Mateo Quintero

You are in Dylan's bathroom, in Denver, and the house is asleep. The fan is off because it wakes his roommate. You have been him for nine minutes, and the mirror is still his: black hair, short beard, a face that cut other people's hair for a living and never learned to be looked at. You hold the scissors from the drawer and don't know why you picked them up.

He was fine. That is the trouble. He was twenty and he worked, and his hands knew a hundred small kindnesses with a comb. But a body that works is only a body, and you have already had a thousand of them. Something in you had gone quiet, and you needed it loud. The phone is warm in his hand. The wheel is already turning.

The scissors are still closing when it takes you.

Light, slanted and low. Steam drifts across a narrow alley, and the signs hang over you in red and blue. Your weight is suddenly much more than it was: low, thick, planted. Your spine is bent at the waist, a club is in your right hand, and a glove is on your left. Your leg is bouncing. It has been bouncing all along, a small motor under the knee, and you did not start it.

The rhythm breaks. You reach for the ball and miss, a hair off, and the club-head skitters on the turf. You do it again slowly, and the ball comes to the face of the club exactly. Ten more follow, and you check each one, though the body has needed no checking for years.

Then the grip. Rubber, worn to a shine where the thumb sits, and with it comes his feeling, not yours: a Tuesday, a long one, a boy of nine who cannot keep his wrists quiet. You hear yourself, in his patience, say *again, slow, again*. Years of that, and a pride he never said aloud.

The polo is damp at the spine, and the cotton gives you the morning. He stood at the closet and chose beige because beige forgave him. He pulled the shirt down over the belly he had stopped apologizing for, and tugged the sleeves until they sat right on the arms. They are strong arms, thick through the forearm, built by swinging for ten years. He buttoned the khakis and rolled the left leg, as always, because the hem rubbed the ink.

You feel the ink. A woman's face in bold lines, faded where the sun reaches. His hand goes to it without being asked, and the memory arrives: a chair in a shop, the needle hot and bright, a night he drank too much first and laughed. He drinks most nights. You feel that too, a dull hum behind the eyes and a thirst already waiting for dark. He is alone in the evenings and fills them well enough. In his head, something is loosely prayed to, a sky, a patience. He never named it.

The visor band is tight at the temple. Under it, a clean jaw, smooth from this morning's razor. His knees ache a little, and his lungs are easy. The turf is spongy under the shoes.

You lift your right hand from the club. The palm is broad, with calluses at the base of each finger. You turn it over and look at it a long time.

Then you look up, past the steam and the signs you cannot read.

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

The leg keeps bouncing. You do not know whether it is his or yours, or how long before the wanting comes back.