Rain on Metal, Inches from My Palm

The look is still happening.

Yesterday. The hospital corridor. The lights too white. He is holding a paper cup and he does not offer it. I do not reach. We are standing in the middle of the hall like we have forgotten how doors work. His eyes stay on my face after they should have gone somewhere else. Past politeness. Past the point where I can pretend I didn’t notice.

I take nothing from him. His fingers catch mine anyway, just the edge, the heat of the cup between us for one second. Skin. Then not.

He says, You’re still here.

The pause after it is longer than the sentence. I can still hear the pause. I am sitting in his truck and the rain has started and the pause has not thinned.

His hands are on the wheel. I look at them instead of his mouth.

We are going for a lock. My father’s cottage. The door that never sat right. Rome said he would do it. He said it the way he says most things, like it is already decided and talking about it would only make it smaller. I got in the truck. I did not ask why he still knew the road.

Rain on the glass. Not heavy yet. The wipers stay off. The harbor is a grey line to the left and then it isn’t. I keep the window an inch down. Cold air. Salt. The sentence again. You’re still here.

He parks in front of the hardware store. Leaves the engine running.

I’ll be two minutes, he says.

He goes in. The door of the shop closes. I sit with my hands in my lap. There is a smear of something on the passenger window that looks like a fingerprint. I do not wipe it.

I need a napkin. There is coffee from this morning in the cup holder on the console, cold, and a ring of it on the lid. I open the glovebox.

Napkins. A flashlight. Registration. And under that, facedown, a photograph.

I know what it is before I turn it over. The paper is soft at the edges. Held too many times or not enough. I turn it.

Us. The last summer. The dock behind his place. I am squinting. He is not looking at the camera. He is looking at me. Someone else took it. I remember the afternoon and I do not remember this picture existing.

Five years. He kept it in the glovebox. Under the napkins.

The shop door opens. He comes back with a paper bag, the lock in it, the receipt sticking out. He gets in. Sits. Closes his door. Rain louder for a second.

He sets the bag on the console behind the cup and looks at the road. His right hand comes off the wheel and settles on his thigh, palm up. Open. As if he has already been told something is coming.

I do not speak.

I put the photograph into his palm. I leave my hand there. His skin is warmer than the paper. I count one second too long and then I take my hand back and look at the windshield.

He does not look at me. He looks at the photograph in his hand. His thumb moves once along the edge, the worn part, and then stops.

He puts it down on the console between the cup and the bag. Face up. He starts the truck.

We drive. The rain thickens. The wipers go on. Neither of us talks. The photograph lies between the cup and the bag and slides a little when he brakes. I can see the corner of his shoulder in it. I can see my own mouth, half open, about to say something I no longer remember.

The road dips. Water already in the low part, a sheet of it, brown, moving. He slows. Another car has stopped ahead, hazards on, then turns around.

He does not turn around.

He pulls onto the shoulder under the overpass. Concrete. Dark. The rain becomes a different sound, harder, on the roof instead of the glass. He cuts the engine.

I wind my window up the last inch. The strip of cold air is gone. The glass where it was open begins to cloud.

Quiet, except the rain.

We sit. The cab is small. I have always known it was small. I am aware of my knee against the console. His hand goes to the console and takes the photograph. I watch him do it. He does not look at it. He holds it against his knee. His other hand on the wheel, then off it, then flat on the console lid beside the cup.

Minutes. No decision. The air we are breathing is the same air.

I do not look at the windshield. He does not either. There is nothing to see. Water running off the concrete in a sheet. The town on the other side of it.

My hand is on the edge of the console. I put it there when he turned onto the shoulder and I have not taken it back. The side of my little finger is along his. I did not put it there on purpose. I also did not move it away. His hand does not close. It does not leave.

The wanting is already in the truck. It has been in the glovebox. It was in the corridor. I can feel it in the fact that neither of us has opened a door.

He is very still. I am very still. The stillness is not rest. It is the pressure of not moving. My coat is wet at the sleeve from the window. His is wet at the shoulder. I can hear him breathe. I can hear myself. Too loud for the size of the space.

His free thumb lifts off the console lid and settles again. I watch it without turning my head.

If I speak I will say the wrong thing. If he speaks he will make it into something we can walk back from.

The rain does not let us leave.

