"Was that your limb?"

In what seems to be a sprint of productive activity in an attempt to avoid writing a paper on Canadian Aboriginal Law, I'm going to deliver on the promise to post a story I wrote a couple years ago. (In regards to delivering, my R.Kelly tome will be the only thing I accomplish this winter break, if I have my way.) The story isn't very good, mostly for reasons that will be explained in....

THE PROLOGUE:

The story of why and how this story was written is definitely better than the story itself, so it's a worth a mention. It begins with a pizza place, and a weekly Wednesday night special called Ladies Night. I was a senior RA, and the new hires were being welcomed into the NYU Residential Life system. Kudos to them...whatever. To the seniors, it was the one Wednesday night we would have free all year, ergo the only night we could enjoy ladies' night, and I could drink unlimited wine a mere five blocks away from my dorm.

It's only ten and the world is spinning. It didn't matter, because the next stop is Josie Woods, the typical undergrad hangout that we were all obsessed with because we could get there without crossing an intersection. It's the little things in life that make it grand, you know. NYC may be my home, but Josie's was my best friend. It's seen my best, my worst, and mostly nights in-between,thanks to its powerful Tequila shots and its jukebox filled with Fleetwood Mac. (And pineapple malibus, I won't lie to you. Judge all you want, but that shit is like a tropical splash of goodness in a wintry shitty mix of springtime NYC.)

It's underground so it's extra awesome.
It's also the in the building where Bhaer lived in Little Women.
Stop judging me for knowing that.

So it's 3am, and I'm at least four tequila shots and ten drunk texts deep. I'm a big drunk texter; I somehow think it's clever, or edgy, when in fact it's just obnoxious. (I'm still a keen texter years later, as the shame from the next morning can be as much fun as the drinking itself.) With this particular night, there's four of us, and we're having one of those nights where the world seems so cruel to the University twenty-something, especially the drunk girl twenty-somethings. We're all in tears: we love each other too much, love men too much, ate too much, drank too much. Too much too muchs, in a nutshell.

It's in this emotional overhaul that I realize I have a story due at noon that day: a four-pager of concise, controlled writing. My professor is demanding, and admirable, and if I turned in that stupid carnival story I wrote the semester before my self-worth will decay to a rotten shell of a human. This story must.be.amazing. But I can do this, I say, it's only four pages.

Note: At this point I'm so shitfaced I can't even be sure if I'm wearing pants. So I run to the nearest bodega, (which I miss every fucking minute of every day, so picture is included):

One time Space Market caught on fire because someone threw a cigarette on a pumpkin display.
 Or something. It happened multiple times.

and buy myself three bottles of Vanilla Coke. It's crunch time, and I work until morning (two hours later) when the NYU café opens up. I'm barely alive, slouched against a corner wall in this dorm lobby as sober, dedicated freshman swarm around me for their daily large mocha. My only concern is fighting gravity, as I'm on a wobbly stool at least four feet off the ground. Suddenly, the sweetest, kindest girl from my floor pops up beside me, with the agility of a whack-a-mole. The conversation went something like this:

Her: "Hi Amy! Can I join you for breakfast?"

"Urrrrgggggggggggh."

Her: "Great!"

At this point, I resemble this:

I try my best to hid my drunkenness, as overt public intoxication* will result in my firing, which is vitally important as I am already on probation at this point. One more strike and I'm fired, and a boss finding out that I'm having a drunk breakfast on University property with a freshman would not be in my best interest. (This is the moment in the story when you realize I'm actually a huge fuck-up, but still decide to be my friend because I make funny faces sometimes.) I stuffed a muffin into my mouth, hid my tequila breath, but it's pretty apparent I'm not a resident of the sober world. She quickly wishes me adieu, because, you know, she had class to attend and a productive life to live. I found out months later she knew I was, and I quote myself, "madddddddddddd fucked up," but was nice enough not to say anything to anyone.

