Martin Kessler

You leave Gordon Pietrzak on a Tuesday before the day has started, and he is a good body: heavy, warm, a manager's belly over a manager's belt, brown eyes, a beauty mark that your thumb keeps finding. He answers email at a standing desk. He has a corner office and a boss who likes him. Nothing is wrong with him, and that is what sent you back. You stood at his bathroom mirror and the wanting had gone quiet, and you could not stand how quiet it was. You pay. You spin. The wheel ticks down, and Gordon is a coat you drop on a floor in Chicago.

Then there is mattress under your whole front, and a cheek pressed into a sheet gone damp from your own breath. The breathing is ragged, and in one pull it evens out. An arm hangs off the edge, and the blood has pooled in it. It draws itself up, the body rolls onto its back, and your hands fold on your chest. You have never slept like this. He never once did either.

Streetlight comes through a gap in the curtains. The room smells of old laundry and cold coffee.

The sheet under your fingers is cotton worn thin, and a flash comes up that is his, not yours. It is a night with the laptop glowing and a wife's back turned toward him on this same bed. He listened to her breathe and did not say the thing. The shame of it sits in your sternum like a swallowed stone.

The pajama sleeve is soft and navy, and the cuff is frayed. He put these on last night. He sat on the edge of the bed with his knees cracking and fed one arm in, then the other. He thought about the listings: warehouse supervisor, logistics, forty-one applications, three replies, all of them no. He prayed anyway, short and plain, the way the church taught him, *Lord, you know.* You feel the habit of it in your lips.

Your hand goes to your face. It is his hand's reflex, and you did not tell it to. The fingers drag over the jaw and find it smooth. He shaved at night, before bed, so he would not have to meet himself in the morning with stubble. The unibrow is a thick ridge under your fingertips. A boy in a schoolyard once said something about it. He decided at eleven that he would never touch it, and he touches it now.

The ring is a plain band, loose from weight lost. Turn it and a kitchen comes up: his daughter at the table with a college letter, and the number on it. He said *we'll figure it out* and had no figure. Under that is a girl he once loved who laughed at his jokes. It was recent, and it was nothing, or it was everything. He never told his wife. The ring is cold on your finger.

His body is fifty-nine years old. The lower back is a rusted hinge, and the left knee reports in. His chest is heavy but the lungs are clean, because he never smoked. His arms are stronger than they look from years of lifting pallets. Somewhere in the hands is the muscle memory of a forklift, and you keep it without asking.

You lift your hands into the streetlight. You turn the right one over, palm, then knuckles, then palm. The ring catches the light. Then you lift your eyes and speak, in a voice that is lower than yours and tired.

"Somebody is going to wake up tomorrow wanting me."

You do not know whether it will be you, or how long he stays yours.