Man Hands Read online

We’re at Wolfgang’s Restaurant trying to have a civilized breakfast. I have ordered the Meat Lovers Scrambler and Braht has ordered dry toast and poached eggs. Times like these, I really question his manliness. I also question why he insists everyone call him Braht. I might change my last name too, if my family was as reviled as his.

  Not to Braht, though. Braht is the worst name I’ve ever heard.

  But I digress.

  “I’m sorry,” I say half-heartedly. “I can’t stop thinking about her. I mean that was…that was…” I don’t have the words for it. The urgency. The heat. It shorted out my brain, and I don’t have a lot of extra room in my attic in the first place.

  “It’s like you were starring in a live porno. You, playing the part of the gardener. Her, the hot, lonely partygoer.”

  “I’m not the gardener.”

  “She doesn’t know that.”

  “We think. We think she didn’t know that,” I say.

  Braht gives me a look.

  I actually hope he’s right that she doesn’t know who I am. Because that would give her an excellent excuse for not calling me, or at least leaving a business card somewhere conspicuous.

  “How is it that you let this perfect creature escape without giving you her last name, anyway?” my best friend asks. “You’re always so polite. You usually get the chick’s whole life story before any banging happens.”

  “Usually,” I agree. Maybe that’s why it was so spectacular this time. Raw. Authentic. Mind blowing. “Afterward, she disappeared like Cinderella at midnight.” I’d ducked into the bathroom to ditch the condom, and when I got back she was just…gone. “I don’t know how lucid I could have been in that moment. I barely finished a sentence for three days afterward.” The sex was really that good.

  “Damn,” Braht says.

  “Damn,” I agree.

  “Too bad your Cinderella didn’t leave a glass slipper.” He laughs at his own joke.

  “No shoe, nope. But I do have her panties.”

  He sits up straighter. “You have her panties?”

  “Sure do.” They’re currently in my bedside table. That sounds creepy, but if she’d thought to leave a business card I would’ve saved that instead.

  Braht puts both hands on the table. “Well, there’s your clue! If they’re unusual, we could find her that way.”

  “What? No way.”

  “Way,” he says solemnly. “Describe them.”

  “They’re peony pink with an espresso-colored elastic,” I say, realizing too late that the precision of this description will make him howl.

  And it does.

  I wait it out. I can’t help having a highly developed color vocabulary. I’m a restorer of fine homes. I own enough paint samples to cover Michigan. “There are chocolate rabbits on the pink underwear,” I say when Braht can breathe again. “And a line of text: Chocolate Bunnies are My Spirit Animal.”

  Braht wipes his eyes and giggles.

  “Stop.” I kick him under the table. “She’s whimsical. She’s luscious.”

  Braht’s coffee comes out his nose.

  Suddenly, I just can’t take it anymore. “That’s it! I’ve got to find her. So why am I sitting here waiting for a Meat Lovers Scrambler with you?”

  Braht considers this. “First, because you need to eat. You get low blood sugar sometimes and it makes you stressy. Second, you don’t even know who this Cinderella is. Third, it’s six o’clock in the morning, and, if you went out searching for her now, you’d look like a stalker.”

  I grunt because it’s all true.

  “This girl isn’t what you need, anyway.”

  Inside my shorts, my dick begs to differ. “Says you.”

  “No, I’m serious. You don’t need another fuck. You need someone who knows you. Your whole self.”

  My whole self just wants another hour alone with Brynn. “Look, I tried things your way. The yoga. The meditation. My ass fell asleep, and I didn’t become enlightened.”

  He’s already shaking his head. “You hold too much back, Tom. You did that with Chandra.”

  I hiss because he’s said my ex’s name aloud, and he’s not supposed to do that.

  “Let me ask you this—did you ever sit her down and tell her about your childhood?”

  “Fuck no! Nobody wants to hear about that.” My childhood wasn’t pretty.

  His perfectly shaped eyebrows lift. “You shouldn’t even be surprised that it didn’t work out with her. She doesn’t know you half as well as I do. And you were together for nine months.”

