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I met Serena at victim support. She asked if her prosthesis bothered me. So I lied and said it did not.
Serena has long brown hair. She wears good leather gloves so you’d hardly tell. I don’t know what she does in the summer. Serena drinks ouzo with her real-live arm, while the other one rests in her lap. She’s talking her languid legalese, about suing the city for comp. I smile.
Did you use t’ be a lawyer, then?
I still am. You think my life stopped because I lost an arm?
No, but nobody’s anything else, after that.
Don’t be silly.
I’m not. You’ll see.
Serena has large greenish eyes. There are dead flies in the ouzo, drawn by the sweetness. She’s flirting with me with her good arm, touching the side of my face. She keeps asking me where I’m maimed. This passes for foreplay. I tell her I’ll show her where later. She laughs.
You will, will you?
If you like.
Your legs are both real though, aren’t they?
Yes.
I see. Look, just tell me you still have your penis, ‘cause if not then I’m wasting my time.
I met Serena at victim support. Yes, Serena, I still have my penis. It’s as simple as that, with sex. You’d think we were both heartless. You’d think, and you’d be right.
…
Serena is dressed in a blue bathrobe. She has long bare feet like strange silver fish. They are quick and they glow in the moonlight. I am drunk and she tells me I’m drunk and her voice has an echo on it. I finish my scotch and she curses me.
What are you? Some kind of alcoholic?
Some kind, yes. It’s alright, I’m high-functioning.
Really? We’ll see about that.
She laughs. I laugh. She raises her eyebrows. I let her undress me. She doesn’t want help. She would find it demeaning. Her dead-fake hand keeps bumping against me. It reminds me of birds, flying in to a window. Or moths, butting heads with a bulb.
Serena is pulling a hard-sum face. She stares at my naked body and scowls. Is that it? She says. Man, you got off lightly. And she’s angry, feels cheated. But she’s also quite pleased. She reckons she beat me ‘cause her injury’s worse. It gets like that, competitive. I shrug.
No, that’s not it, I’m all fucked up inside.
Please, spare me.
I meant literally.
Oh. Really?
Really.
This passes for foreplay.
…
Serena is smoking a cigarette. I used to have a hook, she said, want to see? So I lied and said that I would.
Serena had a hook for a hand, but the sleeve of the thing was engraved all with flowers. She tells me how she kind of misses her hook. And she asks me if I want to do it again. We snort coke off her frosted glass table. She has magazines on a shelf underneath. The magazines are about perfect people, demonstrating their whole bodies smugly. I want to ask her, you’re a masochist, then?
You could take that thing off, in bed.
Ha! You would only say that if you knew nothing whatsoever about women.
…
I met Serena at victim support. She liked taking me home. She says I don’t talk about what happened to me. So I lie and I tell her I will.
I brush Serena’s long brown hair, getting the tangles out after sex. One day we’ll get knotted together, she says, and the fire-brigade will come, have to cut us apart. I laugh, but I don’t find it funny.
Why do you wear you hair long, like that? Are you scarred underneath? Like those cuts on your face?
I shake my head and she goes hum. She asks do I think she’s a whore, ‘cause she came on to me right away. I tell her no and I smile.
It’s different for us.
Yes, it is. But I can’t figure out how.
It’s the way we are, makes us more aware of time passing, how quick and how soon everything could end.
Most people have no sense of urgency.
No. But we do. And more than that, we have an obligation.
An obligation?
Yes, to live.
I don’t think it’s an obligation, she says, I think that it’s fear. She shivers. I put my arm around her waist and kiss her neck. Don’t leave a mark, she tells me, you can’t leave a mark on me, for my work. I laugh at her so hard for that, that a pale fluid leaks out my nose.
…
Serena is shouting at me. She says she doesn’t believe I was injured at all. You were never involved in a blast, were you? So I keep quiet and tell her whatever.
Serena had me for two years. Now she’s bored with me, or she expected more. She shouts and she screams and throws plates at my head. You lousy drunk, she calls me, you useless fucking drunk. I shrug my shoulders and scratch. It started because I was unkind to her. She didn’t want me to meet her friends. I called her a coward. And the shit hit the fan.
You know what your problem is, Serena? You want so bad to be normal but you don’t know how, and the funny thing was, you never did. Difference is you don’t have your mask now. You don’t look just like everybody else.
Fuck you, she says, you’re a bad Irish joke. Dumb fucking drunk. Dumb Irish drunk.
You know what your problem is, Serena? You want to be normal but you resent normal people. They make it look easy and you hate them. You hate them and they bore you but you’re so fucking jealous of them you can hardly breathe. You don’t want me around ‘cause I give you away. That’s what it is, you’re a coward.
Serena is crying on Egyptian cotton sheets. She throws her prosthesis towards me. It falls short by about half a foot. I look down at that arm and feel dizzy. Awful, suddenly severed thing.
I don’t believe you, you dumb drunk fuck. You never were caught in any bombing. You were using me, you rat bastard. Get out of my fucking house, right now.
That inhuman arm, dead and detached. I look at Serena, red eyes and nose and I look at the city outside of the glass. The world moves by with intestinal slowness and I want to run but I cannot run.
I find myself stood at her sink. Being sick.
…
Serena shouts at me a lot. Or I shout at her. Or we shout at each other. I ask her why doesn’t she cut me loose. So she lies and tells me she loves me.
I’ll tell you what it is, I say to her one day, it’s that you always have to make an Goddamn exit, and having me here gives you somebody you can walk away from. That’s it, Serena, isn’t it? Kind of, she says, kind of.
I had to tell her about my heart, the way that things are inside. Some day a nick of metal will move to the left. I won’t have time to blink. I will die.
That hardly seems fair.
That’s the way it is.
Then I can’t let you out of my sight.
Oh? Why not?
If I’m around to see you die, then I’ll know you told the truth. Then I won’t have to hate you, after all.
She asks me how it happened, but I don’t tell her that. Some things are still sacred to me. And we rub along until one of us dies. She watches me, waiting, and willing me to. Not because she is a bad person. But because she wants freedom from hate.
I met her at victim support. She thinks I am running a scam. She would be surprised to know I didn’t lie. Not about that anyway.
------
The human race, the only race I know where everybody loses.
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we are not amused
