The Nine-Fingered Man

I guess Grace felt like telling me which celebrities she thought were hot. I fired back at her, though my list was hastily prepared. What was the point of that exercise? What was she getting at?

But I had put my contact lenses in the wrong eye and went to correct it.

I once threatened a nine-fingered man for flirting with my girlfriend. It gets a little worse—he was her boss at the holiday party. I was embarrassed at the afterhours club later that night, but now I’m proud of myself. Against better judgement, I’m going to assert that one only loses a finger through foolishness. I’m thinking fireworks, that poor show-off.

Grace had told me recently that I’d lost my swagger. The truth hurts. Losing a finger probably hurts. I thought about telling her that story.

But when I got back to the bedroom, I told her again that something was talking to me through the Ouija board. She said on Christmas Eve she’d like to go to mass, by herself, to sing. Gabe appeared in the doorway and said, he knows Santa is bullshit, but he has one more request—is it too late? Also, he said, he just threw up.

Ah, Gabe’s bruised spleen. We took his temperature and it was high, but not alarmingly so. We embarrassed him by asking about his bowel movements. We checked the checklist and it did not seem like an emergency, which often can be hard to identify. He sent him back to bed with a ginger ale and off-brand Tylenol.

But Grace and I did not lay in meaningful silence, stewing over the idea of each other’s fantasies and our son’s peril. Instead, She attacked first:

“Half the women on your list are covered in tattoos and the other half are Republicans,” she said.

I said, “If you were so hot for muscular barbarians, you should have married one.”

She said, “You never should have let Gabe play basketball in the dark.”

I said, “You’re so concerned about money, you refuse to take him back to the doctor.”

There, that would do, we’d said it all.

And what is it with this nine-fingered-man bit? I can only picture his hands.

Sean Ennis is the author of CHASE US: Stories (Little A) and his flash fiction has recently appeared or is forthcoming in New World Writing, Diagram, HAD, Bending Genres and X-R-A-Y. More of his work can be found at seanennis.net