arlen’s arm

by amy shearn

    Minnie and Arlen slept together the first night they met and continued to sleep together each night for three months.  Minnie was not sure whether it was love or avarice.  She liked Arlen's smell, and the way he moved.  She liked his fingers, and the slope of his shoulders, and the backs of his small, curvy ears.  He liked her, too. One of their favorite things was to have sex standing up, or on toilets. They liked to sleep together.  They did not actually sleep together, though.  Arlen had to work early, and did not want to bother Minnie.  So he would come over to her place.  Then they would have sex standing up, or on the toilet.  Then he would go home.  Sleeping together was only an expression.  Minnie guessed she thought it was love, not avarice. 

    One thing Arlen liked was to drive around on rainy nights.  On the night he died, in fact, they were driving around in the rain.  Minnie was flicking her tongue around his ear when another car drove through a red light.  Arlen extended his arm across Minnie’s chest, pushing her back against her seat.  She felt the weight of his arm against her sternum, just above her breasts, for what seemed like a long time.  Then the red-light-running car buckled into the driver's seat, killing Arlen immediately.

    After going to the hospital and the police station, Minnie went home.  The next day she awoke to what seemed like too bright of a morning.  Arlen is dead, her brain said, Arlen is dead.  She went to the bathroom to take a shower, undressing slowly.  She looked in the mirror.  She saw her face, and her naked chest, and the long, blue bruise that Arlen's arm had left.  It was as if his arm were still there.  The bruise was beautiful: a pale, purpley, frowning kind of blue, with a darker center, like a storm cloud.  She poked at it a few times.  Then she stepped into the shower.

    Minnie went to work.  No one she worked with knew anything about Arlen.  She didn't mention it.  Work was easy.  She drank coffee, looked over the accounts, and checked her email.  Before she left for the day, she went to the bathroom and lifted her blouse in front of the mirror.  The bruise had darkened slightly.  It was more the color of a plum now, and like a plum had undertones of pink and yellow, and a faint pattern of veins just visible beneath the purple skin.  Minnie tucked her blouse back into her skirt, went to her desk, and arranged her notes for the next day.  She went to the break room.  She rinsed out her coffee cup.  Then she walked to the bus stop.  At home, she kicked off her shoes, and lay down on the couch, a blanket pulled up to her chin.  She watched TV until she fell asleep.

    The next day the bruise looked very much the same.  After work, Minnie had a message from Arlen's mother.  Minnie and the mother had never met.  The message was garbled by Minnie’s answering machine, and maybe this was why the mother sounded very old and far away.  The mother meant to relay the necessary information about the funeral, but most of what she said was obscured by the machine's poor sound quality.  The mother did not leave a number.  Minnie did not know how the mother even knew who she was, or how to get a hold of her.  Minnie had never met any of Arlen's family, or any of his friends.  She erased the message.  Then she lay on her bed, poking her index finger now and then into the tender strip of bruise.

    In the next few days, the bruise began to fade.  Two weeks after the accident, it had paled from its brilliant plummy hue to a sickly green.  One afternoon her supervisor walked in on her in the bathroom, pounding her fist against her chest.  Her supervisor asked what was wrong.  Nothing, said Minnie, nothing's wrong.  At night, she tried to sleep with heavy oblongs across her chest: a hammer, a crowbar.  She'd wake with strange indentations on her cheek, her arms wrapped around the thin metal bodies.  On weekends, she walked around in the run-down neighborhoods of the city she lived in, asking passersby to strike her in the chest.  Even the drug dealers said no.  Even the shouting street people said no.  She went home and watched TV, rhythmically thumping a palm against her chest.  The bruise twinged with pain now and then, like a greeting.

But there was nothing she could do.  A month later, the bruise had gone completely.

Amy Shearn is the author of the novel How Far Is the Ocean from Here (Shaye Areheart Books). She lives in Brooklyn, but you can visit her at amyshearn.com.