Hot Little Hands Read Online Free PDF Page B

reads, SO…YOU’RE PREGNANT.
    “I don’t need that,” I say.
    “Are you sure?” She holds the pamphlet toward me like a stubborn canvasser on a street corner.
    “I know my options,” I say. “I don’t want the baby.”
    She puts her hands in her lap. “Well, then,” she says. “I guess you’re looking at adoption, or a termination.”
    “I want a termination,” I tell her. “Is that still legal in this country?”
    She leans back in her desk chair and sighs. “Thirty-five years of fighting to maintain our rights and every second girl who sits in that chair asks me that question.”
    “I’m not American,” I remind her. “How soon can I get this done?”
    “Well—” She pushes the mouse across the mousepad to wake her computer. “It’s too late to book you in somewhere today, and most places will be closed over the weekend.”
    She types something in and I look around her office. It’s almost empty, except for the desk, the two chairs, the computer, a phone, and a poster on the wall telling me to ask my doctor about the IUD coil.
    “What’s the IUD coil?” I ask her.
    “One thing at a time,” she says. “I found an open appointment, on Monday at two thirty, at a center in South San Francisco. They offer a free and confidential counseling service onsite. I also suggest you talk this decision over with someone beforehand. A close friend or family member. The father, perhaps?” She looks in the drawer for another pamphlet.
    Suddenly I’m aware of how alone I am in this city, how far away all my best friends and family are. Suddenly I’m wishing that my teenage experimentation with Becky Addis had taken; that she and I were now living together in a cottage on the coast of Brighton, clipping our fingernails as foreplay, flushing our contraceptive pills down the toilet, and laughing triumphantly at our risk-free lesbian life.
    —
    Being unexpectedly pregnant is like learning that someone you love has died. You remember, then you forget, then all of a sudden it dawns on you again. The brain separates the enormous shock into many minor shocks and doles them out at five-minute intervals. I walk to the BART station. I’m pregnant. I buy a ticket. I’m pregnant. I ride the train and get out at 24th Street. I’m pregnant. I buy a pack of cigarettes at the corner store. I give the woman seven dollars and she hands me coins. I’m pregnant. I go to see Luke at the Common Room.
    “Hey, I’m pregnant.”
    “What?” He can’t hear me. He’s standing behind the espresso machine, his manager Katie is at the roaster, and Slow Club is crooning through the speakers. “Did you get my text messages?” he asks loudly.
    “Probably not all of them,” I say. “You filled up the memory on my phone so I couldn’t receive new ones.”
    “Well, I wouldn’t have to send so many if you just answered one.” He doses into the portafilter and tamps it down. “What are you doing here anyway?” He slams the instrument harder than he needs to into the machine and positions a cup under the spouts. “I told you it makes me uncomfortable to see you.”
    Then we have the same fight we’ve been having for the last three weeks.
    “I’ve been coming here since the first day I got to the city. Way before I even met you.”
    “Well, I was working here a year before you even arrived in the States.”
    “This café is one of the reasons I moved to this neighborhood.”
    “Well, there are other coffee shops in the Mission District.”
    “Why don’t you work in one of them, then?”
    “Are you fucking serious?” he says. “Low-fat latte for Allie,” he calls out.
    I’m pregnant,
I think.
    “Look,” he says. “I still love you. If you don’t want to be in contact with me, you can’t come in here.”
    “Oh yeah?” I say. “If you’re so in love with me, why did you change your MySpace status to single?”
    “You’re the one who said you wanted a clean break.”
    “And you took my band out of your