The door handle came off on a Tuesday. Tom Hargrove was leaving for work, his coffee in one hand, his keys in the other, and he reached for the door handle with his free hand and pulled, and the handle came off in his palm. Not broke off. Came off. The screws held, but the mechanism inside—the part that connects the handle to the latch—simply gave up.

He stood in his doorway for a moment, looking at the handle in his hand and the two screws sticking out of the door where the cover plate had been. He put his coffee on the kitchen counter and went back to the door with a screwdriver.

He tried to put the handle back on. It did not work. The mechanism inside was broken, and he did not know how to fix it. He had never fixed a door handle in his life. He was forty-one years old and he worked at a scrap yard and the closest thing he had to a hobby was watching baseball on the radio.

He called his landlord. The landlord said he would get to it "sometime this week." It was now the following Tuesday, and the landlord had not gotten to it.

Tom had learned to open the door with his foot. He kicked the edge of the door near the handle, and the latch retracted, and he could push it open. It was not elegant, but it worked.

The coffee machine broke on a Wednesday. Tom reached for the carafe to pour himself a cup, and his fingers touched the glass carafe, and the carafe cracked. Not a clean break. A web of cracks, spreading from his fingertips outward, and then the coffee poured out through the cracks and onto the counter and onto the floor and onto Tom's shoes.

He stared at the cracked carafe for a long time. Then he threw it in the trash and made instant coffee.

The remote control broke on a Thursday. Tom reached for it to change the channel, and his thumb pressed the power button too hard, and the plastic casing cracked, and the remote stopped working. He opened it up and looked at the circuit board. One of the chips was burned out. He did not know how that happened. He did not know how to fix it.

He put the remote back together and watched the rest of the game without changing channels.

He started keeping a notebook. He did not know why. It was just something to do. He wrote down the date and what had broken and when.

March 12: microwave. Stopped working after I opened the door. March 15: Billy's bicycle chain. Broke while he was riding it. March 18: radio. Stopped getting signals after I touched the dial. March 20: car starter. Won't turn over. Mechanic says the solenoid is shot. March 23: boss's cash register. Jammed after I touched the handle. Boss yelled at me.

He looked at the list. Seven things in twelve days. In a town where things broke all the time, seven things in twelve days was not impossible. It was unusual. But not impossible.

He tried wearing gloves. Work gloves, the kind he wore at the scrap yard. He put them on and touched the coffee maker. The gloves held. The coffee maker worked. He was relieved for exactly four minutes, until the left glove split at the thumb and he dropped a mug and it shattered on the floor.

He took the gloves off and threw them away.

His boss fired him on a Friday. The cash register had been acting up all week, and Tom had touched it one too many times, and finally it had stopped working entirely. The boss had come out from his office, looked at the broken register, looked at Tom, and said, "You're done, Tom. Just go."

Tom said sorry. The boss said go. Tom walked home.

He did not have unemployment benefits. He was a temporary worker, which in Ohio means you are employed only when it is convenient and discarded when it is not. He had no savings. He had a two-room apartment with a broken door handle, a monthly rent of four hundred and fifty dollars, and a son with asthma who needed medicine.

His ex-wife Lisa called on a Saturday. Billy's asthma was bad again. The doctor wanted to see him. Tom did not have a car—the car had broken, and he had not told Lisa about that part, because she would have said something he did not want to hear.

He walked to the clinic. Five miles in winter, on roads that were half ice and half mud. He wore his scrap yard jacket, which was not warm enough. His hands were in his pockets, not touching anything, just warm from being inside his pockets.

Billy was fine. Just a bad night, the doctor said. He prescribed a new inhaler. Tom paid for it. He walked home in the dark.

When he got home, there was a note on the table. Lisa's handwriting.

"Billy's medicine is on the kitchen shelf. I'll visit on the weekend. Don't touch his things."

He smiled. Not a bitter smile. Just a smile. A small, quiet smile that said: she knows.

He sat on the sofa and looked at his hands. They were rough hands. Calloused from years of lifting scrap metal and turning wrenches and gripping steering wheels. Hands that broke things. Not dramatically. Not spectacularly. Just things. Door handles. Coffee makers. Remote controls. Cash registers. Car starters. Mugs.

Normal things. Normal breakage. The kind of breakage that happens in a town where nothing works right anyway.

He thought about tomorrow. He thought about the door handle. He thought about how he would tell the landlord. He thought about the rent. He thought about Billy's medicine. He thought about Lisa coming on the weekend with strawberries and a smile and a bag of groceries.

He thought about all of this without feeling anything in particular. Not sadness. Not anger. Not hope. Just thought. The kind of thought that happens when you have nothing left to feel and all you can do is think about what comes next.

He sat on the sofa. He looked out the window at the dark street. He did not touch anything.

Tomorrow, he would call the landlord again. He would ask for the door handle to be fixed. The landlord would say sometime this week. And Tom would wait.

That was all there was to do. Wait. And not touch anything.

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