  I look around, hoping to see the waitress bearing down on our table with the food.

  No luck.

  “At least tell me this,” Braht continues. And I kind of want to kill him. “Did you love Chandra?”

  “Sure,” I say quickly. Before she cruelly drop-kicked my heart.

  “Yeah? Tell me the thing you loved best about her. One real thing, and then I won’t ask you about her again.”

  That is a deal I need. So I think hard. I close my eyes and picture Chandra on set at one of our projects together, bending over paint cans while her hair drapes down over the smooth skin of her shoulders. I can’t tell Braht how much I liked her hair, because that’s not really love. Even I know that.

  So I think some more, and it’s rough going.

  Chandra was the interior designer on Mr. Fixit Quick. My sidekick. My gal Friday. And, sure, the on-set romance was Hollywood behavior. I’m not proud. Especially since I was that idiot who thought he’d get a different result than the first thousand victims of show-biz romance.

  I loved her because…she was there. And I wanted a person of my very own. My fortieth birthday is less than two years away. The whole bachelor thing is starting to get old.

  Crap. That won’t fly, either.

  After a long silence, I finally realize when I first fell for Chandra—the moment I knew we had something really special.

  My eyes fly open. “Episode three!” I say, slapping a hand on the table. “We had a tough assignment. In the center of the living room was a set of antique bookcases—ugly as sin. But the owners insisted on keeping ’em. They put it in the contract and everything. It ruined the feng shui! Then Chandra painted the back of each compartment a different shade of robin’s egg blue.” I can still see it in my mind. “And it was perfection.”

  Braht gives me the world’s most piteous look.

  Luckily, that’s when the waitress finally sets my plate in front of me, and I love her a little bit for it. Then I eat a little and, once I feel my blood sugar level out, I’m back to thinking of Brynn. Brynn’s eyes. Brynn’s breasts. Brynn’s hand on my cock.

  “You’re doing it again!” Braht says.

  “What?”

  “You’re making that mopey face. Stop it. Just fucking find this girl so you can get on with your life.”

  This is not helpful. “You’re the one who threw the party at my house. So who is she? Where do I find her?”

  “I don’t know! There were three hundred people at that party, and I was distracted.”

  I don’t have to ask who the distraction was. It was the realtor babe who works in the Eastown office. He’s been in love with her for about five years. She treats him like he’s a complete dickwad, and he loves it. He is a complete dickwad, most of the time, so I like her for that.

  “Give me some details,” Braht says and he balances a slice of his poached egg on a tiny end of his toast and takes a dainty bite. I try not to watch.

  I think about Brynn’s hair instead. It’s a soft, silky brown. Feels great between my fingers. And her lips. Plump, full. And that wrap dress I peeled off her. I start to get a little hard at the table, so I eat some Meat Lovers Scrambler to quiet down those endorphins.

  Then it occurs to me. What I should do. I grab an extra roll of silverware, unroll it, flatten out the napkin in front of me. “Pen!” I cry.

  “Pen? Why?”

  “Just hand me a fucking pen!”

  Braht h
ands me a pen. And I draw. I’m inspired. I picture her in my mind, feel my hands rubbing over her curves, and I draw what she looks like. I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. It takes me a minute before I triumphantly shove the napkin in his face.

  He doesn’t say anything for a beat. Then, “You do realize you’ve drawn a large pair of boobs? It’s a nice drawing, Tom. But it’s easier to identify a girl by her face.”

  I’m not sure that’s true. But it’s no use, anyway. “Ball point on a napkin? I’m good with my hands, but even I couldn’t do her face justice. Let’s go back to this panty thing. Later I can look at the tag. Would the brand name be any help?”

  Braht chews a sad bit of egg. “Hmm. Maybe. But I think the design is more important. What sort of woman wears jokey underwear? She probably has eclectic taste. Lives in Eastown, maybe. Collects vinyl records.”

  I see where he’s going with this. His realtor brain is at work. It’s clever, but there’s a problem. “I can’t just go door to door in Eastown, asking if anyone lost a pair of chocolate bunny underwear. I’ll be arrested.”

