Samir Haddad Khoury

Wendell's knees ache in the way they have ached since I got him, a low wet ache like a tooth in each joint. I stand in his kitchen in Phoenix with the dishwasher ticking as it cools. I have been him for less than a minute, and I am already tired of him. I wanted a body that could carry a tray across a room without arithmetic. I wanted to hear a man's name called and have it mean me. Wendell owns a hallway of photographs of people who do not phone. His belly sits over his belt like a held breath. The fluorescent tube above the sink hums a note I have not liked since the first second. I set his glass down, open the site, and watch the wheel. The click of it is soft and ordinary. I pay and I spin.

Heat comes first, a wall of it on the face, then the weight of the shift in my calves. I am standing at a steel pass under a lamp, with a ticket rail at my left shoulder, paper curling in the warmth. My right hand is in the air over a plate of greens. It has just done something wrong, one small motion, a tilt of the wrist that is not its own. So I do it again, slowly and correctly, because the hand is asking me to. Then again, and again, ten times, each one checked, as if some old fear were still in the muscle and I had inherited it.

The apron is stiff at the hem with old grease. When my fingers close on the towel at the waistband, a morning arrives that is not mine. A cold garage under a bay window, white light on a steep driveway, and three small coats on hooks that are not there anymore. He pulls the black jacket off the nail and threads the left arm, then the right, and rolls each sleeve twice, because his forearms run hot. A tied knot at the waist, a tug. He tells himself it's only Wednesday.

The pen in the breast pocket is cool through the cloth, and under it comes a girl's voice. It is the ex, saying his name like a dish put down too hard in the next room. There is a ring in his pocket. My thumb finds it and turns it over without being asked, around and around, and with the turning comes a kitchen in a church basement, a tray of ma'amoul, his mother's palms white with flour, and an old shame that he never learned to cook the way she did, only louder. Then a plate he threw once, years ago. Then the three of them asleep in a back seat on the drive home, the dark road and the heater ticking.

My nose aches faintly at the bridge. My tongue finds the place where a molar has been filled. The shoes are heavy and sure. His shoulders are wide and warm, and the back of my neck is damp. The air is full of garlic and hot oil, and something burnt and sweet. Behind me a voice says, "Chef?" and I understand it means me.

I lift my hand into the light. The tattoos on the forearm are faded, bold, and not mine, a swallow and a rose with the red worn down to rust. I turn the hand over. The knuckles are scarred with small burns and the fingers are steady. I look up.

"Fire it," I say. His voice comes out low, roughened, easy.

Somewhere underneath, the wanting is already stirring, the way it does. I do not know how long this one lasts.