I hold on so tightly I lose my grip. The hubcap clatters to the floor like a platter thrown during a lovers’ spat.
“Go to hell!” I yell, then, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it.”
I pull on a pair of gray sweats and a dirty white T-shirt. Four red lines bleed through the front of the shirt. I grab my battered leather jacket and huff out the door.
Streetlights flicker a dozen blocks ahead, but where I walk bullets rule. I know I am taking a chance, but I am angry. And more than lonely. Three nights before, I thought my life had turned a corner when I found the hubcap in the slush of a spring snow squall. I bent down and scooped black snow out of the deeper dents before I tucked it inside my jacket.
“You’re cold,” I said. “My bed is warm.” The hubcap shivered the whole walk home.
Inside, I laid the hubcap on my mattress in the middle of the floor. I layered flannel sheets, a quilt, and a comforter on top. I warmed some soup on the stove, but by the time it was heated, the hubcap had already fallen asleep. I set the soup on the floor and slid slowly, quietly beneath the flannel sheets, quilt, and comforter.
It was the dream I had that night that gave me hope. I had fallen in dreams before, but I had never been caught. This time, I settled into a lover’s palm the way the smoke of burning leaves settles into valleys. The longer I lay there, the more my skin glowed. All night I slept as a pearl held in the palm of a lover.
The next morning, I awoke spooned by the hubcap. The day unfolded slowly, naturally. The hubcap thanked me by listening—through the morning, the early afternoon, and into the evening—to all of my problems, all of my stories of failed loves and regrets.
When the sky began to darken outside my blinded windows, I interrupted my own lengthy history. “You probably have to go.” I tilted my head toward the window. When the hubcap did not reply, I asked, “Are you sure?” then continued unburdening myself until we both drifted off to sleep.
Again, I fell through my dream, and again I landed in the lover’s palm. I knew the dream was telling me I was falling in love. I didn’t want to listen. Who would believe me? It couldn’t be true. How could I explain any of this? A man cannot love a hubcap if he does not first love himself.
The second day was quiet, almost silent. I had nothing left to explain, and the hubcap never did have any explaining to do. We spoke through touch. I ran my stubby fingers around the hubcap’s rippled rim, caressed its dents, rubbed it until it almost shone.
When I fell again that night, I landed with a bone-jarring jolt in the center of a paw that was cold and rough and sharp at the edges. I struggled to pull away, but honed claws needled into my skin and wouldn’t let go.
Pain pricked open my eyes, and I awoke to find the badly bent and dented hubcap clinging to my chest. I wrestled with it over the flannel sheets, quilt, and comforter. When I finally ripped it off, four cuts bled down my stomach. I jumped to my feet and backed away. The hubcap clattered to the floor.
Outside, I light a cigarette and hold it at arm’s length against the sky in the place where the moon should hang. “It’s not enough,” I say as smoke nooses around my neck. I snuff the butt after only a few puffs, then turn east toward the lights to search my dark and empty street.
**This story was originally published in Beloit Fiction Journal.