Kyle Brandt

I am Declan Combs, still, for another few seconds: six-two, a scar through my left eyebrow that I run my thumb across when I'm lying to myself. I'm sitting on an overturned bucket in a client's basement with a wrench across my knees, and the water heater is fixed, and I know it's fixed, and I'm bored to the bone. Nine days, twenty-two hours. He could do everything. That was the trouble. His hands knew every fitting before I asked. Nothing in him ever surprised me, and I'd have paid anything to be surprised. I stand, and the knees crack, and I pay.

Then the light changes. Gold, low, slanting across white cabinets, and I am standing up with a fork halfway to my mouth.

A coat is on me, heavy, hood bunched at my neck, warm in the way of a coat worn too long indoors. My jaw holds a cold forkful of rice and chicken. The container sits in my left hand, plastic edge biting my thumb. Somewhere below me a boiler ticks. My weight is wrong: lighter in the shoulders, softer through the middle, the belly pressing against the zipper. Shorter, too. The counter comes up where I expect it lower.

I set the fork down. Not my decision; the arm does it, tired and ready.

The coat sleeve drags across my wrist as I shrug, and the lining against my forearm opens something. A Monday in the dark of the morning, this same coat off a hook, the zipper stuck, a bus that smelled of wet wool. He hates the bus. He hates the way the cold gets in at the cuffs, so he tucks his thumbs inside them. I am doing it now.

The stool gives under me. Under the denim of the cargo pants, my thighs ache dully, the ache of eight hours on concrete, ten thousand steps down an aisle, bending, lifting, scanning. The handheld strapped to the forearm: I can feel where it sits, a ghost of weight on the right wrist. A beep, a forklift somewhere out of sight, and then a line of numbers read in his head like a prayer. Aisle 14, bin C, two units.

The polo collar scratches my neck. Navy, washed soft. I remember pulling it on in a bedroom with one window: left arm first, because the right sleeve sits tight over the ink, and that's where my eyes go. Script lettering, a name and a date. I don't read it yet. When I press the sleeve with my thumb, something flares and I let go. I know it already, the way you know a stair in the dark. It hurts a little. It is a grief and he keeps it neatly.

I eat. Even mouthfuls. The rice is salty, reheated twice. My tongue finds a pouch of nicotine against the gum, long gone to nothing, and I want a fresh one more than I want food. His wanting. Small, ordinary, mine now.

The window is black. A face in it looks back at me: spiked hair, stubble, eyes pale and blank with tiredness. Under the glass I smell the evening: wet leaves, cold concrete. Public stairs between backyards, a hundred and some steps, and his knees know every one. His church had stairs like that, the Presbyterian one his grandmother took him to. He sat in the third pew and counted ceiling tiles.

Nobody is here. A counter of crumbs, a backpack on a stool, a red can. Rent due on the first, and the number rises in me like a cold tide. Five thousand in the world, maybe. He keeps it in a folded envelope.

I put the container down and turn my hands over. Wide knuckles, chapped. Nails bitten. The tattoo runs up the right forearm, a name I don't know and a date I do, and it feels like a held breath.

I look up into the black glass.

"Okay, Kyle," I say, and his voice is lower than I expected. "Show me."

I don't know how long. Ten days, or ten minutes, before I want again.