Excerpts from a Novel by T.S. Hand 

Today was a bad day. It said so in red pen, right there between the 15th and 17th, which both forecasted “good” in blue ink. 

I cut myself shaving. It didn’t hurt too much so I did it again. I showed up to work with oozing little scrapes all over and circulated a story about cut power and having to shave in the dark. When I heard my boss’ feet approach on the industrial stain-resistant carpet, I picked at the little devils until fresh rivulets appeared. By 10:30 AM my boss took pity on my (somehow) worsening condition and told me to take the day off. It was an office full of social workers. They were nothing if not compassionate.

…………………….. 

“What do you do?” I ventured.

“I’m a whore.”

I had heard stranger things before from women, so I mulled it over and then offered, “You mean, like a prostitute?”

“No, honey, I’m a whore.”

“What’s the difference?”

“A prostitute has more syllables.”

I chuckled, it was the only spontaneous thing I’d done in awhile. It was unique among spontaneous things in that it felt right. Oh, yeah, today was a good day.

…………………………..

The 18th, a bad day.

I’m hiding in a payphone alcove on 8th Avenue and 36th Street. It’s the nearest place to my office where I can smoke without my boss seeing me from the fourth-floor window. A disheveled young thug comes up and demands, “Yo, man, lemme get two cigarettes.” I’m so taken aback by his order that I acquiesce before I can feel offended. I mean, he didn’t even say the magic word for fuck’s sake. I don’t let it bother me too much, because something in his personality resonates with me, conspiratorially: fuck the man in the suit; take everything you can from him.

A woman comes to the phone next to me and sighs. She looks homeless, but not overly so. She asks if I have a spare nickel for a phone call. A quick check of my pockets yields a quarter. I ask if she has change. She says, “No. It’s OK. It’s just so damn American of you.”

I’m crawling out of my steel smoke cave with the dregs of my cigarette when an unseen woman brushes against me. She starts howling about the bag I just burned with my cigarette end. I look down at the damaged cigarette in my fingers and the pockmark I’ve left in her Coach bag—probably a knock-off. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry. Really.”

“I don’t give a fuck if you’re sorry. Look at my fucking bag, you shithead!”

“I’m sorry, Jesus! You ran into me. Fuck, lady.” I feel all pretense of remorse leaving me as she continues on with this barrage of insults and haranguing. Realizing this could go on forever, and noticing that I’ve already over-extended my lunch break to dangerous lengths, I choose a quiet time in her tirade to look squarely in her eyes as I take the still-lighted cigarette and stub it out in the sinewy back of my hand. Her countenance changes predictably. The smoldering anger she felt now turns to horror.

“Is this what you want? Do you want to see me hurt?” I asked as the pain sent flashes of light behind my eyelids. “Does this make you fucking happy, you cunt?” She turned tail and walked away, quickly. She only looked back once to see if I was real.

…………………………….

I spent more time today with Christie, the Whore. These meetings are usually on good days, although some bad days I even make time to see her. Some bad days I especially need to see her.

Even in our first moments together she was the only one who looked right at me, into me, and saw that I was all bristling hair, bared claws and stiff upper lips. She saw the flicker in there that belied my emptiness. I was equidistant from bludgeoning her for revealing it and kissing her for accepting it; my weakness, that is. She made quick calculations of emotional earnings potential, return on investment and sunk cost, followed rapidly by two blinks forceful enough to stop a bullet mid-flight. Exhaled, caught it, paused, finished exhaling.

She reached out and cupped my jaw, her fingertips tickling my ear pleasantly. “Oh, darling, you’re just so…orange,” she opined. This label was deftly original. I was defenseless. She moved in for the kill. “You know,” she assumed “nothing rhymes with you and you don’t come around all that often, but the moments you do appear people really take notice. You’re life’s solution to beige.”