Martin Alan Kowalczyk

You are twenty-four and standing at a line in Queens, and the line is the reason. Liam Hartigan's back aches in the exact place it has ached since the first minute, a clean bright ache from a shift that was not yours. His freckled forearms smell of machine oil. The tray is warm in his hands. You have worn him for less than a minute, and already you know he is dull. He is a good body that wants nothing, and you cannot stand a man who wants nothing. So you let the tray go and you pay.

The wheel turns. It slows.

Now your weight is on the left foot, the right heel lifted, and your fingers are in the air above a keyboard. They have just done something wrong. One key, one motion, and you felt it land crooked. So you do it again, slowly, correctly. Then ten more, each one checked, on a job that has not needed checking in years.

The cold is on your face, off glass. A long amber light comes sideways through the window and lies across plywood siding and a snowmobile under a blue tarp. The headphones are around your neck, and you feel the cups against your collarbone. Your knees are forty-five years old. They are fine, but they know about it.

The hoodie comes first. The cuff is frayed at your thumb, and you touch it. Suddenly it is this morning, and the hands are his. He pulls the zipper up halfway and stops, because the house is quiet and he likes it that way. Somebody's small shoe is on the stairs. A wife's voice says *you're wearing that again*, and he is warm with it. He is not annoyed. He puts one sleeve on and then the other, and he is already thinking of a function name.

The desk edge is under your palm, and the wood is cool. Years of standing here. A bad year, a long one. He taught himself to stand because sitting made him think. The coffee by the keyboard has gone cold, and the ice has melted into it. You do not touch it, but you smell it, and under it you smell something else. Somewhere in this building there is a bottle, and he has been careful with it, and the care shows. The shame is his, and it is already in your throat.

The ring turns on your finger. Three children come at once. A hospital hallway, a small furious red head against his chest, the weight of a new one. A Sunday, a church that smells of wax, his wife's knee against his, and the Our Father said all together. He did not pray for money, though there is money. He prayed to be steadier than he was.

You look at his hands. You turn them over. The band is plain and worn thin. You look up into the glass, where a man with thinning red hair and a gray-flecked goatee looks back at you.

"Hello," you say, and his voice is lower than you expected. Is it an hour, or a year? You do not know how long you get to stay.