Kevin Tsukamoto

You are standing at a register in Philadelphia, in the middle of a Thursday morning, and the man you are wearing has been asking a woman whether she wants the extended warranty for the eleventh time today. He has dimples. They ache from being used. The moustache itches against his lip, and you have had him for less than a minute, and you are already bored by the way his knees complain on the carpet.

You had a body that worked. That is the shame of it. Under the lanyard his chest is a barrel, 6'2" of him, good enough to reach the top shelf without a stool. And still the want comes up through him like a bubble through syrup. The woman is talking about her dishwasher. You are not listening. You are thinking about the page, the wheel, the small click of it deciding.

"Sir?" she says.

You pay. You spin.

The car drifts a foot toward the line.

You are in the seat. The wheel is in your fists at ten and two, vinyl worn smooth where a thumb has rubbed it, and the dash glow lies green on the knuckles. Highway dark all around. Wind noise, tire hum, the guardrail sliding by with its small lights. You pull the car straight in one smooth motion, and your hands come off the wheel, and settle lower, wider. The signal ticks on for an exit that isn't his. You do not know whose exit it is. The ticking is very loud.

Then the touching starts.

The jacket first. A dark work jacket, its cuffs ribbed, zipper cold at the throat. Pulling it on comes back to you in his hands: a bedroom with the blinds half down, the zipper stuck on the third tooth, and a girlfriend's voice from the other room saying don't forget the cable bill. He had been hunting all day. He had sat at a kitchen table with the laptop open to listings, the pastel balcony light going orange behind him, and clicked a pen, click, click, until she took it out of his fingers, laughing. The memory is warm and tired and hopeful in a way you did not bring.

The sweatshirt under it, soft from washing. He chose it because it was the one she liked. Your belly sits a little soft against the waistband; skinny-fat, he would joke, and she would poke it. His shoulders are narrow. Your back aches from three hours of sitting.

The wheel again, and under your right thumb a small groove. Church, suddenly: a folding chair, a hymnal, his mother's hand pressing his knee. He has never touched a drink. The thought of one is not temptation but simply foreign, like another language. He has kept a little money put away, and it comforts him like a hand on the back of the neck.

Your sleeve rides up. The ink on the forearm is script, a name and a date, and when your eyes land on it something old and enormous opens in his chest, too big to read. You close it. You do not have the right.

Hazel eyes in the mirror, freckles across the nose. Smooth jaw, freshly shaved, still tender. Hair down over the ears. The exit sign comes up green and white. You let the signal tick.

You lift your right hand off the wheel and turn it over. The palm is small, warm, the fingers already curling toward a pen that is not there. Click, they say, against nothing.

You look up into the mirror and meet his eyes.

"Okay," you say, in his voice, softer than you expected. "Okay. Hi."

The exit slides past. How long, you wonder. Until the wanting comes back, the little bubble in the syrup. Tomorrow. Or at the next light.