Walter Gillespie

You are leaving Danny Pruitt because of the dishwasher.

It is a small reason, and you know it. The little door on the soap drawer snapped off in your hand this afternoon, and you stood in his kitchen holding it. You had no idea whether he would have laughed, or sworn, or known where the glue was. His wife's voice came from the next room, asking if everything was okay. The voice was easy and warm, and you had nothing to give it. Five minutes inside him and you were already a bad copy. The short beard itched, and the nose that had been broken once whistled when you breathed. He was twenty-seven and five-foot-four, and you kept reaching for shelves that sat lower than your wanting. So you went back to the page with the wheel on it, while his kid slept down the hall, and you pressed the button before you could hear yourself think.

The wheel turns, and then there is no kitchen.

There is a podium under your left hand, cool and painted, and in your right a picture frame. The wood of it is smooth with handling. You were halfway through setting it upright, and your fingers are still finishing the motion. Your breath comes slow and level. The room is long and quiet, with chairs in rows, and a window full of brick and a pink neon bleeding in through the glass. Your eyes are not on your hands.

Something is wrong with the motion. You hear it, in a way you can't explain. The frame tilts, and you set it down. Then you do it again, slowly, and correctly: the easel leg out, the base squared to the lip of the wood, the glass wiped with one thumb. Then you check it. You check the next one too, though there is nothing to check, and it has been years since this job needed checking.

Your suit is heavy and well cut, and the shoulders have been taken in once. The tie is knotted tight at the throat. Then the ring under your fingertips begins to turn, a plain band, and your thumb is working it around and around without being asked.

*A bathroom, the early dark. A razor. He shaves the whole skull every morning now, and he stopped minding the way it looked years ago. The mirror is fogged, his wife's hand comes through the steam to take the towel from him, and he feels a plain, wide gratitude, the kind that needs no words.*

The jacket's lining slides against your arms. The sleeve is the one he buttoned this morning with his left hand, the cuff stiff with starch. He was thinking, as he did it, of the three children and which of them hadn't called. Behind that is someone else. A woman, recently gone from his life, and he feels her as a bruise he never touches. He tells no one about her. He keeps turning the ring.

*A kitchen. A dead father's folded flag. His own hands at nineteen, learning to be gentle with strangers.*

The floor is carpet over concrete, and your knees ache faintly from standing. Fifty-eight years sit in them, and in the lower back, a low steady complaint. But the hands are strong, dry, and sure. They know how to lift what is heavy as if it weighed nothing. They know how to be kind. The room smells of lilies, carpet glue, and old coffee. He has loved this room for thirty years. People come here on the worst day they will have, and he gives them chairs, quiet, and a clean frame. He never told anyone how much that is enough. He drinks too hard once or twice a month, and he has money put away for nothing in particular. He believes in something, though he would not call it God.

*The back alley after midnight, a guitar through a wall, laughing. He stands in it with a cold beer. It is the only time he lets the day come off him.*

You turn your hands over. They are broad and freckled across the backs, and the band gleams on the left. They are not yours, and they are exactly yours. You lift your eyes to the window, where the neon buzzes, and then to the room where no one is.

"Well," you say, in a voice gone low and gravelly. "Let's see how long you last."

The ring is still turning, and you don't know whether it is his habit or yours.