Pulse

circulation, of the cold making the blood concentrate in more important areas and withdraw from the extremities.
    She found her gloves: dark brown ones, I remember. She pulled them on a little haphazardly, then meshed her fingers to push the wool down to the base of each finger. We walked on, discussing the film, paused, smiled, paused, parted; my car was parked ten yards beyond hers. As I was about to unlock it, I glanced back. She was still standing on the pavement, looking down. I gave her a few moments, decided something was wrong, and walked back.
    ‘The car keys,’ she said without looking up at me. There wasn’t much light and she was digging in her bag, feeling as much as looking for them. Then she added, with sudden violence, ‘Come on, you fool.’
    For a moment I thought she was talking to me. Then I realised she was angry only with herself, embarrassed by herself, and the more embarrassed that her inability to find her keys – and also, perhaps, her anger – were being witnessed by me. But I was hardly going to dock her points. As I stood there, watching her struggle, two things happened: I felt what I would describe as tenderness, were it not so ferocious; and my cock gave a sudden spurt of growth.
    I remembered the first time a dentist gave me an injection; he left the room while the anaesthetic took effect, returned briskly, slid his finger into my mouth, ran it round the base of the tooth he was going to fill, and asked if I felt anything. I remembered the numbness that strikes when you sit toolong with your legs crossed. I remembered stories of doctors pushing pins into a patient’s leg without the patient reacting at all.
    What I wanted to know the answer to was this. If I had been bolder, if I had raised my right hand against her left, laid palm gently against palm, finger against finger, in some lovers’ high five, and if I had then pressed the tips of my first, second and third fingers against hers, would she have felt anything? What does it feel like when there’s no feeling there – both to her, and to me? She sees my fingers against hers, but feels nothing; I see my fingers against hers, and feel them, but know that she feels nothing?
    And of course I was also asking myself the question in a wider, more alarming sense.
    I thought about one person wearing gloves and the other one not; about how flesh feels against wool, wool against flesh.
    I tried to imagine all the gloves she might wear, both now and in the future – if there was to be a future I was present in.
    I’d seen one pair of brown woollen gloves. I decided, given her condition, to equip her with several extra pairs in different colours. Then, for colder days and nights, some warmer, suede ones: black, I imagined (to match her hair), with heavy white stitching along the fingers, and beigey rabbit-fur lining. And then perhaps a pair of those gloves like paws, with a single thumb and a broad pouch for the fingers.
    At work she would presumably wear surgical gloves, thin, latex ones offering the least barrier between doctor and patient – and yet any barrier destroys that essential feel of flesh on flesh. Surgeons wear tight-fitting gloves, other medical staff looser ones, like those you see in delis when you order ham, and watch slices peeled from the rotating blade.
    I wondered if she was, or would ever become, a gardener. She might wear latex gloves for light work in well-tilled soil, for sorting out rootlets and seedlings and delicate foliage. But then she would need a stronger pair – I imagined yellow cotton backs, with grey leather palms and fingers – for heavier work: pruning, forking the ground over, pulling up bindweed and nettle roots.
    I wondered if she had any use for mitts. I’ve never seen the point of them myself. Who wears them, apart from Russian sleigh-drivers and misers in TV Dickens? And given what happened to the tips of her fingers, all the more reason not to.
    I wondered if the circulation to her feet was curtailed as well, in which case: bedsocks. What would they be like? Big and woolly – perhaps some ex-boyfriend’s rugby socks, which would fall loosely around her ankles when she stood up? Or close-fitting and female? In some lifestyle supplement, I’d seen gaudy bedsocks made with individual toes. I wondered if I’d find them a neutral accessory, comic, or somehow erotic.
    What else? Might she ski, and have a pair of puffy gloves to match a puffy jacket? Oh, and of course, washing-up