I turned in my paper a minute to noon, and we workshopped it a week later. It was one of the more well-received stories I had written for that class, which still worries me to this day. The plot is literally nonsensical, as not one ounce of me was remotely sober while writing it. The grammar and syntax prove it. But whatever, we're all friends here on the internet. I literally have no shame left to offer you. It is below, in it's unadulterated form.

*You may ask why I was eating at the café publicly intoxicated to begin with, but I've already given evidence of my lack of rational decision making, haven't I?**

**Also, they had really good pain au chocolats, and a cool Haitian woman worked there.

Evidence of my inability for shame also present in the
2011 New Years Celebration Hair Massacre, pictured above.

Was That Your Limb?

By Amy D.

A loud screech of brakes traveled up the subway stairs. Susan rushed as fast as she could to the platform, careful not to spill her mug of coffee. She focused her concentration on the feet in front of her’s--she liked the guy’s shoes. They were some clean brown Oxfords that didn’t really match his black suit. His light brown hair was fluffed, like dad hair. She reached the bottom of the steps seconds behind the Oxfords. He was sprinting to make the closing doors when he smacked into the rusty, yellow beam that was blocking the subway. Instead of hearing a smack, a hollow thud echoed through the empty station.

            Something flew from his body. Susan thought it was a boomerang – it certainly glided through the air like one—and she stopped to stare at it hit the ground. It bounced twice before landing palm-up on a grungy tile. It was an arm. A completely prosthetic human arm.

            Her eyes shot to the train car, but the doors were shut. Susan looked helplessly from the platform. She quickly set down her plain white coffee mug and plucked the arm from the ground. Then using the plastic arm, she waved the train goodbye. There was no use running after the train, and she didn’t want to waste an hour waiting for the armless over to return. She walked back to the street.

            Susan studied the arm in the sunlight. It wasn’t one of the new robotic prostheses she saw in newspaper articles. It was a simple plastic fake arm that only allowed the most simple of movements. The elbow bent like a straightforward hinge, but the fingers didn’t move. It was remarkably clean, with a light flesh tint. There was a simple harness attached to the limb, but the white straps were frayed.

            “Oh, that’s how,” Susan remarked to no one in particular. After a few seconds of silence and indecision, she slipped her hand into its hand. With the arm hovering inches above the sidewalk, Susan walked slowly back to her apartment.

Jo, Susan’s roommate, had just woken up. She sat on the living room couch, eating a bowl of knockoff Lucky Charms. She was still wearing her bartending bowtie from the night before, and her blonde hair was matted to her head in sweat. “What are you doing home?” asked Jo.

             Susan simply thrust the arm in the air, grinning triumphant. She laughed. “Thought I’d bring it home.”

            Jo stood up from the couch and snatched the arm from Susan. She held her bowl with one hand, and held the arm by the elbow in the other. “I have an idea,” she said. “Loofah holder. For the shower. We’ve been needing one. “Jo suspended the arm in the air, visualizing it hanging in their tiny tub. Susan imagined mold creeping along the elbow, and turning the flesh-covered fingers black.

            Susan scoffed, and snatched the arm back. “That’s disrespectful.”

            “Says the girl that stole a limb.” Jo crossed her arms.

            Susan protectively hugged the limb and rubbed the back of the hand with her thumb. “I didn’t steal it. I rescued it.” She took a nice long whiff of the forearm, “I think it smells like pine nuts.”

She gave the arm a home in the hallway umbrella basket. She laid it down delicately, and let it grasp Jo’s didgeridoo. Neither Jo nor Susan played the didgeridoo. It was a gift they kept as a decoration, untouched. Susan imagined that Mr. Oxfords could probably play the didgeridoo. She tried to picture herself dancing to the sounds of his didgeridoo tune. Then she realized the sounds of didgeridoo don’t really inspire dancing, so she microwaved her coffee and called-in sick to work.

Susan sat at the desk in her bedroom. It was cluttered with week old soda cans and three cups full of pens that she knew didn’t work, but still never threw away. She grabbed a Sharpie and a blank piece of paper.

