Never a Hero

Makes me appreciate the dumb ones a bit more, you know?” He moved a box off a kitchen chair and motioned me toward it. “Sit down.”
    I did, and immediately had Bert’s head in my lap and Betty scrambling on her back paws, standing at attention near my knees. I put my right hand out and let them both sniff and nuzzle me. I stroked Bert’s head, then reached for Betty. As I did, Bert nudged his head against my left arm. He didn’t care there wasn’t a hand there, so I rubbed his neck with the rounded end of my arm while petting Betty.
    “You’ll be their new best friend,” Nick said.
    I suddenly became aware of his eyes on me. Of the fact that I was sitting in front of him with my greatest insecurity exposed. Usually I didn’t leave the house without a long sleeve covering my stump and now here I was, not only with it uncovered, but using it as if it were a whole, useful limb. It was something that often made people uncomfortable, but when I looked up at him, he wasn’t looking at my ruined arm. He also wasn’t doing what most people did, straining so hard to not look at it that I could almost taste their discomfort. Instead, he was shaking his head at his dogs.
    “Go lie down, guys!”
    “They’re fine.”
    He laughed. “You say that now, but they’ll have you petting them all night.” He turned and pulled a beer out of the fridge, twisted the top off, and handed me the bottle. “Here. Drink this. Please. The guys brought them for moving day, but didn’t finish them. Somebody should drink them.”
    “What about you?”
    “I don’t drink.”
    I looked down at the open beer in my hand, thinking about how Nick hadn’t hesitated to open it. Every other time somebody had handed me a beer, they’d done it with the top on. I could hold the bottle against my body with my left arm and open it with my right hand, but that always led to them either apologizing and offering to do it for me, or turning away and pretending they didn’t notice my awkwardness, but not with Nick. There hadn’t even been the telltale split second of hesitation as he wondered how to handle the situation. Maybe he would have opened it for anybody. Maybe the fact that I had only one hand had nothing to do with it.
    Why did it matter so much, anyway?
    I took a drink of beer while Nick went about clearing off another chair to sit in. His arms flexed as he shifted boxes. Hints of tattoo ink peeked from beneath his sleeves. When he bent over, his T-shirt rode up a bit in the back. His pants weren’t low enough to make it embarrassing, but I could see the curve of his back, the way the soft flesh of his sides dipped toward his spine. I could imagine the way that bit of skin would feel under my hand.
    I took a gulp of beer and looked away from him as he turned to sit down, rather than be caught staring. The kitchen was small and packed with boxes. From where I sat, I could see into what would have been the dining room, except instead of a table and chairs, it held Regina’s baby grand piano. So many times I’d heard her playing it, and yet this was the first time I’d seen it. The lid was closed, and like everything else, it was covered with boxes.
    “Takes up a hell of a lot of room.”
    “She used to play every night. I can’t believe she left it.”
    “Huh.” But he clearly wasn’t interested in Regina or her piano. Instead, he was staring at my left arm. “Amniotic band?” He asked the question without apology or embarrassment.
    I felt a blush begin to creep up my neck. I nodded. Yes, it had been an amniotic band that had robbed me of my arm when I was still in utero. It occurred in approximately one of every twelve hundred live births. Not so terribly rare, and yet sometimes I felt as if it made me a freak, like I was the only person walking around who wasn’t one hundred percent complete. And yet, I found Nick’s candor refreshing. A lifetime of living with such a simple disability, yet I’d never had anybody but doctors address me about it with such openness. “How’d you know?”
    He shrugged. “Just a guess. My sister’s your opposite. Missing her right arm.” He touched his forearm. “About the same placement, too.”
    I looked down at the pink tapered end of my missing arm. I put my hand over it, trying to hide it, and yet when I looked at Nick, it was obvious he wasn’t thinking about my missing arm at all. He was looking around at the piles of boxes, stacked ominously around us.
    “God, moving