Kevin Moriarty

You are Nathan Pruett, and you are standing in the dark of a Denver kitchen with a mug going cold in his hand. It is early. The yard outside has not started. His knees ache from lifting freight, the good kind of tired, and he has a body that works. Nobody could say it was the body.

It was the sixth pallet yesterday. The forklift driver called him Nate and clapped his shoulder, and you felt nothing. Not the clap, not the name. A man is only warm to you for a few minutes, and then he is a coat you have worn. So you pay again. Your thumb is already on the wheel.

It turns, and the kitchen goes.

Cold air first, then the smell of wet wood and someone's laundry. You are standing on a porch walkway with a manila folder pinned under your left arm. Your right hand has just lifted toward the buzzer. It does the motion wrong, a half inch short, so you do it again, slowly. Then ten more times your fingers check: folder, pocket, buzzer, latch. The checking is yours. The hand has not needed it in years.

Storm door glass. Your reflection in it is a stranger with a receding hairline pushed back into an M.

The jacket is soft at the cuffs, and the sleeve touches your wrist. Memory comes up through the cloth: this morning, a bedroom half lit, a woman's voice from the other room saying don't forget the Alvarez file. His thumbs fastening buttons without him. He chose the grey one because it hid the belly. He felt that belly the way you feel a debt.

The folder edge bites your palm. Paper, a case number, a child's name in his handwriting. Behind it a kitchen, three kids' backpacks heaped by a door, the youngest crying about shoes, and under it all a tired love so large it frightens you.

You reach into the jacket pocket and find a tin. Wintergreen. Your lip remembers it before you do, a flat burn, a ritual. Then the nails: you are chewing the corner of your thumb and you did not decide to. They are bitten to the quick. Under that is a bottle in a truck's glove box, and a promise made to nobody, and a fifth of something hidden behind the cleaning spray. The shame is his. It sits in your stomach like a stone.

The porch boards flex under his shoes. A girlfriend's laugh. An old ex, years ago, standing in a doorway just like this one, saying you can't save everyone, Kev. He believed her and kept knocking anyway.

You look down at the hand. It is thick across the knuckles, with ragged nails. You turn it over, and the palm is empty.

You look up and say, to nobody, "Well. Hello, Kevin."

Behind the door, footsteps. You wonder how long this one lasts. You wonder whether you will still be him when it opens.