Day 9
Amber sprung up on the bed, drenched in sweat. She had been so tired the day before that she barely remembered going to bed at all, and she needed a moment to realize it was now early morning. Apart from the flashing green light of her smartwatch on the side table, the room was pitch black. Images ran through her mind like the remnants of a dream, like projected on the darkness that surrounded her. She was more than used to this routine, now, but it didn’t make it any less tedious. A week and a half she’d endured it, and it didn’t seem like it was about to stop. The sleeping figure beside her machinally felt his way to her wrist and slid his fingers around its end.
"M'you 'kay hon'?" He grumbled.
Slightly out of breath, she took a few seconds to answer. "Yeah, I’m okay. It’s… I always have the same nightmare."
"Don't worry 'bout ithen." Turning around, he reached over to grab his girlfriend's buttcheek, brushing against her short leg. "Come here and get back to sleep…"
As he tugged on her hips, she felt the sheets brush against her thigh in the strangest of ways. She frowned, trying to make sense of it, scouring her leg for information. She stretched her toes, only finding purchase on the sheets with her left foot, and bent her knees, again failing to move anything on her right side. She looked down but it was no help, as she couldn't see past her nose. She laid down beside her boyfriend again and turned to face him, lifting her left leg to hook it behind his back, confirming the presence of at least one of the two. From the hip socket, down her thigh, through her knee, and following to her foot, everything seemed normal for this one. Her other leg, however, sank under her weight as she laid on her right side, and she could feel the sheets crumpled against its end, where the skin curved all the way around to form a smooth stump. She sighed. One leg down.
Marcus kissed his way to her lips, sliding his hand over her hips, dipping at her waist, nestling his hand against her arm. She sighed internally. She moved her arm within his grasp, the tapered end of her bicep ending somewhere above her elbow. Two limbs down.
She closed her eyes again and tried to enjoy the presence of her boyfriend at her side, their noses still in contact after their kiss. She took in his scent, familiar and comforting, even though his morning breath had seen better days. After all she had been through, he was ever stable, her source of comfort. She reached up, hoping to softly lay a hand on his cheek. To her surprise, her fingers didn’t reach it when she thought they would. She rolled her eyes and carried on upwards, a lot further than she would’ve hoped actually, until she felt his stubble against her skin. The skin of another stump.
It was going to be another rough day.
She kissed him one last time and pulled herself out of his grasp, kicking the covers with her only leg before setting her foot on the ground. She curled her toes against the carpet on her side of the bed and stretched out her arms as far as they could go, knowing that it was a lot less than she would’ve hoped for. As she was about to stand up, a vision flashed through her mind. Then, as if it had always been there, she reached over her nightstand, her face almost touching the sharp corner, and touched the base of the lamp with the tip of her left arm. It lit up, casting a dim light on her side of the bedroom.
She sat in silence for a moment to focus on her breathing.
Two seconds in, four seconds out.
Spotting the rolling stool at the foot of the bed, she pushed herself towards it and transferred carefully, her left arm swinging once to correct her balance, her right resting securely against her thigh. Still using her only complete limb, she made her way into the bathroom and squatted up, flicking the lightswitch on with her mouth.
Three seconds in, six seconds out.
As usual, all of her limbs seemed to be missing from birth, as if her life had never been any different. Her left arm stopped halfway down her upper arm like she had guessed, the stump just about leveled with her breasts. Narrow, fingerless, elbowless. She lifted it perpendicular to the mirror, uselessly looking for a scar. She shuffled to center herself in front of the wide mirror, pressing the stump of her right arm on the countertop for balance before closing the door with it.
Four seconds in, eight seconds out.
She had an elbow on this side, as well as part of a forearm, but even this one ended before its time. Slightly curved inward, her arm transitioned into the semblance of a wrist, which she could move to one side or the other. The floppy flesh that then served as her palm had closed up before any fingers could develop on it. Of course it did, she thought. She rubbed the remaining sleep out of her eyes with the stump, moving it up and down as much as it could against her eyelids, and the sound of a drum banged in the back of her head like a wakeup call.
Five seconds in, ten seconds out.
