CLIO
A Man's Hands
* * *
This story was first published in Spilling Ink Review
A Man's Hands
You talk of things, you dear, sweet man, of things that mean nothing,
because you talk of the past. Please stop. It is something I have forgotten.
Don’t ask me why. Don’t insist.
You reach
across the table and take my hands in your hands. Your skin is so white, so
smooth. And your fingers. Your hands. They are not a man’s hands. They are not
the kind of hands I want touching me, holding me here, but I indulge you. Your
hands. They are not what I am used to. You have the hands of a musician. A
female pianist, perhaps. Not a man’s hands. I move slightly, trying to get
away, but you smile and grip me more tightly. Despite myself, I press into the
soft flesh. Something happens. The part of your hands, the part of your hands
that I am pressing, disappears. I look at your face, but all you do is talk.
You continue to talk of the past, of things I don’t want to hear. I give all my
attention to your hands. My fingers. I make small, circular movements which
grow larger. Soon there is nothing left. Your hands have vanished.
I stifle a
laugh. The other customers laugh out loud, but not at this spectacle. They sip
their coffee, cups poised, elbows on tables, lost in their own worlds. The
Virgin’s little horses have all paired off.
I reach for
your face. You continue to talk, you persist, even as I stroke your brow. Your
forehead is gone. Then your eyes, that piercing blue is no more. I caress your
cheeks and touch your neck.
I run a
thumb across your mouth.
Silence at
last.
You sit
there, mute, faceless and handless. I think of the words tabula rasa, but this has
nothing to do with the future. I have already forgotten what you look like,
although I remember your hands, like a woman’s. Not a man’s hands.
I have to go. I bid you farewell, but you say
nothing. How could you? Outside, I glance at you through the window. No one in the
café has noticed you there. The sun bursts through the clouds, like a
flashbulb, and the glass becomes a mirror, or a photographic plate. A snapshot
of a street scene, with me in the bottom left hand corner. My face almost – but
not quite – as expressionless as…as what? It is hard to recall. Something about
a voice. A piano. Hands. I see myself, reflected and framed, the moment
captured like a definition.* * *
This story was first published in Spilling Ink Review
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