He shifts. Not much. A turn in the seat, toward me, the way a person turns when they are about to say something they have already decided not to mean. I do not lean back. There is nowhere to lean that is not him.

He looks at my mouth and then not at it. The old pattern. The unfinished line. Humor, because humor is how he used to get to the other side of me.

He starts it.

If I’d known you’d go through my—

I kiss him.

The rest of it dies against my teeth. His mouth is already open on the unfinished line. There is a half-second where he could still make it a joke, pull back, say the rest, and then that second is gone. His hand leaves the photograph. I see it go, off his knee, onto the mat between his boots. Rain on the roof. Nothing else.

The kiss is not careful. Wet wool, wet denim, the gearshift against my knee. My coat is buttoned to the throat. He gets two buttons open and gives up. I do the rest myself, fast, not looking, and the coat falls open. He drags it off one shoulder. It stops at my elbow. It stays there. I push his coat back off his shoulders and his arms are caught behind him until he shrugs it the rest of the way down to his wrists and leaves it, the wet wool bunched over his hands. I pull his shirt out of his belt. The hem is damp. His fingers are on my buttons. He does them in order. One. The next. He does not look down at his hands. He looks at my mouth.

The cab is too small for anything that looks like undressing. He reaches down beside the seat and it drops back with a sound like something giving. He goes with it, away from the wheel, half lying. My jeans to one ankle. The other side caught on the boot. I kick the free leg out of the denim and leave the rest where it is. His belt. The zipper. Open. My bra shoved up, not off. There is nowhere to put anything.

I get a knee onto the console. The bag goes over the edge and onto the floor, the lock heavy in the paper. The gearshift in my calf and then not. He takes my hips and I am over him, my knees either side of his in a seat that was not built for this, the roof close above my head, the wheel somewhere behind me and not touching. The windows have gone white from the inside.

The first push is slow and then it is not slow. I stop. He stops. Neither of us moves for the length of a breath. His hands flat on my back over the shirt, the wool at his wrists cold against my sides. Then I shift, an inch, and my head finds the roof, and I get one hand up flat against it, the lining rough, and that is the angle. It is right now. Rain on metal, inches from my palm. Our breathing, louder than the cab can hold. I make a sound and stop it. He says Jules. Once. Flat. Like a fact.

When I need the quiet I lean down and put my mouth on his shoulder. Cloth and skin. I can feel him swallow. My other hand finds the headrest beside his ear and holds it like it matters. My thigh begins to shake and I do not stop it.

I lift my head. He is watching my face. He does not look away. I come first. It is not only heat. It is in my throat, the thing I held down in the corridor, and in my hands, which are gripping harder than they need to, and I keep my eyes open because he is keeping his open. Then the second wave of it, and I put my mouth back on his shoulder so I do not have to hear myself.

He follows. Shorter. His mouth open against my hair, no sound. When I lift my head his forehead comes to mine and stays. His eyes are closed now. There is a line between them I have not seen before. His breath is uneven and he does not try to fix it. The rain does not change.

I sit up. The roof stops me. I get a knee over the console and I am in my own seat again, the leather cold through the shirt. I find the empty leg of my jeans with my foot and work it back in and drag the denim up over the boot that never let go of the other side. He does his zipper, lying back, his hands still in the wool. He leaves the belt hanging open. Neither of us touches the coats. I button my shirt and it comes out wrong, one hole off at the bottom, the collar sitting crooked. I see it in the dark glass and I leave it.

He reaches down beside himself. The photograph on the mat. He picks it up. He does not give it back yet. He sets it on the console, face down this time.

Heavy silence. The engine still off. The water coming off the concrete has not slowed.

Will the road clear, I say.

I don’t know, he says.

I smooth my hair in the glass. I can barely see myself. He reaches down beside the seat and pulls the lever and the seat comes up under him, hard, the way it went down. He sits. He puts both hands on the wheel though we are not driving. His knuckles are the same as they were around the paper cup. I look at the fog on the windshield instead.

I laugh once. Short. At the fogged window. At the two of us still here, still in the truck, the lock in the paper bag on the floor, my shirt buttoned wrong.

He almost smiles. He does not.

The wanting is no longer in the glovebox. The next sentence is still too expensive. We sit. The rain does not let us leave.