The man with no bones lay splayed across my front porch. He wore his skin like a winter coat, wrapped snugly around him, and beads of dew clung to his white-blond, close-cropped hair. I was getting the morning paper, slipping out the door with my legs shivering, in my sister's old flowered bathrobe. I turned eighteen that week, was about to move to New York for college, and all my own clothes were in storage or packed, crammed into suitcases about to be shipped cross-country after me. Finally, I was leaving Paris, its fifteen square miles nearly two hours from Denver, its single five-dollar movie theater and intricate webbing of shared small-town history, the quiet loop of cul-de-sac I'd learned to rollerskate on, sold Girl Scout Cookies door-to-door, and had my first kiss under the familiar haze of the corner streetlamp. Now I was sleeping across the middle of my floor in a sleeping bag until I left on Tuesday; my bed had been hacked to scrap wood when my mother decided to renovate, turning my bedroom into a beach-themed guest room.

I found him thumbing through the entertainment section, holding it loose between his fingertips. The sun had just risen, and it cut clean, silent strips across the lawn in the still morning, glazing both our skins. He rose as soon as he saw me, placing a palm to the ground and lifting up from his chest, legs coltish but his feet set firm on the concrete. Wide cheeks crowded his face. His eyes were green as the underside of a leaf, and he smelled of lemons and the cool, early morning frost. I wondered how he could stand, being only muscle and scraps of sinew and that apologetic first smile curving his lips. He stuck out his hand. His movements were jerky, practiced—had he been born this mass of cartilage, a blob of unsolidified cells pooling in his mother's arms—but his grip matched mine in a solid snare of warm palms.

His voice when it came was soft, his words stumbling after each other. "I'm Jeremy. Hi—I'm sorry about this," he said, half-arching his hand, thin fingers clamped close together, toward the flutter of newspaper pages left unfolded on the porch. He swallowed, the muscles of his throat constricting like a clenched fist. "I got winded walking. Jelly legs," he said with a half-smile, looking past me and looping his left arm around my banister, letting his hand drape; his fingers swayed slightly like clothes hung on a line, unfurling loose in the wind.

I rubbed my foot against my shin and tugged my robe tighter. "It's, um—it's okay." He smiled, the left side of his mouth edging upwards first and the right following, his thin lips rising into the unhinged flesh of his cheeks. I looked out at the still-quiet street, stretching in its pastel curve of identical, squat split-levels with neatly thatched roofs and manicured lawns, mailboxes chipping primary-colored paint, interiors all corresponding to a grid work only differentiated by carpet colors and types of ceramic knick-knacks. "How long have you been out here?"

He looked down at the pile of papers, the loop of twine that had tied it together discarded nearby like a grayed knot of a shoelace. His fingers seemed to move slightly, a twitch then echoed by his knees as he tried to stoop to straighten the mess. The corners of his eyes creased; a wince passed, barely perceptible, over his face, and he straightened again, leaning heavily on the banister, bending to it in a dissolve of skin and sinew. A breath of wind rustled the pages, sending them rippling past a checkerboard of sports scores and movie times; his gaze flicked down again, then back up at me. When he spoke, his voice was a graveled scrape like an old car jostling to movement, yet it was underpinned with a sort of familiar warmness. "Not long. I mean..."

"Just long enough to catch up on your summer blockbusters," I said, still a little wary. I hadn't slept well either, and I could still feel the gripping fingers of insomnia tugging, insistent, at my eyelids as the night paled into daylight. I kept thinking of things I needed to pack, to get done before I left next week, scribbling down flashes of ideas in jagged script I could barely decipher the next morning, sensible only to my midnight-mind.

"Yeah, well. It would look that way, yes." He dipped his head down slightly, the muscles of his neck snaring, and he gripped harder on the railing, latching his fingers tight; his nails were rosy, flushed with blood, and he wore a thin silver bracelet that dangled from his slim wrist. I toyed with the knot of my robe, still shivering, feeling the morning chill in the roots of my hair down to the soles of my feet on the dry hardwood porch.

Across the way, I could see our neighbor Mrs. Henderson through the slats of her blinds, her grey hair knotted high on her head with chopsticks and her mouth set firm in her creased face; she was in plain view of our porch if she was to untangle her blinds just a bit, and I knew she would totter across the street in her sequined Chinese slippers to ask me what the fuss was all about as soon as she caught a glimpse of this—this thing, this unfathomable man that I was sure would collapse without the banister behind him, crumbling onto my front porch as if he were some frayed scarf tossed onto a pile of shed coats, already forgotten.

