Mateo Archuleta

Neil Brandvold's knees ache on the stairs down from the restaurant office, and I think: this is what I paid for? A man of thirty-eight with a nose that was broken once and set a little wrong, a silver beard I have stroked all morning like a cat I did not ask for. He is tall and he is tired. He has been mine for less than a minute, and already he is a closed door. The dining room below is setting tables for lunch, forks laid down in lines, and I know the names of nobody. I stand at the top of the stairs. The wheel is a page in my pocket. Nothing is wrong with him. That is not the reason. The reason is the thing I will not say, which is that a man called Neil has a mother who telephoned at nine, and I let it ring, and the ringing was in my chest all morning like a coin in a drain. I thumb the screen. I pay. It turns.

Cold. Wet air in the nose, diesel and rain on concrete, and my hand is already moving, the right one, along the cold rail by the open door of a stopped train. Something is wrong with the motion. It lurches, a half second off, a note struck wrong. I am shorter. I am compact and weighted low, the balance of a man who is not tall and has never needed to be. I do the motion again, slowly, correctly, the way a stranger would, and it comes out clean. Then the next. Then the next. Ten of them, each one checked, a job that must not have needed checking in years.

The wool is heavy on my shoulders, damp at the cuffs, which have been pushed up the forearms. The jacket buttons are brass and cool through the fabric. I touch one and a morning comes: a hallway, a small child's shoe on the floor and his foot nearly stepping on it, a woman's voice from the kitchen saying his name with a laugh in it, *Mateo, your tie*, and her fingers straightening the knot, smelling of coffee and orange peel. Her ring against his collar. He loved being fussed at. He stood still for it on purpose. The sleeves went on one at a time, white shirt first, ironed the night before, then the jacket, the wool smelling of the closet, the hat last, settled with two fingers.

The key at his hip swings on its chain and strikes my leg. I close my hand on it. Brass, warm from his body. His grandfather's, no, the *habit* of it was his grandfather's: a man who kept keys on a chain and never lost a single one. Mateo got the chain, not the man. A church basement, folding chairs, a hymn he knows in two languages, and a pastor's hand on his shoulder when he was nineteen and angry and had no plan. The wanting to be useful. The wanting to be on time for people. That is why the checking, I think. Not fear. Care, worn smooth into reflex, and I have just broken it open with my clumsy hand.

The right forearm is heavy with something under the sleeve, a warmth that is not the day. I push the cuff back. A cross, and praying hands, inked in the same year he stopped being angry. Under my thumb, the memory of the needle, and of him whispering a verse to hold still. His boots are good boots, resoled twice. His back is strong, his thighs are sore from the steps, his heart goes steady and slow. A little money sits in an account somewhere, saved in small amounts for a daughter's future, and the number comes up in me as a feeling of *enough, almost*.

Across the street, a coffee shop glows amber through the rain, and I can smell it, and he would have wanted one after this run.

I lift my hand into the light and turn it over. Calloused, steady, a ring I did not choose. His. Not mine. I look up.

"Okay," I say, in a voice lower than I expected. "Okay. Let's see how long you last."