Patrick Gallagher

You leave the foreman first, in your head, before the wheel does. He is 33 and he is standing in a dark kitchen in the high desert, and the refrigerator hums, and the whole house is asleep. He has been yours for less than a minute. His body is fine. It is the right size, it does what you ask, and the goatee is neat under your thumb. Nothing is wrong with him. But something is wrong with you, and it is the plain thing you would never say out loud, so you don't. You pay. You watch the wheel, and then you are not there.

The board clicks to 48.

Your knee stops bouncing on the same click. You set a paper cup down square on the seat beside you. The water in it is warm. You fold your hands and you do not look up, because a voice has said a name somewhere, and the name is yours now and you don't know it yet.

The strip light buzzes over the third seat from the door. Your hands are heavy and warm. The left one has a ring on it, plain and a little loose at the knuckle, and when your thumb finds it, it turns, and something opens.

A woman's laugh in a car with the window cracked, the heater ticking. The ring was bought on a Thursday with a weekend's overtime, and she cried at the counter and he pretended he didn't see. That is his feeling, not yours: pride so large it embarrassed him.

The shirt is open over a gray tee, and the cloth under your fingers is soft and thin at the cuff. The sleeve was rolled twice this morning before the light came up. His thumb did it, the habit of it, then the left boot and the right, the laces yanked tight in a dark hallway so the floor wouldn't creak. He is a man who tiptoes around his own sleeping wife. Under the sleeve, against your upper arm, the tattoo itches the way it does when he's anxious. A face in black and gray. You don't know whose, and then the skin tells you a little. Not the wife. Someone he never says aloud. The one who got away, and the ache of her is old and worn smooth, like a coin kept in a pocket.

The chair is hard plastic against your spine. Forty-eight years sit in the lower back, the dull ache of lifting a thousand boxes. Your belly rests warm against your belt. The gut is soft, and it doesn't embarrass him. Your beard is thick and a little damp, and you rub it without being asked, a tic. Your knees are wrecked in a quiet, sturdy way. The hands know things, how to square a box, how to read a label upside down, how to hold a clipboard against a rail in the rain.

A van, the back door rolled up on a wet street under orange light. A stoop, a brownstone, a woman's name on a slip of paper. His whole working day flickers in the cloth at your thigh. Then the number, the cold cup, and the real reason he is here. A doctor's office is down the corridor, and a result is waiting. Is that fear in his chest, or is it yours? You can't tell. You will be the one to walk in.

Your name is called again, and you look at your hands. You turn them over. The palms are broad and creased and not yours. The ring catches the light. You lift your eyes.

"All right," you say, in his low voice. "Let's see how long this one lasts."