I licked my sleep-chapped lips, looked at him again: his neatly parted hair, the rounded slope of his shoulders, the precise rigidity of his neck. I saw the skin of his arms was prickled through with goose bumps, and unconsciously, I began to rub my own hands together to clutch at some shard of warmth; when he glanced up at me, I thought I could see a sort of longing tinting his eyes, some familiar, unnamed yearning I couldn't place but thought I knew as he matched his gaze to mine, and I found myself letting my arms drop back to my sides and telling him to come in.

***

My parents weren't home that weekend. I had spent the past few days watching fuzzy cable movies and subsisting mainly on mint tea and cold, waxy lo mein eaten standing at the counter, littering the tile with threads of cabbage as I paged through my course catalogue for the school year, my future sprawled before me in cool, impersonal type, a takeout menu of core class and electives and pictures of grinning, bright-faced freshman. My mother kept my acceptance letter framed on the wall, lodged behind a small rectangle of glass, just as she saved piles of my old report cards and Brownie badges and honorary participation trophies from elementary school. The house seemed larger somehow when I was alone, draftier, the ceilings edging higher and the light fixtures dangling down like loose lariats. I'd had my friend Katharine over the night before to help me finish packing, but she had sprawled across the floor paging through our old yearbooks, cracking the thick books' spines flat to decipher our illegible middle-school ink smears, abstract doodles and reminiscences I couldn't all recall as I folded the last of my winter sweaters, slapping down a strip of duct tape as she told me, a little bit tearful, that it was the end of an era, truly.

I opened the door for the man. Jeremy watched as he stepped cautiously into the entryway, his clean white sneakers making soft fissures in the carpeting. He looked back at me, a wary smile tugging at his mouth. "I hope I'm not imposing. I know it's still early."

I let the door close behind him with a quiet click. "It's okay; I was up. I'm trying to get myself used to New York time."

"Yeah? What for?"

"I'm moving there. Next week, actually."

He tipped his head forward in a nod but didn't respond, focused on making his way down the hallway. He seemed to walk like a marionette tugged to movement, propelled forward in loose jerks as his hands groped for the solidity of the walls.

I felt the chill of the limestone floor on the soles of my feet as I led him into the kitchen and switched on the light. A yawn tugged at the corners of my lips; he glanced up, tugging at his lips with his teeth, concern passing over his cramped features.

"I'm not bothering you, am I? I don't mean to—"

"No, it's fine. I've been awake for awhile anyway; I was watching the sun rise."

"You sure? I mean, I can go if you'd like. I don't want to impose on you."

I could imagine him set out in the world again: clinging loose-limbed to banisters and fence posts, the set of his features determined even as his muscles began to ease and liquefy into nothing, neighbors with their fleshy faces pressed to the windows to get a glimpse of him as he stumbled through our silent cul-de-sac. "I'm sure," I told him. "Stay."

He stood in the doorway, pressing a palm to the smooth plaster, and half-smiled. In the crisp light of the kitchen I saw he wore a neatly trimmed beard and a thin white t-shirt with the logo of a band I'd never heard of. I reached up a hand to pat my hair down, feeling suddenly unkempt, ragged, my hair in rumpled waves down the small of my back and my eyes still prickling from new contact lenses, making me blink like a fish behind the hard plastic discs. I was making changes - swapping out my old tortoiseshell-frame glasses, letting Katharine weave copper streaks through my hair -, coating myself so that the city wouldn't get too much under my skin.

He stood watching me as I rummaged through the whitewashed cupboards for coffee grounds, undoing my mother's careful organization: her cans of corn stacked in pyramids and spices lined up by size, this rigid, useless geometry I'd never quite understood.

"You know, I've never seen the sun rise," he said, like an afterthought, then fixed his gaze on me still clinging to the doorframe, his neck held at a sort of quirked angle but his eyes steady, washed to a quiet celadon.

"Never? You haven't taken a camping trip? Or pulled an all-nighter?"

He shook his head, one careful left-right movement, and I could almost hear the muscles of his neck locking back into place. I thought I might have offended him - of course he hadn't hiked through Marnier Canyon, sweat pooling in the stretch of skin where his collarbones would be, or stoked a bonfire, tossing a chunk of wood with an easy, thoughtless arch of his wrist. "Nope. I was a Boy Scout for a few weeks in third grade, but I couldn't tell poison ivy from a rosebush."

"I could never light a match," I said, remembering suddenly watching my grandfather lighting his cigars on the stove's pilot light when the joints of his fingers became too weak to strike his old silver lighter any longer, the small blue-edged flame turning his cheeks to thin skin and brittle, useless bone. "Still can't, actually."

His lips curled into an incredulous half-grin. "Really? Why not?"

"I don't know; maybe I'm not using enough pressure to strike it or something. All I ever get are sparks and then nothing."