She wrote, “Was that your limb?” in capital letters across the front. She put a picture of herself delicately holding the arm like a precious diamond, and wrote the date and time of the meet up in large, bold print—her office building’s lobby, noon. Ten minutes were spent selecting the perfect, relaxed script. She figured Mr. Oxfords wouldn’t be a perfectionist, and she didn’t want to be insensitive. One hundred copies later, the entire 33^rd street subway station was covered in fliers.

It took the entire night to prepare for the switch.  Susan washed the arm with some lukewarm water, and set it on a towel rack to dry. Then she spritzed it with some man’s cologne that Jo’s ex had left in the bathroom. Taking a few steps back, she studied the arm.  It had been clean, so Mr.Oxfords was probably an organized guy.  He possibly owned a business, something to do with bonds. He had to be a simple man, to forgo an expensive model. She remembered him being tall--well, tallish, with such nice hair.

That morning, Susan spent forty-five minutes getting ready. She switched from business casual, which was too business, to a v-neck, which was too casual. Her final choice was a blue button-down and jeans. She made sure it matched the flesh tones of her companion the arm.

At noon, Susan waited near a big fern in the lobby, along a mirrored wall. A giant chandelier illuminated the open space. She shuffled the arm back and forth between hands a few times. She picked up a newspaper left on a lobby bench, stuck the arm between her legs and started to read.

Mr. Oxfords would be right in. This was the moment. She would meet the mysterious owner of her arm. Susan held her breath, and gripped the bicep of the arm tightly. The hard plastic was hot underneath her palms.

            He was easy to identify—he was wearing the same brown Oxfords as before. She wasn’t disappointed; he was beautiful in that not-so-obvious way, like a superhero’s sidekick.  His brown hair was less fluffy than last time, which Susan thought was a shame, but his face looked kind. And his clothes were clean; she liked that, even if he did mix brown and black.

He beelined straight for her and the fern, walking with a bouncy, assured step. But something wasn’t right. This man had two arms, two full arms coming out of his suit jacket.

“I believe you have my arm,” he said to Susan. “But I have to run. Thanks for the arm, yeah?” He flashed a smile. Susan saw the fingers of his left hand—robotic, mindless fingers—adjust his blue necktie. She swallowed. The air traveling down her windpipe was heavy, and a sharp ache hit her lower jaw. He wasn’t going to leave like that, not after all this time, not with fingers with megabytes and a simulated fleshy touch.

Sweat on her palms made the bicep slippery.  She pointed to the mechanical limb. “You already have an arm.”

He sighed. “Yeah, it was getting fixed yesterday. You got my crappy back-up.” His hand reached out and gestured for the arm. Susan locked her grip on the bicep.

“I’m Susan.” she said, sticking out her arm. She tucked the plastic one underneath her armpit.

“Really?” he said, exhaling loudly. He checked his watch, and put his robotic arm impatiently on his hip. Susan swore she heard some beeps and boops, and she felt her eyebrows fold down toward her nose. She stroked the plastic of the wrist with her thumb, and traced the back palm with the rest of her fingers.

 Susan checked if her shoes were tied, because her timing had to be perfect. She looked quickly into the mirror, pushed some hair out of her eyes, and cracked her neck.  She shrugged. “Fuck you, then. I’m keeping it.”

He blinked a few times and leaned towards her. “Wait—what?”

She looked into his brown eyes, and didn’t blink. “Yeah, I like it better than I like you.” She smiled. “Bye,” she said, softly and cheerfully, before running out the revolving door.

“Hell no, lady!” Mr. Oxfords yelled, after the first seconds of shock that kept him immobilized on the marble floor. He ran out into the sunlight, where the avenue was full of cabs. He sprinted along the cab line, forcefully knocking on windows. “Lady! What the fuck!” he screamed.

Suddenly, a car horn blasted from behind him, and he whipped around just in time to see Susan’s taxi pull away, his own arm waving him goodbye.

-A.