She placed her short thigh on the countertop to keep her balance as she tried to do something with her hair. Her left arm pointing at the ceiling, it rubbed backwards against her cheek with limited results to get a rebel lock out of her field of view, while the right was only slightly more successful. Pressing her stump against her temple, the friction of skin against skin managed to send a few strands behind her ear in a somewhat precarious position. Spotting a hair brush not too far from her thigh, she leaned forward and poked it with her stump, forgetting about her lack of fingers.
Six seconds in, twelve seconds out.
Folding herself in two over her thigh, she pulled it to her and angled it against her leg to give herself some leverage. Then, carefully rolling it between her forearm and thigh, she pushed it up her upper limb until it fit in the nook of her elbow. Bending it as hard as she could, she lifted it up and brought it over to her left arm. After another series of delicate manoeuvers, she took hold of it between her two stumps. Maybe not as solid of a grip than with fingers, but it would do for now.
Marcus slid his hand on her shoulder and dropped a kiss on her cheek, then snatched the brush out of her grasp to help her with the back of her head. Eyes closed, she focused her attention on him and away from her limbs, taking in more regular, uncalculated breaths again.
“Mondays, am I right?” He spun her around, taking good care of keeping her balance by holding her shoulders. “What's the big idea with doing shrooms on a Sunday evening anyway.”
Amber was in no rush to leave his embrace. As she pushed her tongue deep inside Marcus' mouth, she lifted her arms to his face, already unconsciously adjusting her grip. Her shorter left arm laid on the angle of his jaw, while her right reached up to the side of his face. She bent her wrist against his skin, ever so slightly gripping his skin, while her thigh poked at his crotch. He was hard already. He chuckled and reached for her ass, pressing them together as she hooked her only leg behind his back. Amber loved being carried in his arms.
He threw her on the bed and, as she regained control of herself, scuttled backwards to rest against the headboard, watching Marcus intently as he kneeled on the mattress before her. His hands reached for the hem of her shirt and lifted it over her head, revealing her naked body to him. Like it was the most natural thing for her, she pressed her breast together using her asymmetric limbs : the bicep of her shorter arm on her left and the stump of her right digging into the supple flesh of the other. She released them from her feeble grasp and let her arms dangle at her sides. She felt her cheeks flush and, without her noticing, the tips of her stumps did too.
Lifting her right arm towards her boyfriend, Amber flicked her wrist twice towards herself.
—
“Have a great day yourself, Sir.”
She gave him her go-to professional smile as, prescription in hand, he gave one last look at her arms before turning away from the reception desk.
Sylvia was in to help her today. This meant that Amber could take her time to clean up her desk in-between clients without it feeling too much of a chore. As always when she was missing both hands, picking things up had become a two arm job, and since one of them was exceptionally short, it had become even more tedious. She grouped a few papers together and, pressing them between her stumps, folded herself in half to fit them into the shredder.
After straightening herself again, she was hit with a sudden feeling of déjà vu. There was nothing out of the ordinary to notice. No car accidents, no one tripping in front of her desk comically, not even a recurring joke coming from Silvia. But there was something in the air that reminded her of her previous days. How the sun reflected on a moving car back in the parking lot, the constant hum of the fax machine, it seemed like her mental clock had internalized so much of these stimuli that she didn’t flinch when the phone rang. She pressed on the spacebar with her fingerless hand.
“Hello?” She fixed the position of her headset with her left arm and pressed it against her ear, exposing her armpit. “I know it’s you.”
The voice was eager to break the silence between them. “You’re learning, finally. That took you long enough.”
Amber looked around to make sure no one was eavesdropping her conversation. “I’m still trying to convince myself that I’m not going crazy.” She whispered into the microphone, looking down at her hand. “Do you… know anything about this?”
His rugged laughter filled her ears. “How long has it been already? How long have you been reliving the same day over and over again? How many times did you wake up to a different version of your body while nobody seems to notice a damn thing?”
Amber’s stomach dropped. It was clear from the get go that these calls were linked to her new… predicament. But hearing it so clearly from his mouth sent chills down her spine. She clenched her toes nervously, unable to do the same with her lacking fingers, and breathed out slowly.
“This is day 9.”
“Count yourself lucky, Amber. Perhaps by working together we can figure this thing out.” There was a short pause. “What shape are you stuck in, today?”
