Rubén Castañeda

You are Nabil Haddadin, and you have been him for less than a minute. The kitchen in Anchorage is quiet except for the compressor of the walk-in cycling on, and your hands, his hands, smell of onion and bleach. You came home from the line an hour ago and stood at the sink without turning on the light. You had been chopping all night, and what sent you back to the wheel was small: you cannot stand the beard. It itches under the jaw, a stranger's hair that you keep touching to check it is yours. The beauty mark by your eye catches in every window. Nobody warned you that a body this young would want things you can't name. It is nearly midnight and you want to be somewhere else. The page glows. You pay. The wheel turns.

Then the dark is a different dark, and a heavier one.

You are face-down. The mattress is soft and sour with sweat, and one arm hangs off the edge into cool air, fingers brushing carpet. Your breath is ragged and wet in the pillow, and then it is even, all in one pull. The arm draws itself up. The body rolls onto its back, and your hands fold on your chest like a man laid out. He has never slept like this. A strip of streetlight cuts through the gap in the curtains and lies across your chest.

The shirt is the first thing. Cotton, thin and washed soft, collar stretched. It carries him up through your ribs: he is standing in this same shirt at a dresser in the dark, the drawer sticking, a Wednesday of the kind that has no name. He pulled it on after the shift because the uniform smelled of the belt and the cold of the register lane. His wife used to fold his shirts in thirds. He does it in thirds still, badly, and does not know why.

The sheet is under your fingers, and with it comes the ache of the bed. It is the one he took when the house was sold, and Marisol took the good lamp and the dog. He did not fight her. Twenty-two years, and the last one was silence in two rooms. He loved her more in the divorce than in the marriage, and he told no one that.

Your thumb finds your teeth. The nail is already bitten to the quick, and the habit carries a taste of copper. Under it comes the church: a Methodist hall, folding chairs, coffee in styrofoam, his mother's hymnal with the cracked spine. He still sings the bass line alone in the car.

The body underneath all this is large and badly kept. Six foot one, a soft belly over thin legs, and a lower back that burns when you shift. The knees are sore, and the calves ache from standing, from nine hours on rubber matting watching groceries pass. Your hands know the motion of the scanner without being asked: a flick, a beep, a flick. The scalp is smooth against the pillow. The jaw is smooth too, shaved before sleep out of some old discipline. You touch the mole high on your cheek and it feels like a small, stubborn fact.

Then you lift both hands into the light and turn them over. They are thick-knuckled and brown, and strange. The nails are chewed ragged.

You look past them, up at the ceiling and then toward the dark where a camera would be, and you say, quietly, "Okay. You'll do."

Somewhere under the quiet is the question you cannot stop asking: how long.