"Well, then I guess I'm in good company," he said, still smiling gently. "Although I can light a match." The teakettle whistled, the shrill sound of it ricocheting off the walls and finally I couldn't hear my breath, my heartbeat in the quiet kitchen, clattering static against my ribs. Jeremy took his hand from the wall, stood still for a moment, feet heavy on the floor, and moved to sit in one of the kitchen table's low wicker chairs. Precise as a chess piece, he rested his arm along the back of each chair before finally sliding into the leftmost one, where I usually sat for dinner, and letting his hands splay across his lap.

"You know, I could teach you. If you wanted," he said, the low drawl of his voice padding the quiet kitchen. "You should probably know, living in the big city and all."

"Teach me?" I looked over at him, seeing his lower body skewed beneath the table, the steady, brazen verticals of its legs seeming to me a silent mocking. I moved my hands flush with the kettle, the stove's flame below flicking at the brittle china, and smiled. All I had heard about lately was the big bad city, of its constant headlight glare and pulsing clamor, its narrow back alleys, some swindler waiting to latch on and leech me of something precious, anything. My friends, nearly all staying for state schools, said I would come back, letting my life unfold like theirs in the placid comfort of Paris, settling down and settling. "Yeah. Okay," I said, and paused. "What about you? Did you ever live in the city?"

He shook his head, that same fixed, almost mechanical click into movement. "I've never been," he said, as if a wider, more exotic tangle of cities and countries had held his attention instead. "You like it there?"

"I've only been once...but I loved it. We stayed right near Central Park, and you could see the horse-drawn carriages circling the park from our hotel window. It snowed nearly the entire week we were there, too," I said, remembering snow crystals dissolving on my tongue and Styrofoam cups of watery hot chocolate from street vendors, so much slush crowding the sidewalks. "We got caught downtown in Times Square in the middle of a blizzard and the streets were empty. It was almost like being in a snow globe. I've never seen anything like it."

Jeremy looked at me, his fingertips skimming the tabletop; he smiled, his eyes softening, seeming to pool in the skin of his face. "I'd love to go one day," he said softly. "It sounds—wonderful." He swallowed, curled his fingers into a limp approximation of a fist and dropped his hand to his side. His eyes glinted with something as he began to speak again. "I was born in Phoenix, though. We moved around a lot, though. My father sold car parts; he said it was bad for business to stay anywhere too long. But mostly I just wanted to stay settled somewhere."

"I've lived here all my life," I said, feeling suddenly the weight of the years I'd spent here as I stood in the kitchen like every other morning, the coffee pot bubbling and frost edged over lilac-curtained windows, the house warm with heat and smelling slightly of cinnamon, familiar.

He grinned. "And now all you want to do is leave."

"Pretty much, yeah."

"You'll miss it, though," he said, half-questioning but spoken as if he already knew the answer.

I shrugged. "There's not really much to miss. Stay here longer, you'll realize."

His voice, when it came, was soft, nearly muffled over by the slurring of coffee as I poured it into two cups, the grounds dissolving and fogging over the water, turning it dark: "You'll see. There's always something."

"It's just—I feel like I'm done with Paris," I said, glancing over at him, remembering suddenly nights spent draped over the hood of Katharine's car, passing warm Cokes back and forth in the low starlight; sprinting to first period geometry each morning, books slipping from my arms; my mother pouring batter into the waffle-maker on Sundays and filling out the crossword in inky capitals, her face whiter, softer somehow, without makeup in the morning. "I'm done with that part of my life, you know? And now I'm just waiting to start again."

I set a cup before him and sat down in the chair beside him, found myself marveling for the first time at the instinctive angling of my elbow, its careful jut, the familiar slope of skin. I was so whole, I realized as I watched him slowly extend his fingertips to wrap them around his cup, face softening as the warmth seeped into his skin. "But you'll never really be finished with this place," he said, easing his head down to meet the lip of the cup. A lock of near-colorless hair brushed past his eyes, his face held like moonlight in the coffee's mirrored surface, rippling and disassociating as he tipped a sip to his mouth. "It all stays with you."

"And if I don't want it to?"

He edged his shoulders upwards, smiled slightly down into his cup. "Well. I don't know about that."

A shard of sunlight glinted off the cool glass that kept my acceptance letter fixed firm to the wall, and I remembered slicing open the letter that sweltering April afternoon, alone in the kitchen after school, sweat clinging to my neck, my cheekbones and the thick cream envelope gaping as I unearthed the pages it held. I felt my breath snare in my throat, and I cracked the knuckles of my left hand, tugging the bone loose as if I was untangling a ribbon and feeling the warm burn of it rushing quick, familiar. Jeremy looked up at me, lips damp, the specks of gold in his eyes sparking like mica.

