Marcus Dewayne Whitfield

It is the middle of a Thursday morning, and I have been at the screen since I woke, doing nothing. The page loads. There is a wheel on it, and I have wanted this for as long as I can remember. I know the films, the stories, the threads at two in the morning where strangers swear it happened to them. I have never believed any of it could be bought. I pay. I spin. The wheel slows and I think: it won't work.

Then there is a hum. It is a fluorescent tube, and I am crouched.

My knees are bent deep and my thighs are warm from holding it. There is a sock in my left hand, black and still hot. My right arm is inside a dryer to the elbow, in heat that smells of lint and cheap detergent. The concrete is cold through the soles of my shoes. I breathe, and the breath is not mine. It sits lower in the chest and goes in easy. I pull the load out in one armful and drop it in the basket. My hands start folding before I have decided anything. They square the corners and crease the sleeves flat, quick and exact. Nothing about it is me.

The sleeve of the sweater is soft against my forearm, and something opens.

A morning, early. He is standing in a bedroom where the light is not on yet, pulling the black sweater over his head. His wife is asleep, one foot out of the blanket. He tugs the hem down and his stomach is tight with a small dread about the Wednesday queue. Then the jeans, the left leg first, a habit from years of boots. The belt buckle is cold against him. He keeps his phone face-down so the screen won't wake her. He feels tender toward her, and tired, and he kisses the air above her hair.

I flinch. The sock is still in my hand.

My fingers have been drumming on my thigh. I did not tell them to. The tapping is a rhythm, four and a rest, and with it comes church. A folding chair, a hymn he can't carry but sings anyway, a small hand in his. A girl, six maybe, standing on his shoes to dance. The ring on my left hand is thin and a little loose when my hands are cold. I turn it, and a hotel hallway comes back. He is twenty-six and shaking, and there is a velvet box. He is more afraid than he ever was in uniform.

The uniform. Under the sweater sleeve, the skin of my upper arm remembers something. I do not look. I feel a hot road, a sound like a slammed door, and a friend's laugh that stops. It is only a flash, and it is gone before I can hold it. What stays is a rule he keeps: he doesn't talk about it, and he folds things.

The baskets are cheap plastic, and the handle is cracked where his thumb always goes. Hands remember a hundred Wednesdays of this. He hates the call center and the headset that leaves a groove above his ear. He hates the script and the voice he uses on it, the smile he pushes down the line into strangers' anger. Yet the dimples come anyway when I think of the kids. I feel them rise in my cheeks, deep and involuntary, a face that can't help being kind.

The body is strong, and the shoulders are loose from habit. My left knee gives a dull tick when I shift, an old ache. I smell detergent and damp concrete and, far off, someone's dinner through the ceiling. My heart is steady. He is not afraid of anything down here.

I stand. The tube hums. I look at my hands, the broad knuckles, the ring, the sock, and turn them over. They are warm from the dryer, and they are mine.

I look up, and I say, quietly, "It worked."

Somewhere, a page is waiting with its wheel. I wonder how long this lasts, and whether I will still be him tomorrow, or in four minutes.