The message scrawled across my bathroom mirror in red lipstick, “Tonight’s the night.”
It wasn’t my handwriting but I know it was by my hand. I was beginning to think it wasn’t really my hand after all. Got to think. Cody’s dead. Took his own life with his last hand. I cried at the funeral. They said it was my fault. That I pushed him over the edge after the accident.
I’ll never forget the way his mother looked at me. It was like the mother in Jaws who slapped Chief Brody. She didn’t slap me but if looks could kill. I guess she’d be happy to know maybe hands can. And maybe soon, but I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction.
This was New York City. I told Cody you’re supposed to say something if you are going to catch feelings. He just gave me those big baby blue puppy dog eyes. But he told me he just wanted things casual. Casual and low key.
That was about all I can handle. Between my ex, two kids and a job I hate the truth was I wasn’t ready for monogamy. Maybe polyamory if I was the primary. But I can’t be with one person the rest of my life. So, when I said to Cody, “So why, ‘casual’? What? We just get a free pass?” he just shrugged.
That was the third first date and the first night of setting sheets on fire across south Brooklyn. And then came the holidays. And Cody was… well, he had a way with words. And he never asked me where I was going or what I was doing.
I mean he knew I was on Lexapro and in therapy since I’m 13. But he treated me nicely, he was a good cook and most importantly he took care of my, well my needs right. But, on the other hand, he was getting to the less sunny side of middle age and as a thrice failed entrepreneur he lived like he was still in college. Hell, he didn’t even have a car.
Yeah, he just stayed in his corner apartment, smoking weed, doing IT consulting for some liberal think tank and mostly texting me Buddy Holly lyrics. Things was we started seeing each other a bit too much, maybe for casual. And he kept cuddling, and massaging me, and telling me I did a good job raising myself since I ran away from home at 13.
I mean it wasn’t a total mess. I was still Ivy League in the end, married a rich guy, and when he stopped meeting my needs, and had that anger issue, well divorce worked out best. Then Cody.
Then it got messy. He stopped drinking and started noticing mine a little more. Kept wanting to cook me macrobiotic food. Wanting to be too nice to me. I mean I just wanted him because he was hot. Hot in those leather pants. Hot with that shaved head.
I guess things really started going downhill for me on New Year’s Eve. I mean he wanted to watch, “Moonstruck,” and he gave me this really nice Irish wool sweater and silk pajamas and all
I asked him was if he would let another guy go down on him.
He just looked at me sideways and said, “Nope.”
I asked why and he said cause he’s not into that.
I asked, “But it feels good, doesn’t it?”
He just said, “Only when you do it, Slick.”
That night I knew I drank too much because I started doing the bouncy thing on my feet and kept falling over. I had brought my friend Nancy hoping I could talk Cody into a threesome but he just nursed the same scotch whisky all night never leaving his perch at the bar.
Nancy told me she told him, “I have no inhibitions!” and put her hand on his thigh.
I asked her what Cody said.
“I can lend you some.”
That night Cody drove my car back to his place.
“You’re driving too slow!” I heard my voice say.
“I haven’t driven in four years.”
“Why do you live like that Cody? What’s your life plan? This is going nowhere fast!”
And then I felt my hand grab the wheel and my heel stomp down on the accelerator.
The last thing I heard Cody say was, “WHAT THE FUC-“ and then there was the yellow flash of a taxi and I remembered no more.
I awoke to the most revolting turn of events five weeks later. A coma had wrapped me in its dark arms. Internal bleeding. T-Boned by an NYC taxi. I was lucky I wasn’t paralyzed. But I wasn’t lucky my right hand was mangled beyond all repair. And yet, there was a right hand. Bigger than my left. With the same scar I remembered.
The jagged thin scar that ran vertically down my right index finger. The one Cody said he got when he was washing a shot glass and it shattered stabbing his finger into a blood flapping mess. Now that scar was on my too big hand that had the ugliest scar all along the wrist.
I remember feeling a wave of nausea reach up to grab me and pull me back down into nothingness.
…
“How are ya feeling, Slick?” Cody asked.
“Exactly how did I end up with your hand?”
Cody held up his right arm. He had a black leather glove on. He took his right hand in his left and gave it a cork screw. And off it came like a narcissist’s mask of humanity.
“You needed a hand, Slick.”
I didn’t know what to say. So, I just said, “Thanks.”
Cody smiled and I passed out again.
A month later I was back in my life. But I wanted Cody out. The text messages. The Buddy Holly lyrics. The Fats Domino lyrics. Always wanting to take me to dinner. And then, inviting me to Valentine’s Day. No, this wasn’t casual and low key. So, it wasn’t but a week later over ramen I asked him if things were still casual and low key.
Cody looked at me a moment then said, “Yeah. But it sounds like you want to go with other people.”
“I don’t think I can be monogamous,” I replied.
“Then you shouldn’t be,” he said.
“Everything that has a beginning has an end,” he added before rubbing his eye with the back of his gloved hand.
Then he even suggested it was a long day and I should go first. He said he’d pay for dinner? I felt my anger bubble up. I would pay for dinner. It was my feelings we got into. But the waitress wasn’t there and my right hand started to wave as if it had a mind of its own.
“I’ll get dinner. Don’t worry about it. Just put on your coat and I’ll give you a hug goodbye.”
As he wrapped his arms around me, I said, “I still think you’re the bee’s knees.”
“Everybody says that,” he said.
And then I went home. I didn’t feel like crying. I felt waves of relief. He was too nice. Too emotionally needy. Too much late-night talk. Too much sex. Too much cuddling. Yeah, I could date around now. It was a new year, new day and a new me.
But then, then strange things began to happen. I kept finding scratches on my body in the morning. Once I found myself pleasuring myself almost as if it weren’t me. I told my psychiatrist and he suggested upping my dosage. It didn’t help.
And then, when my ex was late picking up the kids and made me miss a date, well, sober as a judge I felt my hand ball into a fist of rate and then punch him in his jaw. I shattered it. Then I almost smacked my oldest when he broke a vase. I had to go in the bathroom and take deep breaths and put cold water on my face.
And then I found myself up late last night. I tried to text Cody for the first time in months but he blocked me. That night I drove to his corner and just watched his bedroom window. The blinds were down and the pink Himalayan salt lamp shone in the hot summer night.
But Cody was dead. He had hanged himself with one hand somehow from the rafters of his apartment. Sure, they all blamed me. But I told him it was casual. I told him it was low key. It’s not my fault he caught feelings.
I thought about ringing his bell but it was past midnight and he was dead anyway. So, I went home and washed down a sleeping pill with some vodka. That morning I awoke with my bloody initials carved in my stomach, a steak knife next to my hand.
I stumbled into the bathroom numb with Lexapro and panic.
The message scrawled across my bathroom mirror in red lipstick, “Tonight’s the night.”
I looked down at my stomach and felt my hand come up to my throat. I looked in the mirror transfixed by the black circles under my eyes; the bloody letters on my stomach. Punctuation dripping from my hand to drop in the sink like a confused period. My right hand slowly reaching up to caress my cheeks with crimson. Like a bloody corsage presented before the prom.