She has her mother’s leg
[5 minutes ago]
“Well, here goes nothing. This arm,” she says, holding up one of Venus’s lost appendages made flesh, “from the elbow joint down, is my mother’s.”
“Excuse me?”
She smirks with one side of her mouth. Pearly white teeth. Three root canals, as I’m privileged to know, but who can tell by looking?
“It’s not some weird feminist metaphor. I was born with a withered arm, and my mother recently died. Around four months before I met you.”
I raise an eyebrow uncertainly. She takes it as a cue to continue.
“She willed me her arm. My body’s young, so it makes it look like this. But when they attached it, it was more like a raisin with fingers.”
“What the fuck?” That’s what my mouth gears up to say. Luckily my hand is stuffing a big piece of fillet mignon into it.
“Mm.” I say, gesticulating with a fork. Surely I misheard that one.
She waits patiently, but a crimson blush is slowly creeping out of her décolletage. Another time I would find it highly erotic. Her hands are folded in front of her on the table, one slender index finger tapping nervously. Tap, tap, tap. Sound effects from a cheap horror movie. A dead woman’s hand come to life, come to claim the rest of her. Wait, which hand did she say it was?
[1 hour earlier]
“Today’s the day,” I say to Freddie. We’re at the local Starbucks. I’ve just finished drinking something with a healthy name it doesn’t deserve, despite its low alcohol content.
“The day? What day? Wait, you mean the day? As in the the?”
“The the. That’s the word I was looking for.”
“Buddy! Congratulations!”
“Hey, she hasn’t said yes yet.”
“Yeah, but how could she not! I mean, would you say no if you were her?” Indeed. Who’s the prettiest one of all? I sweep my gaze idly around the cafe and it settles on the winner, my own reflection, staring back at me from the window. We smile at each other. A cute kinky-haired black girl passing the cafe must think the smile’s meant for her, because she smiles back shyly.
“Or you could have that,” Freddie says, his eyes following her ass off screen.
“I could get married and have that too.” Freddie’s head spins around like a record, back to me. Now playing: Concern for Immortal Soul in B flat minor.
“I’m joking,” I say. “Plus, Charisse is a million times hotter.”
Freddie grins, noticeably relieved. “That she is. I mean just those legs alone are worth hitching yourself to.”
“Yeah, Santa gave her a real nice pair.” He really did. It was easy to forget how smart she was.
“And that mouth…”
“Right…”
“Even her ears man, they’re fucking perfect!”
“Hm, I never noticed. Anyway…,” I wave a hand in front of his face. “Fantasize about my future wife on your own time.”
“Right, so how are you going to do it?”
“Oh, I’ve got it all figured out. I’m going to say ‘Charisse, will you marry me?’”
“That’s it? You’re not going to pop out of a cake or star in some passing parade like Ferris Bueller?”
“Um. No, that sounds…hard. I’m going to keep it nice and simple. Less chance of fucking it up.”
Freddie looks supremely disappointed.
“Come on man, chicks love it when you go all out. Even Charisse, I mean she’s all wise and modern and shit, but I bet even she has a Disney princess somewhere deep inside her.”
“Point taken. If I grow a pair of animated tits before dinner, I’ll put on a whole production.”
Freddie raises his cup of Very Berry Hibiscus. Here comes a sappy toast.
“May you be all three inches deep inside your Disney princess before tonight ends.”
Or not.
“I get it, I have a tiny dick.”
Freddie chugs and slams the empty cup down on the table. Fifty more of those and he’ll still be sober. Why do we come here?
[30 minutes earlier]
Charisse must have sensed the momentous occasion because she looks absolutely stunning. For a second I forget how stunning I look. She’s in a white strapless curve-hugging dress that goes down to just above her knees, with a slit on one side that your eyes follow up and up and still up, and I hope there are no old men ripe for a heart attack in the restaurant, but wait, it does end, just below her hipbone. No, just above. No wait, it’s below again. Damn it! If she doesn’t stop swinging those things, I might have a heart attack myself.
I look up to see her smiling brilliantly, knowingly, seductively. A playful adulteress about to be made legit by yours truly. She extends a hand for me to kiss like she’s accepting an award. Um yes, I’d like to thank my mother, for getting all two miles of these legs out of her uterus safely, and the Academy of course, but please don’t drool on the floor any more, I think I can see my panties in the reflection.