  “Maybe,” he admits. Then he brightens. “I need a consult! I’ll ask for a woman’s opinion.” He pushes his chair away from the table and takes off running. I mean, he takes off like there’s a tsunami coming and he’s trying to get to higher ground.

  He’s forgotten all about me already. This is just an excuse for him to phone up that realtor lady who doesn’t give him the time of day and breathe heavily into the phone.

  His sad little poached egg sits quivering on his plate. I reach over and pop the thing in my mouth.

  Not bad. Not bad at all.

  You can’t blame me. The fucker took off and left me with the check.

  I can only hope that somehow I get in touch with Brynn. And when I say “get in touch with,” I mean talk to her, take her out, and then touch her all over. With my tongue.

  11 Look at My Sausage

  Brynn

  I’ve placed them next to each other, sort of snuggled together. Thick, golden lengths. I tell Sadie to tilt the collapsible reflector until the light bounces off their tight, glistening shafts just right and—

  “For fuck’s sake, Brynn! They’re sausages! You’re taking a picture of meat! This is not high art! Take the picture already so we can eat it!”

  Ash has no respect for the intricacies of food photography. The better these sausages look, the more clicks on my site and pins to Pinterest, the more possibility I have of selling one of my cookbooks, the more money I make, the more independent and well-adjusted I feel.

  Also, this week I’m obsessed with sausages. Can’t think why.

  I snap the picture just as Ash lunges and grabs a sausage off the plate, then bites the end off of it.

  Bitch.

  Sadie grabs the other link.

  Motherfucker!

  It’s a good thing there’s an entire pan of bacon too, and they’ve left alone the quiche and home fries that are just calling my name. I grab my own plate before they can attack again.

  Ash really does look like she’s ready to attack, and she probably would, if her phone doesn’t ring.

  She takes a look at the screen. “It’s Douchebag,” she says. Sadie and I nod. We know who she’s talking about. She answers with, “Hi, Douchebag. What do you want?”

  Then she walks out of the room. Sadie and I hear her mumbling.

  I cut a nice slice of quiche for Sadie, scoop up some extra crispy home fries sprinkled lavishly with herbs and sea salt, and top it all with three pieces of thick-cut bacon, hot from the oven.

  Ash can get her own plate. I’m mad at her.

  We sit down at my little vintage 1950s metallic kitchen table—the one I bought ten seconds after Steve agreed to a divorce. He always said that vintage was just another word for crap.

  I never should have married him.

  “How’s Decker?” I ask Sadie. I have to wait until she stops moaning for her to answer. She’s just taken a big bite of the quiche. It is moanable. I have to say. Basically it’s eggs, cream, and cheese. What isn’t moanable about that?

  “He’s good,” she finally says. Then she goes back to her plate. There’s this weird awkward scraping sound of her fork on the plate. Sadie is usually the one who can read all of us. I’m not as intuitive, but looking at her now, I can feel sadness pouring off her.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  She nods. “Fine. I’m just, I don’t know. Tired. Decker...” Sadie’s tone is upbeat, but it strikes me as false somehow. Something’s…off. I’m not sure how she meant to finish that sentence, but surely it can’t be bad. They have sex like every night. Sometimes more than one time a night. That’s got to be a sign of a healthy relationship, doesn’t it? But then again, that was before they had two little girls to look after. Sadie really does look tired. Usually she’s all golden-like, but right now she’s a little…tarnished. A little dull. Something is definitely up.

  I want to respond to her, I do, but Ash walks back into the room saying, “Okay, fuckwad. I already said okay. Seven p.m. I heard you the first time. Fuck off.” That’s how she says goodbye. I can feel Braht’s lovesick sigh even through the phone. She sits down at the table with us. “That was Braht.”

  “You don’t say?” I ask, and Sadie snorts.

  Ash fixes herself a plate. And all the while she takes sneaky little looks at me.

  “What?” I finally demand after the fourth or fifth one.

  She gives me a shrug. “Let’s talk about this gardener of yours.”

