Samir Khoury

Roy's knees hurt. That is the first thing, and you let it be the whole reason for a moment, standing in a stranger's kitchen with the paint still under his nails. Forty years of ladders live in these knees. The coffee is going cold in the dark, the street outside has not started, and you have been Roy for less than a minute and you already know the weight of him: the belly that sits on the belt, the beard that itches, the blue eyes that look at the window and want nothing.

Nothing is wrong with him. That is the trouble. He works, he would be fine, and you would be fine, and you cannot stand it. You open the page. The wheel is already turning under your thumb.

Then there is a streetlight through a gap in curtains, and you are face-down.

Your breath is ragged, then even. Your arm hangs off the mattress, and it draws itself up on its own, or you draw it, and the body rolls onto its back, and your hands fold at the chest. It is a posture he never once slept in. The sheets are tangled around one sock. The room smells of dust, laundry and cold coffee. A nightstand is crowded with chargers and a small phone.

You do not stand. There is no time to stand. You only touch.

The sheet under your palm is rough, washed too many times, and it gives you a flash: his mother's voice on a phone, years ago, saying to eat something, and the shame of not having money to send. Underwater, the number comes, twenty-odd thousand, a figure he carries like a stone in the shoe. Not drink, never, a promise made at a funeral. A rosary in a drawer he does not use but will not throw out.

The T-shirt is on him, black, gone soft and stiff with grit at the collar. It gives you the morning he put it on: the left sleeve first, because the right shoulder aches, then the long drive down the gravel road with the water tower standing on the horizon like a pin. Barbed wire flashing in the headlights. The hallway of an apartment building, the ladder opened under a ceiling panel, the cold of a leak dripping down his wrist. He liked the ladder. He liked being the one who knew where the water went.

His fingers rise to his mouth without being asked. The nails are bitten to the quick, ragged at the edges, and your teeth find the corner of one before you stop them. Twenty-two years of that habit are in the muscle.

The body is small, compact, lighter than Roy's by a lot. The chest is easy, the back sore from days of reaching overhead, the calluses hard along the palms. The goatee is a thin scrape under your lip. Hair falls across the cheek, and you tuck it behind the ear as if you have done it a thousand times, because he has.

You hold your hand up in the streetlight and turn it over. Brown skin, chewed nails, a stranger's hand.

Then you look up, and out loud, in a voice lower than you expected, you say, "Okay. Let's see how long you last."

The house ticks and settles. Somewhere a dog barks once. You do not know whether this is a night or a year.