I remember myself and offer her my arm. We’re at the entrance to Idori, the Japanese restaurant whose staff I flirted with shamelessly to get reservations the night before. I’m a chick magnet, sue me for taking advantage of my God-given gifts. I nod to the two ladies that frame the reception area, and that were instrumental in arranging this night, and they bow perfunctorily, but I catch a flirty smile from Aiko on her way down. I walk a little taller. Sorry Aiko, maybe in the next life.
Five minutes later we’re seated, I’ve ordered, we’re looking into each other’s eyes, and I can’t think of any more reasons to procrastinate.
“Charisse,” I say.
“John.” She tilts her head slightly.
“Charisse…”
“John.” She laughs. What a distracting woman.
“Will you marry me?” Phew. Almost punked out there for a second. I can feel my cheeks starting to pulsate with warmth, and I realize I’m looking at the white tablecloth instead of into her eyes. We’ll have to do some revisionism to this memory later. I look up to gauge her reaction. Now whose turn is it to look at the tablecloth? Wait, why is she looking at the tablecloth?
“John…I…,” she starts, haltingly. Shit. My panic must be written all over my beautiful face because she looks up and suddenly has this look like she’s accidentally stepped on a kitten.
“No, John! That’s not what I meant. Yes, the answer’s yes, a thousand times yes! But…”
“What is it?” Why does she look like she and Maury are about to tell me it’s not my baby?
“Before we do this, I want to make sure that there are no secrets between us.” Uh oh. She’s said yes (she said yes!), but I’m not sure that’ll stand after she Jack Bauer’s the lurid details of my past sex life out of me, which is what these things are always about. How dare a man be born in a buffet and try more than one dish?
“Is this about my…,” I start, not knowing how the sentence is going to end.
“No!” She cuts me off, thank God, and is waving her hands in an “it’s not you it’s me gesture” that everyone who has ever broken up with someone for the wrong reasons, has used as a preamble to a pack of lies.
“It’s not you, it’s me,” she continues, predictably. “I have something to confess.” Oh, well, this is more interesting. My cock is suddenly listening very hard.
“What is it?” I start to say but what comes out is a strangled croak. I have to clear my throat. “What is it?”
“OK, you know how they’ve been making all these advances in the field of transplant surgery in the last few years?”
“Uh…yeah? Didn’t that guy donate his whole lower body to Stephen Hawking?”
“Yeah, so you know. Well…”
“Honey, if you want me to get a penis reduction, you can just ask. The answer is no.”
“Ugh, John. You’re just making this harder.” My mouth starts to open, but she preempts me. “I know, that’s what she said.”
Damn it but I love this woman!
“Plus, if you reduce it any more, I won’t feel anything.”
Bitch.
“Look, honey,” I say. “First of all, get your filthy mind out of the gutter. No, don’t interrupt.” I heave a great dramatic sigh. “Look. The past is the past. I live in the present, and in the present, I love you. Nothing you can say will make me love you any less. If those are fake, I’ll still play with them in church on Sundays.” And the award goes to me. Fuck all y’all in the Academy, Meryl Streep couldn’t have done it better.
Charisse seems to relax a bit, but even my melodramatic rant doesn’t put her completely at ease. She must be sitting on something big after all.
“Well, here goes nothing,” she says.
[presently]
Tap, tap, tap.
I don’t know how long the silence has dragged on. She looks like she’s about to start crying.
“Ah…” I stammer, stalling for time. “Ah…don’t worry about it?” My voice comes out in an unconvincing falsetto.
“Really?” she breathes. Really? I don’t know. My eyes keep gravitating toward that arm and my paranoid mind is trying to find some obvious imperfections, but it looks like the freaking mirror image of the other one.
“It looks so…good,” I say. “Your mother’s arm, I mean, are you sure? I don’t really see a huge difference.”
“Oh John, thank you so much for saying that.” She dissolves into tears. I wait patiently for it to run its course.