"I used to be able to do that, you know."

I took a long swallow of my own coffee and set the cup down heavily on its saucer, droplets sloshing out onto the tabletop's surface. "Is that supposed to be a cautionary tale?"

He licked his lips, smiled. "Not at all. I just—I know what it seems. I don't want you to think I'm some creep showing up on your porch. Some invalid." He reached his index finger up to swipe at his cheek, mirroring some unconscious gesture with his studied precision.

"I don't think anything," I said.

"Somehow I doubt that."

I folded my hands in front of me, twining my fingertips together neatly. "You don't even know me."

"I know." He fixed his eyes down at the jellied skin of his own hands, his lips mashed together in a thin line. "Look, what I said before - how I got here? My friends, they left me. I wasn't taking a walk, some nice stroll through your neighborhood. No jelly legs. They left me and drove off." His voice was like lukewarm water trickling over my wrist, dipping low as he said this last part. The coffee was cooling at my fingertips, smelled earthy and thickened on my tongue. He wasn't looking at me; I followed his leveled gaze toward the wall: its slick, pale blue sheen of paint that my parents had debated bitterly over for months, streaking the white wall and dropping names like Pulsating Blue and Blueblood and Calypso as if they were snippets of code; three even levels of family portraits through the years - me in pigtails in a white eyelet dress, grinning out from the crook of my father's arm, and grimacing five years later in a Sonic Youth t-shirt, my bangs brassy, then beaming bright with my lips strained and glossy at graduation; back to the encased acceptance letter, signed in curved script, its thick frame tilted, I noticed now, at a slight angle.

I swallowed. "What happened?"

"We were supposed to all go camping, up at Marnier Canyon; celebrate the end of summer. I thought I could make it, but—" His hold on his cup handle slackened and he laid his fingers flat on the table, his skin melting into the slick wood. "But by the first rest stop, I just—I couldn't do it. I get so tired sometimes," he said softly.

"So they just left you?"

"They said they were sorry about it. Said it'd be better for all of us this way, and that they'd pick me up when they got back."

"Where are you supposed to go until then?"

"I don't really know. I'll figure it out, I guess. I mean, what else can I do?"

"But—why?" "Well, I'm not really useful, am I? It takes me ten minutes to cross the room; what good can I give anyone? I'm dead weight—it's all I am. No one will ever stay with me like this." He looked back at me, finally meeting my eyes. I said nothing, but I knew this feeling: this sense of odd remove, a weightlessness that had somehow become heavy as lead, pitted deep in my stomach and unflagging. I was beginning my life. I was intact, and yet I felt like a last puzzle piece, ridged and peeling, edges warped so that I was now just beyond the whole, peering down on it spread out before me, all calm logic and neat, sensible borders. Having finally edged past Paris - Population 4,821, a pinhead on a wide stretch of map, I was suddenly a part of nothing and knew, somehow, that I would never be in that same way again.

I pushed back my chair, the scrape of it against the floor ringing low, and bent down to open the cupboard, feeling his gaze latch to mine again as I sat back beside him at the table.

"Show me, Jeremy," I said, my voice catching like a snag in thin lace as I set the matchbox before him. He lifted his hand slowly, set it down on top of the thick cardboard and ran his thumb along the grooves of the striking strip.

"I don't know if I still can do it."

I leaned over, the sleeve of my bathrobe brushing his skin as I opened the box and pulled out a match. "Try."

He turned it over slowly between his fingers, feeling the bulbed tip, and I could smell sulfur, could remember so many neon birthday candles dripping wax, fireplaces tossing their sparking flames in the bitter crisp of winter, thick sweaters pulled down low over our palms and my father's warbling country songs low on the stereo, our skins turning golden in the light, all those years ago. His hand shook as he reached down to press the match to the box. He held his fingers close around it, his eyes fixed, and rubbed it against the serrated strip, the single sharp, focused gesture slicing clean through space and turning suddenly to light.

The small flame flickered molten, brightly, seeming as if it could melt the loose, useless skin off of his fingertips, of mine, too, simply and purely. He pursed his lips and exhaled the flame back to crisp wood; I could feel his breath on my skin, the scent of smoke curling high in the air and fading fast. He handed the half-burnt match to me. "Try it," he echoed as I took it in my hand, the tip still hot. I held my match near the base of the box, wavering, until I felt his fingers wrap around my wrist; his grip clamped close, solid, and I felt his pulse match mine as I reached to the edge and struck through, finally holding the lit match aloft as all world's warmth bent to this flame, flickering brilliant and alive in the silent charge of morning air.