Something To Do With My Hands
an excerpt

“Well, it's b-bb-ba...b-b...I d-d-on't know what I'm t—t-rying to ss-a-y.” I quickly tried to inspect the bottom of my beer, found it about a third of the way full, and blew across the top. I scrutinized the floral detail on the cupboard knob behind Drew's shoulder, then blew across the top again, hummed the note, then a third, then a fifth.

“Major c-c-chord.” I offered hopefully.

Drew laughed, eyebrows kinked in puzzlement. I tried to concentrate again on a small object around his periphery, but homed back to the center. “Air,” I squawked as I fanned myself and looked for the nearest exit, which presented itself in the form of the half-open window next to the television shelf in the corner of the apartment's main room. The window led out to the house's back porch roof, and the curtains I'd made for Sarah and Abby out of some crazy old floral bed sheet billowed in gentle invitation, as if offering me the out.

I drained my beer, haphazardly grabbed another out of the fridge and stepped on the clear path to the window. The breeze's fingers had grown sharp nails since the sun had gone down, but the clear full moon sky left it bright enough to make out the detail on the porch roof's railing and the scatter shot detritus of the backyard, and the cumulative body heat of the party and my own anxiety, not to mention the soft-lensed body blush that four or five drinks will bring about, left the chilly bite of the air as inviting as the curtains' full figured wave. I stuck one leg out, recentered myself over the sill, and swung my torso under the sash, shifting my weight onto the gentle pitch of the roof. I was a little surprised to find it deserted, but relieved by the silence of it. The gentle syncopated thump of hip-hop from the party skinned over as I stepped fully outside and up to the railing which bordered the roof in an honest assessment of the attraction of an accessible, shallowly pitched roof. The breeze tiptoe tickled the recently bared locust branches in the backyard, reaching under the hairs curling down my neck to my shoulders and running up the skin of my shirtsleeve-bare arm, prickling up the attention of the hairs on my arm. I breathed in deeply through my nose, lips pursed and tucked between my teeth, and released back out in a brief cloud of cartoon steam. I felt like I should have some exaggeratedly big cartoon cigar to go with it, and huffed out another breath, wishing I had some sense of how to blow smoke rings. Can you even blow steam rings? Probably not. You'd think that everyone would have practiced it as a kid if you could get away with that, but I huffed out a few breaths thinking round thoughts without much in the way of results.

I realized that I'd hurried outside without stopping to open my beer. I fished around in the pocket of my jeans in search of something suitable for prying off the lid and pulled out my mini leatherman. I sat down on the edge of the roof, dangled my legs under the beam and over the edge, leaned my arms over the beam, and popped the beer bottle's cap over the edge on the second pry, sending it clattering tinnily onto the flagstone below. I took a sip then paused to actually look at what I was drinking, not that I really felt too picky at this point. Ah, yes, this point; where I've drunk enough to loosen the filtration system but, being me, it's never enough to make the critical peanut gallery quit altogether their near constant side-swiping, underhanded remarks. Some people visualize having an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other shoulder (likely with the devil on the left shoulder – the word sinister is the Latin word for left). Me, I have a full panel of judges, like my life is some sort of diving competition, only with more commentary. In fact, they get even more gregarious when I've been drinking. At this particular moment, the Belgian judge was having a particular problem with my choice of beer.

“Oh, shut up, Jan, they can't all be Trappists” I thought at him, and he shot me an indignant glare with his putty-Muppet face. Gianni, the Italian judge was reading a big-armed riot act over my disappearing on Drew yet again. Jukka, the Finnish judge, on the other hand, gave the weather an approvingly high 7.6, though, and I smiled, slightly more on the right than the left, into the breeze again.