“You’re welcome,” I say graciously, after she wipes her eyes and blows her nose into her napkin like a girl, which is to say she doesn’t. “It’s not that a big deal, right? I broke one of my fingers once playing football you know. Had to have it in a splint for a month. It’s still a little crooked, see?” Damn it if that finger isn’t straight as an arrow. I’m ill prepared for this. I pat her (other) hand. “There there, it’s OK.”
She shakes her head as if to clear it, sending a stray tear flying, and folds her hands on the table, fingers interlocked. She’s squeezing them together and they’re starting to turn white. I get a horrible feeling.
“Uh oh,” I say. “There’s more, isn’t there?”
She nods, lips pressed together in apology.
“There’s more.”
“You had a football injury too?” I ask weakly.
“No. No, unfortunately not. But I did have an injury. A terrible injury.”
I look her up and down, searching for clues. I don’t understand, I know every inch of that body intimately, what did I miss? What did Freddie miss when I “accidentally” let him see those photos?
“I had just gone to the dentist, and the anesthesia hadn’t worn off yet…but I was starving, so I stopped for lunch in a Mexican restaurant.”
“Yes?”
“And I bit into a fajita.”
“Yes?”
“And I bit off my tongue.”
“No!”
“And chewed it and swallowed it.”
“Oh!” My hand shoots up to my mouth involuntarily. My tongue’s still there, thank God.
“I thought it was tendon or something, it was so rubbery. I ended up basically swallowing it whole. I realized what I’d done just a few seconds later, when I saw blood on the fajita, but by then it was too late. They pumped my stomach and managed to get it out but it was already half-digested, they couldn’t reattach it. Not that I wanted them to, it was hideous.”
“So, what did you do?”
“Well…my family, my dad actually…my dad, he gave me his tongue.”
“What!?”
“He was old! He could barely taste anything anymore. And my mom does all the talking in our family anyway. He jokes that I saved his tongue, that it would have atrophied if it idled in his mouth much longer.”
“Ha ha,” I say.
“Though it’s kind of hard to understand his jokes these days. Anyway…”
“So your tongue.” It suddenly hits me. “When you…I mean when we…I mean your tongue, I mean your dad’s tongue…”
She nods mutely. Her face is a beautiful bouquet of condolences. Her arm a dead woman’s arm. Her tongue, a man’s tongue. My father in law’s tongue. Pearly white teeth. Three root canals, not that you’d know by looking at them. Or am I just blind?
“Can I see it?” I ask. She leans over a little and sticks out her tongue shyly.
“But there are no seams or anything…can you stick it out a little more? Hm, I don’t see a thing.”
She packs it back up. “Yeah, apparently the mouth is one of the fastest and best healing places in the whole body. Can you believe how amazingly lucky I was? I mean anywhere else and it would have left a hideous scar. I spent an extra five grand removing the one around my elbow. Before that, my mom’s hand looked like a freaking glove.”
“Amazingly lucky,” I repeat. The room turns alternately hot then cold. I inspect myself discreetly and see that my armpits have been hard at work hydrating my three hundred dollar shirt. Charisse is no longer crying, but I feel I may be before long.
“Is that all?” I ask finally. She looks down at her hands, bites her lower lip, then looks back at me, imploringly. Oh Christ. Here it comes. I’ve been suckling the nipples of a veal for the last year and a half due to a congenital nipple defect that runs in her family. Or because they were accidentally sliced off in an industrial flossing accident. She buys her hair in ShopRite and her eyebrows at Home Depot. I open my mouth but nothing comes out and I motion with my hand for her to continue.
“John, last one, I promise.”
“Mmhmm.”
“It’s my toes.” She raises a hand before I can say anything. “Don’t worry, the last time you sucked them, they were still mine.”
“Keep your voice down, woman!” I hiss and look around furtively, but no one looks like they ingested that little tidbit.
“Sorry. It was wonderful by the way, I don’t know why you’re so shy about it. Anyway, I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a while before we can do it again. You see…I kind of sold them.”
“You sold them,” I repeat dumbly. I reach under the table, pinch my leg really hard and nearly yelp from the pain. How do I wake up from this bizarro nightmare? “You sold them,” I hear myself saying. There’s a harsh edge of hysteria to my voice. “Of course you sold them! They’re your toes, why wouldn’t you! What does that even mean? How are you even walking?”
