Travis Hollowell

You are leaving Joaquin Barrera because of the road. Nothing was wrong with him. The cab was warm and the dash lights were green, and the sleeper bunk behind your shoulders smelled of coffee and clean cotton. The clock said it was before five in a Chicago Thursday. He had been yours for less than a minute when you saw it: an empty lane that ran to Indianapolis and kept going, and you had no wish to drive it. He knew the way. You didn't want the way. You wanted to be pointed at something you had not been yet. So you go back to the wheel, and your thumb is already moving on the glass.

The floor goes out from under the cab, and the carpet is under you.

You are sitting. The mattress edge gives under a weight that is nearly all his. It is a great deal of man, tall and thick, with the heat of sleep still in it. The room is gray with the window's early light. The wallpaper is striped and stained, a lamp stands on the nightstand, and a small alarm clock ticks. Your hand is flat on your chest, on cotton, and under it are ribs and a slow heavy heartbeat. The shirt is buttoned wrong by one. The tie hangs loose, a dark strip on either side of your collar.

Then the shirt starts to give him up.

The cotton at your shoulders is soft from washing, and it brings the morning he put it on. His wife had ironed it. He stood at the closet with the iron's smell still in his nose and thought about the store. It is a day of straightening boxes and facing shelves and the price gun against his palm, and he doesn't hate it. He hates being tall in aisles built for children's hands. His thumb remembers the trigger of the gun, a click that sounds like a small bone.

Your fingers curl on your knee and crack, one knuckle after another, a habit that belongs to the hands. With it comes a diner, closed now, and a stool at its counter. He is nineteen and has a cigarette going, his ear is hot and swollen from a mat, and his father says *you'll want ice on that*. The ear never went back. Your fingers find it, a lumpy ridge of gristle, and it is a little proud and a little tender.

The wedding band is cool against the bedspread. He remembers a kitchen, two small voices arguing over cereal, and a woman's laugh while he stood holding a box of it, large and happy and not looking at himself. He remembers one stoplight turning red over an empty main street at midnight, and how much he liked sitting under it with nobody coming.

The carpet is rough under your socks. The beard is stiff along the jaw. His knees ache, and his back remembers a hundred cases of televisions. You are strong in a dull, settled way, and you are heavier than anyone you have been.

You look at your hands. They are big and square, with the ring and a nick across one knuckle. You turn them over. Then you lift your eyes and say, quietly, "All right. Hello."

The clock ticks. You do not know how long this one lasts. You wonder how long before the wanting comes back.