She’s quiet, real quiet and I wonder if I’ve shared too much . . . if the idea of my prosthetic hand is too strange for her. I’ve dated women who were intellectually fine with the fact I had two stumps and two fake limbs, but at times when I touched them with one of my prosthetics, they’d recoil. It might be subtle, but it was there. Hard to get excited with a woman who didn’t want you to touch her a certain way.
I run a hand up my left arm, currently covered in the long sleeve of my knit shirt, and feel the industrial plastic underneath. Should I have waited to share with her? No. I walk determinedly to the other side. She either accepts me as I am or I’ll move on. I quickly finish installing the three other sensors.
Her soft voice breaks into my thoughts. “Is it really gauche of me to say I find that fascinating?”
No. Fuck no. I want to reject the feeling of relief, but it’s there. I like to think that I don’t give a fuck how people respond to me, because there’s nothing out there that I used to do in the past that I can’t do now, including bringing a woman to orgasm. Repeatedly. My dick’s not broken and I’ve got a damn strong tongue. But what Natalie thinks matters more than it should.
“Nope,” I answer, trying to keep my tone even and light.
“I think my brain works in digital too. Like I have problems opening the door when I don’t know who is on the other side, but when Chris or Jason, our doormen, let me know it’s them, I’m not afraid. As if they’ve cleared out the hallway of the infestation of people and all that is left is my food or package.”
“Sure. It’s the unknown that scares you. If you knew exactly what would happen, every minute of the future, then there’d be nothing to fear.” I finish up the install and continue explaining, “Now I’m placing the battery pack underneath your chair out here. The battery is the main power source, but if it’s turned off for any reason, the sensors have small solar panels and there will be enough residual juice to emit an alarm. The battery pack should be moved inside. The best thing that you could do, if possible, is to open your door after I leave and take the battery pack inside your house. Place it just to the left or right of your door and it should work perfectly.”
“I think that’s amazing. I think you’re amazing, and I’m trying really hard not to cry right now. I think crying is verboten on dates, right?”
“It can put a damper on things,” I reply dryly.
Inside, I hear her doorbell ring. “It’s Chris. He says he has a bag of something that smells awesome.”
“I left your food with him. Go get it.”
While she answers the door, I settle gingerly into the small chair. Thankfully, it holds my weight. From my bag, I pull out my own dinner. Three chicken breasts and plenty of veggies, courtesy of my sister. I pop off the plastic lid and dig in. It’s late and I’m hungry. I guess one of the advantages of not eating face-to-face is that she can’t see when I’m being rude. Even I know that starting to eat before the other person does isn’t well-mannered. Mom likes to say that I use being in the army as an excuse to forget everything she’s ever taught me. She’s only half wrong.
A long, loud screeching noise has me rising from the table and knocking on the glass door. “You okay in there?”
“Yes,” she says, slightly out of breath. “I was just pulling my coffee table over. I didn’t realize how heavy glass is.”
“Shit, you should have asked me, I’d have helped you move it.” My voice dies off at the end. That’d only happen if she could open the door. “Never mind.”
“I want to open the door. I really do.” Her voice catches on the last word.
I clench my jaw. “It’s nothing, sweetheart. Have a seat. Let’s enjoy our dinner.”
“This is bizarre.”
“Only if you want it to be.” I tear off a hunk of the chicken and shove it in my mouth. There are benefits to being out here. I don’t have to watch my manners and I can eat with my hands.
I hear the clink of a plate on the glass-topped table she has and then silence. I imagine she’s dumping her food out.
“God, this food smells great. Where did you get it?”
Bizarre or not, we’re having dinner. I smile with satisfaction and swallow another piece of chicken before answering.
“There’s a tiny little hole-in-the-wall near my place, with great Chinese food, reasonably priced. I think everyone in the four-block radius who knows about them keeps quiet so we can get in and out real fast.”
“Well, it’s delicious.”
“What’re you eating?” I told her, I’m a visual guy.
“My egg roll. Do you like them?”
“Don’t eat a lot of fried foods,” I admit.
“Everything tastes better when it’s fried,” she says. “I saw this one episode on television where they tested out all these different animals to see if they tasted like chicken. At first they fried all the stuff and admitted that the test wasn’t very challenging because everything that’s fried tastes good, even lizard. I suspect even poo would taste good fried.”
I nearly spit my chicken out when she says that. Laughing, I pause and take a long drink of water before I can catch my breath enough to answer. “Let’s just agree to assume, because I’m not willing to test it out.”
She chuckles. “What are you eating? Same Chinese?”
“A few chicken breasts. Some broccoli.”
“What? Why? Did being in the army kill your taste buds?” She sounds aghast. I hear her shift on the floor, the sound of fabric rubbing against wood as she finds a comfortable place for her ass on the big floor pillow I spotted sitting near the French doors.
“At the risk of sounding like a ’roided meathead, I’m pretty careful about what I eat. It’s harder for me to build muscle in certain areas of my body, so since I was discharged, I’ve stuck to a diet of mostly lean meats and vegetables. I’ll splurge now and then, but not tonight.”
“Now I’m feeling guilty, but not so guilty I’m not enjoying the crap out of this lo mein.” Her gusty sigh of appreciation is followed by a moment of silence, for eating, most likely. I polish off the rest of my chicken and lean back to enjoy the cool spring air.
While she eats, I talk.
“When I was first in, the meals were terrible. We lived on a diet of caffeine, tobacco, and stimulants. The latter are banned, but we used them anyway and the officers turned the other cheek. They weren’t going to deny us Ephedra when they were asking us to carry out twenty-four-hour shifts at a time. The food we ate was basically a bunch of calories in a bag. There was mystery meat in chunks and we’d heat it up using this weird-ass chemical that would cause cold water to boil immediately. There was a ton of junk food—cake, snack foods, candy. The supply of MREs varied over the course of our time over there. Sometimes we had too many of them. Later, in the middle of the deployment, there’d be too few. All the good stuff, we’d save, and then distribute when we got low.”
“What’s the good stuff?” she asks, as if there couldn’t be anything good, which is probably a fair assumption after what I’ve shared.
I wonder how long she’ll let me stay out here. I should’ve brought a blanket and I could’ve bunked down, although my six-foot-plus frame would have a hard time being comfortable. “Instant coffee, cocoa powder, grape Kool-Aid. Skittles. Loved the Skittles. The Charm candies, though, we’d get rid of. They’ve been considered bad luck since they first appeared in World War II rations. If you’re caught carrying them or eating them out on patrol, you’re likely to get shot and killed, so most platoons will throw them out or give them to the Iraqi kids.”