Hot Little Hands Read Online Free PDF

flicker and dark of the movie, I closed my eyes. There was no soundtrack but I listened to the up-and-down lilts of the language as though it were music. I leaned my head onto his shoulder. His jacket still held the cold of the rain and it smelled like outside when I breathed into it. Mr. Ackerman put his hand on my hair and stroked it. I felt dizzy and humid, like I was flying above myself in the dark. I imagined him standing below me like that painter guy, getting ready to catch me before I hit the ground.
    “Mr. Ackerman,” I whispered, my teeth against his jacket.
    “Are you tired, Sascha?” His mouth found my ear and he took his eyes off the screen. “Or do you want to go somewhere else?”

“T here’s this story about a girl who goes to see her gynecologist,” I tell the gynecologist. “She gets up early on the morning of, while her roommates are still sleeping, and goes for a run. When she comes home, she’s all sweaty, but she doesn’t have time to shower before her appointment. So she grabs a towel and wipes herself off. You know, down there.”
    “Uh-huh,” says Dr. Hill as she holds the speculum against my thigh. “This might be a bit cold.” She inserts it into me. It
is
a bit cold, and uncomfortable. I worry for a moment that there will be a sharp edge or angle on there that she doesn’t know about. “Go on,” she says. “So she wipes herself off—”
    “Yeah. Then she goes to the gyno and takes off her pants, gets on the chair, spreads her—oh.” I hold my breath as she cranks the thing open. It squeaks as it pushes against me.
    “Lie back,” she says. “Breathe. Concentrate on the bear.” I press my head back into the chair and stare at the poster stuck to the ceiling above me, a photo print of a bear standing on a grassy hilltop. “That’s it,” she says, as she gets me wide open.
    “So the girl spreads her legs, and the gyno comes in—it’s a man—and he comes into the room, stands in front of her, looks between her legs, and says, ‘Oh, I see you dressed up for me today.’ ”
    Dr. Hill scrapes a cotton swab against my cervix. The discomfort feels real and far away, like someone yelling your name outside your front door while you’re sleeping.
    “And the deal is, the girl lives with this raver chick, and the towel she grabbed to wipe herself off was covered with the chick’s face glitter. So the gyno thinks she’s applied it especially for him.”
    “Urban legend,” says Dr. Hill as she winds the speculum closed.
    “Really?” I say, sitting up and leaning back on my elbows.
    “Absolutely.”
    I inhale as she pulls the metal out of me. Inside I feel like I felt in eleventh grade, when Becky Addis and I got drunk in the park and she shoved her hand down my jeans and put her fingers inside me with fingernails that were too long.
    “Vaginas don’t sweat,” says Dr. Hill. “Not inside anyway. I’ll go to the lab and check on your other tests. Why don’t you get dressed and meet me in my office.”
    —
    I expect AIDS, because I had sex with this Irish guy who told me he’d gone to see prostitutes in Amsterdam. I expect herpes because this drummer Chris went down on me and I found a tube of Zovirax on the floor under his bed the next morning. I expect HPV because I saw a segment about it on
60 Minutes
last week. I expect chlamydia, gonorrhea, hep A, B, C because I’m a floozy whose back catalog of lovers should be organized with the Dewey decimal system. But I do not expect a fetus. And that’s what it is.
    “Do you know who the father is?” Dr. Hill asks me.
    “Yes,” I say.
    “Was this something the two of you planned?”
    “No,” I say. “Complete accident.”
    “What precautions were you taking?”
    “He was, uh, pulling out.”
    “The withdrawal method?” she asks. She shakes her head as I nod mine. “Very risky.” She opens a desk drawer and takes out a pamphlet with a photo of a pensive-looking Asian girl on the front. Above her head it