She scoffed, looking around once again, like ashamed of talking about her changing disabilities. “Left arm and right leg end before the elbow and knee. Right hand stops at the wrist, and...” She trailed off and frowned. “Wait.. I thought you knew how I looked from day to day?”
“There’s a lot of things you don’t know about me yet.”
This was usually how their conversations ended, on an obscure and uncertain note, after only a few empty questions. But today’s call had felt different from the start, perhaps it would end in a new way, too.
He cleared his throat. “Do you have a pen and paper?” Standing on her only leg, Amber reached over her pencil case with her hand and pulled it towards her, securing a pencil between her lips. Then, she skillfully retrieved a single post-it note and stuck it on the desk before her. “11489 Marshall. Take a table for two. Noon. Don’t be late.”
“Wait!” She mouthed the pencil between her stumps and scribbled as fast as she could. “How will I know who to look for?”
He laughed again, although less menacingly this time. “You won’t need to. I will.”
—
The evening went on as usual. After a long day at work, she and Marcus had sat down on the couch to watch The Office, although this time, she was wolfing down on her chicken nuggets as if she hadn’t eaten in days. At that moment, she didn't care about her arms anymore. She had grown accustomed to them over the last 12 hours and barely needed to think about how to manœuvre the food towards her mouth anymore.
Tomorrow's meeting was the only thing on her mind.
After cringing at Scott's Tots for the ninth day in a row, she decided to follow Marcus into the bedroom instead of staying up late. Maybe changing her routine would cause the week to finally start moving again? Probably not, she thought, but it wouldn’t hurt to try.
Day 10
"AAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!"
Amber sprung up on the bed screaming at the top of her lungs, drenched in sweat. Apart from the flashing green light of her smartwatch on the side table, the room was pitch black. Images ran through her mind like the remnants of a dream, like projected on the darkness that surrounded her. The sleeping figure beside her machinally felt his way to her thigh and squeezed it gently.
"M'you 'kay hon'?" He grumbled.
Slightly out of breath, she took a few seconds to answer. "Yeah..” Amber shook her head, remembering what awaited her today. “Just a nightmare, that's all.”
"Don't worry 'bout ithen." Turning around, he reached over to grab his girlfriend's buttcheek, brushing against her other leg. "Come here and get back to sleep…"
As he tugged on her hips, she felt the sheets brush against her legs in ways she was easily able to recognize. Her back completely straight, she bent her knees and felt them rise symmetrically under the weight of the blankets, wiggling her toes in the process. She sighed, relieved. Complete legs always made her days easier. As she reached back to ease herself at her boyfriend’s side again, her arms failed to reach the sheets and she fell heavily against her pillow. This could only mean one thing, she thought to herself.
Marcus kissed his way to her lips, sliding his hand over her hips, dipping at her waist, and up her ribcage to nestle his hand against her hers. She frowned, trying to make sense of it, but she knew looking down was no help. She clenched her fist around one of his fingers, which suddenly seemed to have doubled in size, and felt the movement at the side of her breasts. She tried reaching over with her right arm but something similar occurred : she felt her hand move beside her chest. It was as if her arms had shrunken almost all the way…
Pushing down on the mattress with her legs, she turned towards her boyfriend and kissed him in return, completely losing control over her right arm under the weight of her torso. No matter how hard she tossed, its muscles weren't strong enough to free itself. She tried to reach Marcus’s face with her other arm but failed again, although she could feel the muscles in her limb stretch and tense under her efforts. Instead, she grabbed onto his hand as it wandered near hers, again getting a feeling of skewed proportions between them.
“Are you hungover from last night’s shrooms?” She asked, backing away from his lips.
“No, and I slept like a baby.” She heard him smile.
“What’s the big idea with doing shrooms on a Sunday evening, anyway?”
“You tell me.”
Annoyed at her arms’ apparent impotence, she lifted her leg and hooked it behind his back to bring him closer. She let herself get lost into their embrace, shielded from the day's upcoming challenges by the darkness that still surrounded them. But that could only last so long. As his hand trailed from her face and towards her body, she felt it run the entire length of her arm in what seemed like a flash. She shuddered and broke out of their kiss, her mouth suddenly very clammy.