  “There’s really no more to say.” I’d already spilled the whole story. The kissing and the “May I” and the energetic fucking. The whole thing was so out of character for me I don’t think they’d have believed me if they hadn’t witnessed the leaping kiss that started the whole event.

  “I know how we can find him,” Ash says now. Her eyes are sly, and it makes me nervous.

  “It wouldn’t even be difficult,” Sadie says. “We could stake out Braht’s house until the landscaper comes by. His phone number will be right on his truck.”

  I hate this idea. “Who needs the phone number?” I quip. “I could just climb into the truck and do him right there.”

  “That works for me,” Sadie agrees.

  “No!” I argue. “It doesn’t work at all. I had my fun. I can leave the poor gardener in peace, now.”

  Ash snickers to herself. “What if he wasn’t really the gardener?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say, cutting off a giant bite of sausage. If only I could stop thinking about sausage. “His profession isn’t the problem.”

  “Then what is?” Ash asks, sitting up straighter.

  “Whrtifhngd?” I try. My mouth is full of sausage. So I make her wait. “What if he’s not a good dude? Like—I find my prince again and he’s kind of a dick.” I have a sneaking suspicion that most men are. “Right now he’s perfect, okay? I want him to stay that way.”

  For a moment, Ash looks troubled. She plays with the teaspoon I’ve set at her place. This lasts a second or maybe two. Then she brightens up again. “It’s fine,” she says.

  “How is that fine?”

  “You leave after the fucking,” she says with a shrug.

  “There won’t be any fucking,” I point out.

  “Mmh,” she says. Either it’s a dodge, or she’s enjoying my quiche. It could really go either way. “Drinks tonight?” she asks. “I think seven o’clock would be a good time for some tiki drinks, no?”

  The subject change is awfully abrupt, and I feel the tiniest prickle of suspicion.

  But Sadie brightens up immediately. “I could do drinks. Decker is watching the girls. I tried to get him to call a sitter and go out for dinner with me, but he said he was too tired.”

  See? Men = dicks.

  12 Pining & Pupu Platters

  Brynn

  I should have been more suspicious when Ash insisted on taking me lingerie shopping that afternoon. And I should
have been even more suspicious when she insisted that I wear my purchases out of the store. But it saved me from having to unlace the wacky corset thing she’d picked out for me.

  And, man, my boobs are so perky! It’s like having extra storage space. I could shelve books up there.

  We swing by Sadie’s house to pick her up. She practically ejects from the front door like a rocket when Ash’s car pulls up in front. She runs down the front walk, leaps into the backseat, and says, “Step on it.”

  Ash, being a good friend, floors it. We blast off from Sadie’s quiet little street like Thelma and Louise.

  “Problem?” I ask over the roar of the engine.

  “Decker didn’t want me to leave. He’s spent exactly one day with his babies in the last two weeks, and it’s—” She makes air quotes. “—too much for him.”

  “Tough shit,” Ash says, tapping on the brakes just lightly enough not to kill us all as we turn the corner. “We have drinks to drink.”

  “Where are we headed, anyway?” I ask.

  “Tai One On,” Ash says, accelerating again. “We were supposed to be there at seven. And it’s already five after.” Ash gets crazy when she’s late for anything.

  Wait.

  “Supposed to?” I ask. “If it’s just the three of us, who cares?”

  Ash winces.

  “Ash?”

  “Mmm?” she says, eyes on the road.

  “Is it just the three of us?”

  “Mmm.”

  “Ash!” I’m squawking her name as she pulls up to Tai One On, a Tiki place we visit on a semi-occasional basis. “What’s happening right now?”

  “Mai tais. Duh.”

  I grab her arm before she can get out of the car. “What are you not telling me?” Her eyes grow wide, and I just know. “He’s in there, isn’t he? My gardener is in there.”

  She gives me a tiny nod.

  “OMIGOD!” I shriek. “No. Nope. No. Uh-uh.”

  “But I already said we’d—”

  “Ash! You tricked me! You tricked your oldest friend. That’s mean!”

  “Yes,” she says with a sigh. “I did, sweetie.”

  “You always do things like this!”