Chapter 3
Tony
My entire life as a hand tool in a box, I haven’t been washed. It didn’t even bother me, really. Which is weird. I haven’t thought about dirt this whole time. I haven’t worried about what I touch or what touches me. I’ve just lived, if that’s what you want to call it.
But now there’s water on me, and soap. It’s nice. Gotta say, I like it. It’s not like this panicky feeling. It’s just warm and bubbly. The way Julia’s fingernail gets in every groove is nice too. I can’t feel it, but I can feel it.
When I had hands to wash, you bet I washed them ten times a day. At one point, they were so cracked they hurt like fuck, so I put lotion on them. But the lotion made me want to wash my hands. I tried gloves, but they made my palms sweat which made me need to wash my hands. So that stopped.
The guys, one time, changed everything in the office. They shifted the corkboard so it was crooked. Our business license upside down. The boxes stacked unevenly. The shit in the fridge in uneven numbers.
It was as if everything went right to fucking hell.
It took hours to fix. I’d make the desk blotter parallel with the edge of the desk and realize the casters on the chair were facing all different directions.
“You guys are fucking assholes!” I’d cried. If I could only slap them all with both hands at a time. And still, all I wanted to do was fix Lorenzo’s fucking collar.
“Didn’t work.” Caspian gave Giancarlo’s shoulder a hard pat as he passed by into his office, which was a nightmare of asymmetry.
Lorenzo just shook his head and sat on the edge of Giancarlo’s desk.
“What?” I said. “You all think this is funny?”
“What if Kellie quits?” Lorenzo asked as if he was so reluctant to tell me our secretary was unhappy, he had to phrase it as a question.
I also didn’t know what she had to do with the symmetry of the office. If she quit, it was probably because Caspian was bending her over a desk three times a week.
“Because of Cas?” I sat at my desk and slapped open my ledgers.
“Because of you,” Giancarlo said in his serious voice.
“I never laid a finger on her.”
Shit. I’d touched the ledger.
Hands, hands, gotta wash your hands.
“She can’t keep up with your like, fucking… everything has to be perfectly straight and even every minute. I don’t…”
The ledger had been touching the shelf, and now something I couldn’t see was on my hands. I didn’t care. Not really. Except for the noise in my head.
Wash wash wash.
“…blame her. I love you, man. And I’ll never…”
I stood and pulled a tissue from the box.
“…ask you to change but you’re hard to…”
Even though I was going to wash my hands in a minute, I used the tissue to protect me from the doorknob. Just to be safe.
“…work with.”
Just as I opened the door, Giancarlo’s voice cut through the noise in my head.
“Stop.”
I stopped, because Caspian may have the office, but Giancarlo’s the one who gave the orders.
“What?”
“Kellie’s the third secretary we’ve had in a year.”
“Marion got married. Jennifer moved to Ohio.”
“Marion got married, true. She also took a job at National Importers.”
“Are you saying they left because of me?”
My fault. Something is my fault.
Stop.
“She didn’t have to leave, bro,” Lorenzo said with real pity. His collar is still uneven. My hands are still dirty. “And I saw Jenn at Breakers this weekend.”
That’s in Los Angeles, not Ohio.
“Two women changed their minds.” My hands feel like crud. My brain’s telling me they’re crusted over with germs.
“I got a few drinks in her and she told me it was you. She likes you. Says you’re a good guy and all, but she couldn’t keep up with the straightening and shit. It made her feel like she wasn’t good enough.”
“She was good enough!” I shouted to drown out, for one second, the way my hands buzzed in my brain.
I knew what they were getting at, and they may have been right, but I couldn’t take it another second. I had to wash my hands.
It’s not fair to say I was cured by becoming a tool, because it’s not like that can be reproduced for anyone else. But when she dries me off, all I can think about is how, without a brain, the brain noise has been completely shut off.