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Order this writing in the collection book Revealing All Your Dirty Little Secrets available for only $1995 |
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This appears in a pre-2010 issue
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What It Wants
Randall Brown
His hand does things he doesn’t want it to. Waves at the racist neighbor. Grabs mixed nuts off the shelves. Reaches for an ABBA CD. At work, he keeps it deep in his pocket, lest it salute, strike out, slap someone on the back, pinch a passing lump of flesh. Then it reaches for his balls and he has to sit on it, type with the one hand that listens to him. Anyways, he can’t let it near keyboards.
I want to hold it, Sally has said for months—and he’s told her he can’t trust that hand. Maybe it needs love. Maybe it doesn’t want love, maybe it wants to dig into flesh until the thumb and index finger touch.
So, Sally writes this letter to the men upstairs about him hand and shows it him, says she’ll send it right up to them unless he gives her what she wants. He thinks of the handshake he’ll need for a new job, all his hand might do inside his pocket or unloosed.
So it comes to pass that Sally sits in his cubicle. He pulls his arm attached to his hand up and out of the pocket and Sally grasps it, turns the lifeless hand over. What do you think it’ll do? she asks him.
I never know.
She interlocks her fingers—church, steeple. It doesn’t want to play. She squeezes the fingertips. She reads the lines. She kisses each finger, then sucks his thumb. She places it under her shirt. She rubs it back and forth across her nipple.
It’s a good hand, she tells him when she’s done. I’d give anything for such a hand.
I’ve got to tell you something, he says. My mouth doesn’t do what I want it to.
Yeah? My heart’s like that.
She wheels the chair over to his mouth —and then the hand rises between them, pushes her hard, so the chair takes off like a go-cart and then his hand, fuck, it’s waving.
Bye, bye.
No.
It’s locking the door.
Oh God.
He’s got his hand that does what it wants. It wants whatever he doesn’t. A terrible, terrible hand.