“John, please don’t yell at me. I got the other person’s toes. It was an exchange, sort of. She got my toes, and I got hers and about a hundred grand.”
“A hundred grand? Holy shit!”
“Too much or too little? Never mind. Anyway, they’re gone. But don’t worry, you know Cassie?”
Her sister. Despite everything I’ve heard tonight, I make an effort to catch my breath and assemble a somber dignified expression out of the frazzled components of my face. Cassie has breast cancer. Inoperable.
“She didn’t…”
“No, she’s alive. She’s not well, but she’s alive.”
“Thank God,” I say.
“Thank you for saying that. I’m going to sound like a horrible person, but when Cassie dies, I’m getting her toes.”
“Charisse…”
“I know! John, I know I’m a freak! I totally went off the deep end when my mother died and willed her arm to me. It’s not like it was my idea, it would never even have occurred to me! But would you ever have fallen in love with me with a withered arm?”
“Come on, Charisse, that’s not fair.”
“No John, being born a cripple is not fair.”
I suddenly feel very tired. I put my hands up placatingly before this becomes about something else entirely.
“OK, I can understand the arm, but the tongue thing? I mean I like your dad and all but…actually, I still can’t believe I didn’t notice he doesn’t have a tongue. I mean he doesn’t say much, I’ll give you that, but I thought it was just a strong accent.” What am I going on about? “But his tongue? I mean his tongue!”
“You love my tongue! Who cares where it came from!”
“OK, OK.” I try to pull myself together. “OK. I sort of get the tongue. I guess.” I totally don’t get the tongue. “But the toes. You sold your toes? I mean, who does something like that?”
“I know. I’m sorry. I guess I got a little carried away.”
“A little?”
“OK, a lot. Shit, John, get off your high horse. Not everyone’s born Adonis Studly.”
“Hey! I work very hard to make this body look like it was born that way!”
“So how can you judge me for doing the same for mine?”
“What are you talking about!? How does selling your toes make your body look better?”
“I told you I’m going to get Cassie’s toes when she dies, you won’t even know the fucking difference!”
“That’s completely beside the point! You sold your toes for money, not for something real, like someone’s fiancee’s set of hot toes! How can I trust you not to do something like that again? I don’t want to wake up one day on a million dollar yacht just because the night before you sold your breasts to Jennifer Connelly.”
The fight suddenly goes out of her. Her shoulders droop, the righteous anger drains out of her eyes.
“I know John. That’s why I had to tell you. So you could decide for yourself if you trust me anymore. And whether you’re OK being married to some kind of human…Mrs. Potato Head.”
“Reese, you’re not Mrs. Potato Head.” How far I’ve fallen from my Oscar winning performance. I look around to see that half the restaurant is staring at us. Fuck them all. I take a deep breath and turn back to Charisse.
“Look,” I say, taking her hand in mine. Damn it but I can’t remember which one’s an original. “This is a lot to take in.” She starts to nod frantically. “Can I…think about it for a few days?”
She keeps on nodding like a bobblehead doll. “Of course, John. Take all the time you need.”
Dinner crawls slowly to an end, both of us wanting to be alone. We agree to take separate taxis home, and that it doesn’t mean anything that we are, even though we’re making a point of discussing it, which means it might mean something after all.
The taxi coasts up to my apartment, but I don’t want to go home right now. Freddie’ll start interrogating me about why I’m back home, or worse, I’ll interrupt him watching a porno, or worse, a documentary, which he’ll then force me to watch with him. “Don’t worry dude, I’m only thirty minutes in, we can start from the beginning.” I shudder inwardly and tell the caddie to take me to Central Park.
What the fuck was she thinking?
“Excuse me?” I look up to see the cabbie staring at me in his rear-view mirror. Shit, did I just say that out loud?
“Sorry, talking to myself.”
“Love trouble?” If only it were that simple.
“Sort of. My girlfriend sold her toes.”
That shuts him up. His eyes widen and he crosses himself. I suddenly feel reckless.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “Her sister’ll be dead soon, and she’s willed Charisse her set.”
The breaks squeal and I almost hit the seat in front of me with my face.
“Out!” he yells. “I’ll not have this blasphemy in my cab!”