She clicked her tongue twice. “Would you mind fetching me a glass of water please?”
“Asked so nicely, how can I not?”
He kissed her once more, on the cheek this time, and she closed her eyes as he walked out of the room. Taking deep deliberate breaths, she scoured her body with her mind. She was already pretty sure that her legs were intact. She could feel them solidly anchored in her hips as she pushed down on the mattress to lift her butt, and her muscles felt strong and complete. She kicked off the covers and threw her legs to pivot into a sitting position, legs crossed, before waddling to the edge of the bed. Then, like she had done the previous 10 days, she made her way to the bathroom expecting the worst, and turned on the light with her mouth.
She jumped at the sound of Marcus’ voice. “Here. Are you sure you’re okay?”
Amber smiled at him. “Of course…” As he passed her the water, she craned her neck and drank from the strategically placed straw without using her arms. “I may have a little hangover now that I think about it.”
“I’ll throw them out if it’s too much. You had a pretty nasty bad trip last night, do you remember?”
She frowned and tried to press at the side of her temples but her hands did not cooperate. “I’m trying not to, thanks.”
“Alright then. Meet me in the kitchen?”
As Marcus left her alone again, she closed the door with her foot and stood before the mirror, turning her attention to whatever was hiding inside the sleeves of her shirt.
Down from her two bony shoulders hung arms that seemed to have been shrunken in MS Paint by a 5 year old. Her upper arms, barely 3 inches long, articulated into an elbow of sorts that led into a pair of hands about half the size of her usual ones. With her arms and fingers stretched out, they could only reach as low as the bottom of her rib cage, which would explain how she felt Marcus’ hands so high on her ribs when he had grabbed hers. Bending her arms and rolling her shoulders forward, her fingers brushed against each other and a wave of relief washed over her. Something about not having fingers at all the day before had left a weird impression on her mind.
Still close to her face, relatively speaking that is, she clenched her fists and noticed some missing digits. Her right hand had no thumb, and the three fingers remaining all poked out of a reduced palm a lot smaller than it should’ve been. The same could be said about her left although it did have a thumb, which looked more like a misplaced pointer finger than what it was supposed to be. Seven fingers in total. Not a complete set, but it would do, she thought.
Was that it, then? Those were the arms she was going to use for the most important day out of recent memory? She clenched her fists again and pounded punily at her sides before storming out of the bathroom looking for her phone.
There it was, on her nightstand, beside her smartwatch. She laughed bitterly at the idea of putting a watch onto such small arms but did it anyway. First sitting on the bed, she grabbed it between her toes and slipped it on her left upper arm, using the knee of her left leg as support for the right. Then, leaning close to the screen of her phone to reach it with her small arms, she stared at their honeymoon picture which she recognized immediately: both of them posing in front of a sunset on a beach of white sand. That was during their honeymoon three years ago. He was as handsome as the setting sun, sporting an unbuttoned white collared shirt and a few days old beard.
Lovingly snuggled in his arms, she wore a delicate short coral dress, smiling from ear to ear. She knew this photo by heart, but not like this. At least I’m standing, she thought, looking at the toned leg sticking out from the bottom of the dress. But from the frilled sleeves, her arms could barely be seen. The fingers of her right hand seemed curled at the seam, holding on to it absently as she beamed a smile at the photographer.
Grabbing a bra from a nearby hook, she brought it over to her boyfriend for some assistance and finished getting dressed by herself, mostly utilizing her feet as makeshift hands to pull and adjust her clothes around her body. She stood in front of the bathroom mirror again and twirled around, enjoying the whirlwind of colors her dress produced.
—
She stood in front of the café with her mouth slightly agape and looked around, like she was expecting to spot someone spying on her.
She toyed at the sleeves of her dress mindlessly, and numerous passersby needed a double take to confirm what they were seeing for it was truly a unique sight. After taking a moment to center herself and a few deep breaths, Amber hit the automatic door button with her knee and forced herself to walk in.
