“Someone who knocks people down on the street.” Lauren wondered if he ever smiled. So far he’d scowled, winced and grimaced, but showed no positive emotion at all. He looked angry, something his brother had failed to tell her. Lauren had kept an image of him as the happy college student. But they were no longer in college and she was no longer Lori Graves. She was thirty-one and he was either thirty-three or thirty-four.
“That isn’t it,” he said.
She decided not to pursue it any further. Lauren was new to this pretend game and she didn’t want to show her hand or let him discover that she’d been hired by his brother. She was naturally shy and nervous at all the talking she was having to do.
They ate in silence for a while, enjoying the excellent food. When the waiter brought the check, Lauren quickly took it. Without glancing at it, she handed him her credit card and he walked away.
“Not only pushy, but aggressive,” Jake said.
“I said I’d pay for the coffee. The food came with it.” She smiled again, hoping he’d reciprocate. She was disappointed.
The other diners finished and left the restaurant. Only she and Jake remained with the staff, who’d all but disappeared. Jake slid out of the booth. Lauren stood, still on one heel. When she saw that Jake was in pain, she placed her hand on his right arm. He stopped immediately, facing her.
“Let me help,” she said in the same voice she always used with a crying child.
She didn’t wait for his approval. In fact, she expected him to refuse. She began moving her hand along the length of his arm. With her thumb and forefinger, she worked long, steady strokes against his muscles, smoothly caressing them with both the heat and shape of her hands. It would be better if his arm was bare, but this would have to do, she thought.
Jake stiffened at her initial touch, but he relaxed as she added pressure from his shoulder to his wrist. Then using both hands, she pushed him into a seat. He didn’t resist. Lauren found points where she assumed the pain was intense. Her fingers lingered there and she added releasing pressure to ease those tissues. His right arm was thinner than the left, indicating that he hadn’t used it in a while and had not been exercising it according to any competent therapist’s routine. She finished her impromptu massage, the entire procedure taking no more than five minutes. Stepping back, she stumbled, forgetting about her heelless shoe. With flailing hands she caught the table and steadied herself.
“Are you all right?” Jake asked whipping around, his good arm extended but couldn’t have reached her in time.
“Fine.” She smiled. “But I better put on those new shoes before I break an ankle.” Reseating herself, she pulled a shoe box from one of the bags and exchanged her broken heels for a pair of flat-sole shoes. When she stood, she was noticeably shorter than he was.
Outside, Lauren looked in the direction of the subway that would take her back to Brooklyn. She turned to Jake.
“Well, Jake Masters, thank you for the company. Consider the debt paid in full.” She offered him her left hand. He took it and shook. Lauren wasn’t sure, but she almost got a smile, at least the shadow of one at the edge of his mouth.
“It was interesting,” he said, still in a formal tone.
Lauren felt like she should stand up straight and salute. She didn’t know what his comment meant and decided not to find out if it was positive or negative.
“Well, Lauren Peterson, good luck with your new career.”
Lauren opened her purse and pulled out a card. It had her name and a phone number on it. Handing it to Jake, she said, “Just in case you want someone to help alleviate the pain.”
“Temporarily?”
She heard the sarcasm in his voice.
“True, so you’d better act fast or that number will be disconnected.”
JAKE WAS SPEECHLESS. He hadn’t been whirl-winded by a woman sincenever? Had it ever happened? He couldn’t remember. As he watched Lauren Peterson walking away, Jake wondered what had just happened. Who was she? She looked slightly familiar, but he was sure he didn’t know her, didn’t know anyone like her. Someone who could be both klutzy and aggressive at the same time. Women usually flocked to him. At least they had before Jake stopped the thought. He wouldn’t go there.
Since the accident, most people tried to ignore his arm. They didn’t mention it, tiptoeing around even looking in that direction. If anyone approached him, they did it from the left. If he changed direction, they moved back to his left side, as if he had a contagious disease that would jump through the air and infect them.
Without even knowing his name, Lauren broached the subject of his injury head-on. Jake admitted that threw him for a moment. He was in pain and when she bumped into him, it escalated.
There was no pain now. She said she wasn’t a therapist, but her hands had felt magical as she soothed his muscles better than any licensed therapist had ever made him feel.
Who was she? he asked himself again. He had his eyes on her back. She walked confidently, weaving in and out of the swaying crowd. After a few seconds, she was gone, swallowed by the sea of humanity. Jake glanced at the card in his hand. It had her name and a phone number. He remembered her words. That line would be disconnected soon.
Pushing the card in his pocket, he told himself it didn’t matter. He was no longer seeing therapists or nurses. They’d proved they could do nothing for him. It was all in his head. He’d been told that by the best psychologists in the business. Of course, they didn’t use those words. They used medical school jargon to explain neurological deficits, paralysis or somatosensory losses. It was hysterical paralysis for the layman. He was no moron. He knew the language. He’d learned it alongside them in the same chairs at the same medical schools. In essence, his mind wouldn’t let him move his arm.
Turning around, Jake dismissed Lauren. This was his life and this was how it was going to be. He headed toward the car that stopped at the curb. The driver got out and rushed around to open the door. Jake levered himself inside without any help and soon the car merged into the traffic.
Back at his apartment, the place felt cold and austere. It never had before. Had Lauren somehow changed his perspective? The apartment was a grand two-story space with twenty-foot ceilings and windows almost as tall, but today it felt empty and bleak. Lauren was different, not exactly a breath of fresh air, but someone he rarely came across. She was like spring: warm, sunny, colorful. Why was she making him feel that his apartment, the space he’d lived in for the last five years, was a grayed-out shell? It had everything he needed, furniture, lighting, paintings on the walls, books and a huge concert grand piano that had once belonged to his grandmother, yet he felt as if there was no life in the place.
Wasn’t that the way he wanted it? As cold and empty as his life had become. Did the rooms reflect the state of his life? Had it atrophied along with his arm? Jake glanced at his right arm. The pain had not returned. He wondered what she’d done that was different from the multiple therapists who’d tried and failed. Why were her hands more effective than those of the professionals?
The pain was real, but phantom nevertheless. Jake stared at the limb that hadn’t moved in two years. He willed it to move. Just a small change, even minuscule, would be welcome, his brain said. He’d ordered it to move millions of times since the doctors told him there was no physical reason why he shouldn’t be able to use his arm. Yet it refused to answer the commands of his conscious brain. It hung limply by his side or stayed in a pocket if he used his left hand to put it there.
Since he’d stopped all the therapy, the arm was noticeably smaller than his left one. He could give himself all the rationalized reasons he wanted, but he knew that without exercising that arm, it would atrophy. He dug out Lauren’s card and looked at it. As he ran his thumb over the raised lettering,