There's your dog; your dog's dead. But where's the thing 

that made it move? It had to be something, didn't it?

[Anonymous woman, Gates of Heaven]

I'm standing next to a man at Subway. I'm thirty-one years old. It's my lunch break. 

Out of the corner of my eye, I see the side of his neck, his blue shirt, his khaki pants, hands in his pockets. He's the same height as my father. He's wearing the same sort of professional-man-in-midlife things that my father used to wear. He's angled away from me, smiling and chatting with the woman behind the counter. 

He goes further down the line, pausing to point at the banana peppers. I shuffle behind him. I'm playing the game in my head now, one that I only let myself play sometimes. 

He checks his watch. I let myself step into that alternate universe and imagine it really is Dad next to me, that he's okay, he's like every other normal-ish middle-aged man. I imagine that he's taking me to lunch, that I'm going to tell him a story about work. I don't look at the man's face again. It's too different. The nose is all wrong, and so are the small bifocals, the shaggy beard. I just stare at his forearm, tan and familiar, ending in his khaki pocket, black watch on his wrist. It's almost perfect.

I imagine that I'm irritated with him because he hasn't made enough of an effort to get to know Ivan, but I won't say anything about it. I imagine that he has a clipping in his pocket for me from a magazine, or a newspaper, a picture of a tiny house or an announcement for an art show opening that he thinks I would like to go to. I imagine that the woman behind the counter will ask him if he wants tomatoes and he will smile blandly for a moment because he didn't hear her, then say, Oh yes, of course! a beat later, then laugh. We will talk about Mom and how she's working too hard. We will talk about how nice the weather is today, perfect for a walk later.

We inch further down the line. I imagine he gets a call on his cell phone and he answers it, no confusion, no fumbling, just takes it out of his pocket and says hello. It's Mom, and he tells her we're going to eat first and then we'll head over. He closes the phone with a snap. The last time I remember Dad having a phone that didn't confuse him it was a flip phone, but I don't dwell on that, don't start the automatic calculating of what year it would have been and when was the last time I remembered him doing this, doing that, and what did it mean, the endless sifting and re-sifting through clues. I just let flip phones be a part of this universe for as long as they want to be.

I feel the old familiar wave of emotions I always felt when I was with Dad one-on-one, the eagerness to please, the slight discomfort of not knowing quite what to say next, editing stories as they ran through my mind, trying to find one that was the best mix of brief and funny. I have a perfect one from this morning, a conversation with a coworker. It's important to not idealize the conversation, to make it as real as possible, as mundane as it would have been in real life, an updated version of the thousands of other conversations we'd had before. If I make it just exactly like it used to be, that's when I feel it, a wash of comfort over me like a blanket.

I imagine that I am reaching up to tap his back and I feel the flat of my palm against the pad of his shoulder, slightly damp with sweat, tell him that I'm going to run to the bathroom. It's okay, he will pay for both of us, he's already pulling out his wallet. I catch a whiff of leather and old dollar bills. Everything is fine. 

The man reaches out, takes his sandwich, calls out his thanks and turns to walk out the door. I have to stop myself from trailing behind him. You are thirty-one, I remind myself. You are on your lunch break from work. 

Where are you? Where did you go? There is a child inside me that keeps asking these questions, even though they're fruitless, even though they're painful. My father isn't here, but he isn't anywhere else, either.

Is this all for you? the woman asks brightly, holding up my sandwich. Yep, I say, reaching into my bag. That's all I needed.