The warm outside air was promptly replaced by a cooler, although not unpleasant, air conditioned ambiance. Lofi atmospheric music filled the room and was punctually interrupted by the clinking of glasses and cups together or on wooden surfaces, and of utensils fighting against their targets. Finding the leather strap of her handbag near her right shoulder, she closed her three fingers on it and made her way deeper in, making eye contact with the barista. She flicked on her back the two tight french braids that secured her dark brown hair and smiled at Amber.
“Hey there! How’s it going?” Her voice thrilled like a lyrebird’s, high pitched and melodic.
Amber smiled back, her small fist still clutched at her side. “Fine, I guess. Do I just sit wherever?”
“Yup! I’ll be right there, hold tight.”
“Thanks.”
She found herself a cozy little nook away from prying eyes and squatted her headbag away from her shoulders and onto her chair. She strained her left arm and craned her neck to look at the time. 11:55. Right on time.
Maureen showed up a minute later, her name written in big bubbly letters on the front of her apron. “So, what can I do for you?” She whipped a notepad from her back pocket and a pen from behind her ear. “I know it’s early but we have a new batch of draught available if you want to take a look at the blackboard behind me.”
Squinting her eyes slightly, Amber read the menu diagonally, her arms bent in front of her nervously. “Do you do hot ciders here?”
Her eyes were fixed on her, but never seemed to drift towards her arms. “Yes we do! With a stick of cinnamon?”
“Yes. Please.” She added quickly before forgetting. “And thank you.”
“You are most welcome. Would you like a straw to go with?”
Amber stammered, taken aback by the smoothness with which Maureen had asked her. With no mention of her arms and such a simple question, she had put a lot of her concerns aside. She felt strangely seen. “I would, actually, thank you.” She relaxed her arms and straightened her back, noticing how slouched she had been for the last few seconds. Even though her limbs hung limp at her sides, Maureen still paid no attention to them at all.
“No problem.” She closed her notepad. “If you need anything else to be at ease, please let me know.”
“I will, thanks.”
Amber smiled back at Maureen and somehow managed to contain her gasp as the latter walked away. She was missing both legs beneath the knees. From underneath her dark green capris, two flowery decorated prosthetics were showing, their plastic sheen unmistakably fake. She made her way back behind the bar and Amber only now noticed that her gait was slightly off, her feet meeting the ground with less subtlety than she would’ve expected. What were the odds of crossing paths with another amputee so close to her work place? And on a day like this one, too?
As she took another look at her watch, the door of the café opened to let in another customer. Tall, bushy beard, a man in his late fifties made his way towards Amber's table aided by not one but two walking sticks. Around his shoulders hung an old beige fisherman’s coat, decorated by a few rusty bobbles.
She felt a drop of sweat trickle down her back and wished she had the range of motion to wipe it off. It was him. The man that kept calling her day after day at the office, she was sure of it. Fixated on her at first, his gaze soon lowered to his own body to help coordinate his movements. Somehow, something was wrong with him, too. His knees bent in unusual angles, his legs were unsteady. She could see bulky braces sticking out of his boots, stabilizing his ankles. As he came up to her table, he grabbed the chair opposite to her with a shaking hand and slumped on it gracelessly with a slight wheeze. Putting his canes aside, he joined his tremor ridden hands on the table.
“Hello Amber.”
Her mouth opened and closed a lot more times than she would’ve liked to admit. Words bumped into each other inside her head and prevented her from forming a coherent idea, leaving her utterly speechless. The man broke the silence again.
“Not what you were expecting, I guess?”
“I… Uh..” She scoffed and bent her right arm awkwardly before her. “I’m not sure what I expected exactly.
“Did you think you were coming in here to meet with your captor? With the source of all your troubles?” He looked tired. Unbelievably tired. “I’m sorry to disappoint you.”
“So you’re telling me you’re not the one causing all of…” She gestured around her tinily with her arms and they bounced back at her sides like the fins of a penguin. “This?”
That was the moment Maureen decided to bring in Amber’s hot cider, cinnamon stick and straw included, as promised, along with two purple macaroons on a small plate.
“Good morning Mr. Parkinson! The usual I presume?”
“Why change what’s not broken?” He looked up at her and laughed softly, kindly. “Thanks Maureen.”
“Parkinson?” Amber whispered under her breath after Maureen’s quick come and go.