My hands clench into tight fists, and I have to exert all my will power not to punch something. The driver glares at me, unintimidated.
“OK, OK. I’m sorry. I know it’s a lot to take in all at once. Relax, I’m getting out.” Jeez, and I thought I was intolerant.
I open the door and start to climb out of the cab. Just as I plant a foot on the ground, a nasal honking sound pierces the air.
“Shit! Watch out!” I hear, then the door slaps me in the face like the fingernail of a metal giant flicking a fly. The back of my head crunches into something behind me. I hear someone, the caddie? give a girlish shriek, followed by a drum roll of tumbling appendages, the screech of metal on metal, then a heavy thud, and finally silence, measured by the regular zippery sound of a bicycle wheel spinning freely.
My head is spinning too, my brain struggling in that late Friday night way to merge two images of the world. I hold still and they slowly lock back into each other. I cautiously probe around my mouth with my tongue. Blood. Feels like lots of it. My top two front teeth seem to have earned a small degree of freedom. I do a quick frantic survey. The rest seem OK. Then something’s shaking me.
“Are you okay, man?”
It’s the caddie. He looks like he’s forgiven my previous transgressions.
“What happened?” I say, but it comes out “Fuff faffen?”
“Guy on a bike,” he yells. Dear God he’s loud. “Are you okay? You look okay, I’m going to go check on the other guy, he looks really fucked up.”
He disappears from my field of vision.
“Oh shit,” I hear a second later. “Oh shit. Buddy, are you OK, can you hear me?”
There’s the sound of something being dragged, then some clatter and I no longer hear the bicycle wheel. Then the caddie’s voice again, high and panicked. “Wake up, can you hear me? Oh, thank God! Come on, buddy, you’re going to be alright, I’m calling an ambulance.”
“Fuff faffen?” I hear, and start cracking up involuntarily, then wince as lightning shoots up my nose and tears stream out of my eyes. I remember I have hands and feet and try to move them. They seem to be okay. I reach a hand over and feel around my nose gingerly. Pains shoots immediately through my entire skull and all the way down to my neck. No more touching. But I need to assess the damage. My nose is all I have. Finally I get the idea to look in the caddie’s rear-view mirror.
Oh shit. Shit shit shit. My nose. It’s a bloody mess. I crawl forward for a closer look.
“No…” It’s broken. No, broken is not the word. Shattered. I’m going to look like Owen Wilson when they put this Humpty Dumpty back together again. I can already feel the slow throb of pain begin, still far, but creeping closer with every second, like an inexorable ocean tide. A gust of wind brings the high pitched wail of an ambulance, then I can’t hear it anymore. I wonder which will arrive first. Will I be squealing in pain by the time they get here? Will it be too late for my nose? A thin sheen of cold sweat breaks out all over me. Charisse.
“No…,” I moan. Charisse, with her obsession with beauty, she’ll never marry me like this.
Wait.
I search my pockets for my phone, as if my life depends on it.
Don’t be broken, don’t be broken, don’t be broken. “Ah ha!” Not a scratch on it. I mash the buttons and it’s calling Charisse, her beautiful face smiling at me from the screen, nose very much intact.
“John?”
“Charisse!”
“John? Are you OK?”
“Not even a little bit. Charisse, forget about what I said. I still want you. Nothing’s changed.”
“Oh John! I’m so happy to hear you say that.”
“One condition.”
“Name it.”
“You have to give Stevie Wonder his eyes back.”
“Haha! Over my dead body.” We both laugh. Well, mine’s more of a gurgle.
“John.” Her voice is gentle, tentative. “Your voice sounds weird. Have you been crying? You can tell your future wife, she promises she won’t show the pictures to anyone who can’t keep a secret.”
“Hah. No, I wasn’t crying. Not really. But I think I will be pretty soon.” A crushing wave of self-pity washes over me.
“Honey, what is it?”
“I’ll…I’ll explain later.”
“Okay…I’m getting kind of scared now. Is there anything I can do for you?”
Finally. Jesus, for a second I thought I’d have to pull it out her with pliers.
“Actually, there is.”
I take a deep breath and try not to sound too eager.
“Did I hear you correctly when you said Cassie has kind of a manly nose?”
