Carnal Currents

The first thing I notice is the weight of him. Not heavy, exactly, but dense. Like he's been compressed into something smaller than he should be, all that coiled muscle and quiet anger packed into a frame that barely fits the chair across from me. He's got his hands folded on the table, knuckles pale, and he hasn't looked at me once since I sat down.

I don't take it personally. Most people in this room don't want to look at me.

"You're staring," he says. His voice is low, gravel scraped over something softer. He still doesn't look up.

"I'm observing." I lean back, let the chair creak under me. "There's a difference."

"Is there."

"Observation's got a purpose. Staring's just what happens when you forget to blink."

That gets me a flicker. Not a smile, not exactly, but the corner of his mouth twitches like it's considering the possibility. He lifts his head then, and I understand why he's been keeping his eyes on the table. They're the kind of blue that makes you think of deep water, the kind that pulls you under before you realize you've stopped swimming.

I've seen a lot of eyes in this room. Addicts, mostly. Liars. People who've done things they can't say out loud, or things they can but won't. His eyes don't look like any of those.

They look like they've been waiting for something.

"Marcus," I say, reading from the file I've already memorized. "Thirty-four. Former Marine. Dishonorable discharge, though the details are sealed. Two arrests, no convictions. Currently employed as a bouncer at a club downtown." I close the folder. "That's what the paper says. What does the paper miss?"

He watches me for a long moment. The overhead light buzzes, a fluorescent flicker that makes the shadows under his eyes deeper. I should've turned it off. Fluorescents make everyone look like a suspect.

"Depends who's asking," he says.

"I'm asking."

"Why."

It's not hostile. It's genuinely curious, like he's been handed a puzzle and he's trying to figure out if the pieces fit. I've been doing this job for six years, and I can count on one hand the number of times someone's asked me that. Most people want to talk. They've been holding something in so long that the moment someone offers a space, they spill. Marcus doesn't look like a spiller.

"Because you're here," I say. "And people who end up here usually have a reason."

"Maybe I'm just bored."

"Nobody's just bored at nine on a Tuesday. Bored people stay home. Bored people watch TV. Bored people don't sign up for court-mandated counseling."

He tilts his head. The movement is slow, deliberate, like everything he does. "You looked me up."

"Standard procedure."

"You memorized my file."

"Also standard."

"Did you memorize everyone's file, or just mine?"

The question lands somewhere between my ribs. I don't let it show. I've spent years learning how not to let things show, how to keep my face a neutral mask while my brain runs calculations underneath. But he's watching me now, really watching, and I get the feeling he can see the math happening.

"Everyone's," I say. "It's my job."

"Right." He leans back, and the chair groans. "Your job."

The silence stretches. I've learned to let silence do the work. Most people can't stand it. They fill it with whatever's closest to the surface, and that's usually where the real stuff lives. But Marcus doesn't fill it. He sits there like a man who's made peace with quiet, like silence is just another room he's learned to live in.

I'm the one who breaks first. That's unusual.

"You want to tell me why you're really here?" I ask.

"No."

"Okay."

"Okay?"

"I'm not going to make you talk. That's not how this works." I pull a pen from my jacket, click it once, set it down. "You show up. You sit. You leave. That's all I'm required to ask of you."

"And if I don't show up?"

"Then you violate the terms of your release and go back to jail."

He nods slowly, like that's the answer he expected. Maybe it is. Maybe he's been waiting for someone to tell him the truth without dressing it up, and I've just done that, and now he doesn't know what to do with it.

"You're different," he says.

"Different how?"

"Most people in your position, they try to fix me. Like I'm a car that won't start. They've got a toolbox and they're just looking for the right wrench."

"And what am I doing?"

He considers this. The fluorescent light flickers again, and in that half-second of dark, I feel something shift in the room. Something that wasn't there before.

"You're just sitting there," he says. "Waiting."

"For what?"

"For me to decide I want to be here."

I don't have a response for that. It's too accurate. I've been doing this long enough to know that you can't force anyone into change. You can only hold the door open and hope they walk through. Most don't. Most sit in the hallway and complain about the draft.

But Marcus isn't complaining. He's just sitting. And there's something about the way he's sitting, the way his shoulders are squared and his jaw is set, that makes me think he's done a lot of sitting in his life. Waiting rooms. Holding cells. The back of an ambulance, maybe. Places where you wait for the next thing to happen because you've stopped believing you get to choose.

"I'll be here next week," I say. "Same time."

"I know."

"You don't have to talk. You don't have to do anything. But I'll be here."

He stands. The chair scrapes against the linoleum, a sound like a match striking. He's taller than I expected, broader. The kind of man who takes up space without trying, who makes the room feel smaller just by existing in it.

"Doctor," he says. Not a question. He's reading the nameplate on my desk.

"Doctor," I confirm.

"You don't look like a doctor."

"What do I look like?"

He studies me. His eyes move from my face to my hands to the file on the desk, and I feel it like a physical touch. Like he's cataloging me, filing me away for later.

"Like someone who's been in this room too long," he says.

Then he's gone. The door clicks shut behind him, and I'm alone with the buzzing light and the empty chair and the strange, unsettled feeling that something just started. Something I didn't sign up for.

I open his file again. Read the same words I've read a dozen times. Dishonorable discharge. Sealed records. Two arrests, no convictions.

But the paper doesn't say anything about his eyes. The paper doesn't mention the way he looked at me like he was the one conducting the interview, like I was the one who needed to explain myself.

I close the folder. Turn off the light. Sit in the dark for a while, listening to the building settle around me.

Next week can't come fast enough.