“Pretty ironic on a day like this, isn’t it?” He ran a shaking hand across his beard. “I’m not related to the guy, before you ask.”
“What do you mean?” Amber dipped her lips to take a sip of her cider. The warmth traveled down her throat down to her stomach and seemed to ripple through her body like a miraculous balm.
“Huh?” Completely focused on not spilling his own cup of coffee, he hadn’t heard her question.
“You said… On a day like this… What does this mean?”
The man took a loud slurp of his beverage and dried off the tip of his mustache with the inside of his collar. “Let’s just say that you and I aren’t so different after all.” He lifted his hands and inspected them closely, as if looking back at old, lost friends.
There was a loud bang in Amber’s head. She straightened herself yet again and frowned. Her back was sore from all the movements her torso had to do to compensate for her mediocre reach. “What… What is going on, Mr Parkinson?”
“You…” With a voice filled with emotions, leagues away from the devious man she thought he was when he had made these phone calls, he uttered the following words in a whisper. “You are not alone.”
Amber instantly broke into a sweat, her hands twitching at her sides, fumbling in her sleeves. “But, but… How? Why?!” She felt lightheaded and wanted to run. There was a scream at the edge of her lips but her lungs refused to push it out. She leaned forward and placed her hands on the table, her palms laying asymmetrically and her fingers tangled like two small balls of yarn. “Please tell me what’s happening to me. I’m begging you.”
“You already know what’s happening to you.” He joined his hands again in a useless attempt to prevent them from shaking. “You wake up every day to find yourself back at the start of the same week, living through the same day and the same routine. Events go by and repeat themselves like reruns of old shows on cable TV and every time you wake up, you find part of your body disabled in ways you never thought could be possible. And the worst thing is, nobody around you notices a single fucking thing.”
She thought about Marcus, her husband, the man with which she had been sharing her life for the past few years. How he had dealt with his wife’s vanishing limbs without the shadow of a concern, never questioning the changes in her body. Her challenges might’ve been alleviated if he had been aware of it and helped her psychologically but…
“But… How?” Her voice was only a whisper.
“I.. I wish I knew, Amber.” He took another sip of coffee before adding : “Then I could’ve freed myself from it.”
She looked back on him as if under a new light. He looked tired. Terrifyingly tired. “How… How long have you been stuck in this.. this time loop, Mr Parkinson?”
He sighed and looked at the ceiling, looking for either courage or guidance, but found none. He cleared his throat. “Thirty seven years, five weeks and three days.”
Nausea rose in Amber’s head and she gagged, barely able to hold the content of her stomach. Anxious tears formed at the corner of her eyes and the room spun around her like her blood pressure had just plummeted. Her face went pale and she rested her back against the leather cushions of her seat, her hands unnervingly still too close to her chest. She closed her eyes and tried to focus on her breathing but her head was spinning too fast. First the random amputations, the disabilities, the hardships, and now she was going to be stuck here, or rather stuck now, for years? Decades?! Someone slumped beside her and slid its hand around Amber’s.
“It’s going to be okay.” The voice said melodically, as if it had been directly ripped out of a song. It was Maureen. “We’re here to help you.”
Amber tightened her grip around the girl’s hand and looked down at her prosthetic legs. “You too?!”
Maureen chuckled. “Consider yourself lucky, I have two hands today. I wouldn’t’ve been able to serve you as quickly yesterday with my right side completely missing.”
“How long has it been for you?!” Amber asked, unsure if she really wanted to know the answer.
“A little over two years.” She let go of Amber’s hands and reached for Mr Parkinson’s, tenderly hiding his tremors from view. “Mr Parkinson is always the one reaching out to new people. I appreciate him more than he’s willing to admit.”
He freed one of his hands and gently returned the favor on Maureen’s. “You are among the things that keep me going day after day.”
Still shaken from these revelations, Amber shook her head and tried to anchor herself back into the present, taking another sip of her hot cider. She took a deep breath and the smell of cinnamon filled her nose comfortingly.
“So, what you’re saying is there are other people like us?” Amber asked.
“With you in the mix, we are now eight people that I know of, three of which meet with Maureen and I on a regular basis. We would be glad to count you within our midst.”
