dog's rear end, wiry and gray, working at its base. Your thumb is on a lock button, and the leash is slack because you have stopped walking.

The dog looks up. Ears back. It knows.

You wind the cord twice around the hand, and the hand knows how, which is the first thing his hand gives you. You step off. The dog has to learn the stride.

Then the jacket. The canvas collar is stiff against your neck, and it brings a morning at a coat hook by a door, his girlfriend's voice from upstairs asking whether he has the bags, and the pocket under his fingers is full of folded plastic and a single dog biscuit. A feeling comes with it that is not yours: a dull, settled tenderness for this animal that he pretends is only duty.

The shirt, dark and checked, buttoned to the second button. Sleeve by sleeve he did it in the dark so as not to wake the children: left cuff, then right, thick fingers fussing the small button. A girl's sock lay on the stairs and he stepped over it and then went back and picked it up. His belly pushes against the placket, and he has made his peace with that.

The boots grind on the concrete. Steel toes, resoled once. Under them the marble steps of the house behind you, worn hollow by a century of other people, come back as a hundred mornings of his weight going down them. His knees are thirty-five and know it. His lower back has an opinion.

His hand goes up and runs over his scalp, over the hairline that has retreated into an M, and the gesture lands with a whole afternoon: a mirror, a barber saying nothing, an old girlfriend years ago saying he looked like his father, and him laughing, and not minding, and minding. Then the lab. A fume hood, glassware clamped, a flask bubbling, the sweet chemical air of work he is good at and is paid well for. Under that, quieter, a thing nobody knows: he has not had a drink in six years, and he still counts the evenings.

Your jaw is smooth. He shaved before the walk, which is a small vanity.

You stop on the sidewalk. The dog sits, waiting for you to be someone it knows.

You look at your hands. Short fingers, a callus at the thumb, a burn scar of nothing, just skin. You turn them over.

"Okay," you say, in his voice, a little higher than the last, and the dog's tail moves once. "Okay. Let's see how long."

Somewhere behind your breastbone the wanting is asleep. For now.