Tobias Larkin

You are standing in Sione Tuilagi's kitchen at the hour when the building goes quiet, and you are still deciding. His wife's mother has left a casserole dish on the counter with a strip of tape on the lid. His reading glasses are folded on the marble. His knees, which are a finance director's knees, ache from stairs. You had him for less than a minute, and the whole of that minute was the weight of him. You have spent it doing sums with the numbers in his head, and every one comes out the same. You are good at being the man who is asked. Nobody there can be told no. The thing you wanted was a man who could say no to you, and he cannot. You pay. You spin. The wheel clicks over, and the kitchen goes.

Cold tile under your bare feet. Water running. A toothbrush in your mouth, bristles scraping gum, foam on your lip, and you are halfway through a stroke that was not yours a heartbeat ago. The window is full of low orange light and the glass is warm on your shoulder when you lean. You stop. You start again on the other side, slower, working the back molars, because they are the ones that ache.

Then his things start to talk. The tee against your back is soft and thin, and in it is this morning: the dresser drawer that sticks, the plaid shirt he wore to a cut block and then hung on a nail, sleeves rolled twice, sawdust in the pockets that never quite comes out. His jeans are stiff at the knee, and in them the chaps, orange canvas, buckled strap by strap in the dark before the crew truck came, the third buckle always last because it jams. The tap handle is cold under your palm, and under it a woman's voice saying his name the way no one else does, laughing, in a kitchen that smelled of coffee, and then the same voice not laughing, and a suitcase on a stairwell. She got away. He rinses her out of his mouth twice every night and she is still there. Your thumb finds his pocket and a lighter is in it, plastic, warm from his leg. It flips over once, twice, with no instruction from you. He never smoked. He only liked the small wheel catching. His shoulders ache the clean ache of a day with a saw, and his hands are hard as bark across the palms. Twenty-six years. Not much money. A church pew in his head, a hymn, a hand-me-down Bible with a cracked spine. No drink for two years. You can feel the space where the wanting used to be.

You spit. You rinse. You set the brush bristles-up in the cup, out of the grey water where it has always sat.

You lift your hands. The knuckles are cracked and pale with soap. The lighter turns once over your fingers. Up in the mirror, a mole high on the cheek, blue eyes that are yours now.

"Hello, Tobias," you say. His voice is lower than you thought.

You wonder how long this one holds. Till the wanting comes back. Till tomorrow. Till the sink is dry.