“This is surreal.” Amber’s eyes darted between the two. “You mean to tell me that you meet up like a disabled book club once in a Blue Moon?”
“Every 10 days to be precise. Here, at 8pm, in the last booth to your right.” Amber followed Maureen’s finger as she pointed in the direction. “It serves as a sort of therapy for us. It feels good to be surrounded by people that understand what you’re going through, you know?”
“And when’s the next reunion?” Amber asked.
“Tomorrow evening. The others would be happy to meet you, I’m sure of it.” Maureen’s smile was reassuring and sincere.
Amber bit her lip. “And what if I can’t make it? What if I wake up paralyzed from the neck down? Or, or… without limbs at all?”
“Then we meet 10 days later. Not everyone shows up every time, you know. We all have worse days than others. Maureen here is the most assiduous but that hardly a feat, she’s renting the apartment right above our heads. Ow!”
Maureen had pinched the skin of his arm teasingly, and his slow reflexes had prevented him from retaliating. “You forgot to tell her that I’m also responsible for making the reservation, and I do it even when I’m mute and deaf!”
He laughed goodheartedly. “She’s a good one, Maureen. Always hard at work despite her shifting limitations.”
Maureen smiled back at Mr Parkinson. “Speaking of work, Miss Cooke is going to be done with her tea in two minutes, I’ll get her water started right away.”
Amber and Mr Parkinson stayed silent for a while, watching the world revolve around them, examining each other. When he pushed the plate of macaroons towards her, she leaned forward and twisted her torso to grab one with her right hand before remembering she wouldn’t be able to bring it to her mouth. She dropped it again and used her mouth instead, eating it all in one bite. It was a little dry, but good nonetheless. She rinsed her mouth with another big sip of cider.
“What now?” She asked.
Mr Parkinson sighed and shrugged. “I’m sorry.”
Amber frowned. “Sorry? Sorry for what?”
“For a bunch of things..” He let out a short laugh. “But mostly for these phone calls at your job. I wish I could’ve met you sooner, but I…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know. I needed to be sure you weren’t in on this… trick. I want to believe that one day I’ll finally catch the person responsible for this, and every time I contact a new person… I hope this will be the end.”
“So it’s true what Maureen said earlier? That you reach out to others when it starts happening?” He nodded. “How? How did you get my number? How did you know where and when to call?”
“That’s a story for another time, Amber.” He fumbled at his sleeve to look at his watch. “You better get back to work, lunchtime is almost over.”
“Like it even matters.” She tapped her ribs with her arms, as useless as wings on a baby bird. “I’ve called off of work a few times now to stay at home and watch TV and I suffered zero consequences. I think I’d much rather do that than get through the same work day over and over again without anything ever changing.”
“And I think you’ll be quick to change your mind. Routine is often what keeps us grounded. Look at Maureen.” They turned their heads and watched her run behind the counter, arms and hands tangled in a choreography of synchronized movements, flicks, stirs, and pours. “She’s been serving the same clients every day for more than two years. It didn’t take her long to get it all memorized, let alone chatting them up and getting to know their life stories by heart. She could probably do it with her eyes closed. If tomorrow she wakes up missing an eye, or with deformed hands affixed to her shoulders like yourself,” Amber bent her arms to bring her limbs closer to her, almost feeling ashamed of looking this way, “at least she knows that her usuals are still going to be there as an anchor point.”
Amber stared back at him, at his tired eyes, at the experience and the pain he must’ve endured over all these years. She knew there must’ve been truth in his words, but her current state of mind wouldn’t allow her to perceive it. She looked at the time on her own watch and downed the rest of her cider, which had now gone lukewarm. She stood up reluctantly.
“I should be going then, I guess.” Grabbing the strap of her bag between her toes, she skillfully lifted it onto her left shoulder while balancing on her left leg. “I'll see you tomorrow, Mr Parkinson.”
“Take care of yourself, Amber. Oh and… don't bother paying for your cider. It's on me.” He winked at her.
After saying goodbye to Maureen, she fumbled her fist out of its sleeve and clasped it around the strap of her bag, turning around to press her back against the door. After one last look inside the café, she pushed it open and walked out into the afternoon sun.