Manny lost his thumb while carving initials into a Sunset Park sycamore on Christmas day.

He had run from his house, boots crushing through a fresh snowfall north towards the hill. Streets empty, storefronts shuttered. Occasional fire hydrant peeking out from the drift, curious snouts wondering where the world went.

From within his red skully, Manny could hear the blood coursing. Beat of a thirteen-year-old heart. Breath echoing through insulation, cloudy puffs like locomotion. Joining a city without aromatics, not a single taqueria open for business, bakeries shut down.

Thought maybe he caught the faint scent of Chinese from on 8th Avenue.

Manny wasn’t sure he could be sure of anything anymore.

Wasn’t sure he even needed all those layers.

Body heat like wildfire to the point where his skin presented with an actual tingle.

All signed in triplicate when he saw Maya standing beneath their tree.

Couldn’t handle another minute without her, and Manny boosted himself up the four-foot wall ensnaring Sunset Park like a four-block flower pot. Rolled onto his back. Sunk halfway through the snow. Brought a few deformed angels to life as he struggled to his feet. Ample gut interfering with half-assed sit-ups. Felt that Christmas present digging into his thigh. Got himself straightened out and ran up the hill, transported

halfway through time and space, suddenly at Maya’s side.

Her face protruded from beneath a pink wool hat. Slender nose a crooked arrowhead. Hazel eyes with flecks of hot chocolate. Red winter cheeks accenting caramel skin. Large lips, chapped and smiling, showing off the righteous gleam of metal and green rubber bands.

She blinked.

Manny asked if she had decided.

She pulled at her fingers. Removed a purple glove, showed him the back of her hand.

Right index. A plastic novelty ring topped with a Christmas tree.

Topped with a star.

She stared up at him. Laughed. Assured him it wasn’t derisive, it was only his face. His crazy, overjoyed grin, she told him, he looked like a crazy boy.

Manny didn’t mind, but felt a terrified panic take hold as her own smile faded. Lines left behind on either side of her mouth, insisting this moment was not an illusion. Alone in the middle of a city gone quiet. Gray day. Sting of a slight southern wind. The galvanizing rush of colors, distant buildings standing out, popping from their foundations, oversaturation, the seconds before a kiss.

He caved, deflected the oncoming event.

Turned to the tree and reached into his pocket.

Pulled out his SOG Aegis Assisted folding knife. AEO4-CP, fresh from its Christmas wrapper. Unsheathed the blade: 3.5 inch AUS-8 steel, partially serrated with a black TiNi finish.

Heard Maya produce a tiny crystallized gasp.

Manny liked the sound.

He cut into the tree. Right hand against the bark to steady, and started with her initials. Maya asked him what he was doing. Breathless and rhetorical. Manny fashioned a plus sign, then carved his own. Before she could thank him, Manny insisted it wasn’t complete without a heart.

He almost made it.

Bottom left, top two chambers, then on back down, when he slipped.

His parents hadn’t skimped on quality, and the blade went right through his glove, through skin, sinew, bone and all.

Blood gushed once, twice. Three fat geysers of red all over those initials, his life’s work.

He began to scream. Vaguely despairing at the pitch, so many octaves above masculine.

Maya kept her head. Took her hat off, erratic static sending strands out and all over. Wrapped Manny’s hand in pink wool, gently telling him to shush as he began to cry, asking her what they should do, what should they do, what were they going to do? Maya remembered something she’d read. Fell to her knees and grabbed Manny’s thumb. She shoveled. Fashioned a white, frozen cocoon for transport. Got to her feet and snatched her new boyfriend by his functioning hand.

They ran down the western slope towards Fifth Ave.

Somehow got caught in the crossfire of neighborhood kids in a snowball fight. Navarro and his punk friends, middle school monsters from PS 172. The barrage turned savage as those toy soldiers united against a common enemy. Pelting Manny and Maya, screaming with vile glee

FAT PIGGY! ROBOT BITCH!

The attack was relentless. Endless. The pair lost all sense of direction, huddling close as Manny’s frightened sobs reached a fever pitch and Maya made an executive decision.

Manny felt her mouth against his and his eyes instinctively closed. Every last building on the block vanished, followed by the roads, lifeless lanes on the BQE, choppy waves of the Hudson river, chemical vortex absorbing the boats, bridges, Statue of Liberty, the entire city into that one kiss.

And when they broke apart, the pain was gone.

For a seven-year minute, Manny was gone. Returned to sender as someone else.

Tears dried, some many miles taller, towering over the world.

He smiled. Took the snowball from Maya’s hand, turned, and there was the windup.

The pitch hit Navarro in the face. A Christmas detonation of white powder that brought everything to a standstill.

Navarro, stuck where he was, puzzled expression on his hooded mug.

Everyone watching to see what would come next.

Nobody expecting to see him gag, retch, and send that severed digit from his mouth, only to leave a bright red thumbprint on that powdery Brooklyn snowfall.

All Manny’s screams and nightmares were reassigned with that one transaction.

Navarro screeched. Everyone followed the leader. Navarro puked. Some saw, some didn’t, each one at different intervals of retreat, mass exodus. Screaming, screaming, more puking. Stumbling, falling over themselves to see who could run home the fastest, dive beneath the Christmas tree and curl up with their presents.

Maya laughed, almost crying.

Manny beamed, watched the skies in her eyes, bright, perfect snowglobes.

He kissed her, and she kissed back, and the doctors would stitch him up good in another hour or so, but in the meantime Christmas was in the air, and they never found Manny’s thumb and

that’s what happened to my hand, Manny told me, reaching for his shot and motioning for me to join in.

I picked mine up. Took a quick look down the bar. All empty seats in The Tap Room that afternoon save for the old man in a ten-gallon hat, whose name I didn’t know, story I would never hear. Blizzard blasting the Sunset Park streets through glass doors.

Have to say, I had to tell him, I don’t remember asking you, Manny.

But you’ve always wondered.

Yes.

We knocked back our shots, had a few tugs at cold domestics.

So now, Manny coughed, you can ask me what’s really on your mind.

Was it worth it?

He laughed. And here I was all ready for “Did that really happen?” but my answer kind of works for both of them.

Yeah?

Manny stared up at cheap silver tinsel. Followed the thread past an occasional ornament, a string of dead lights celebrating yet another Christmas day. Maya moved away two years later. Don’t know where she is, who she’s with today. On this of all days, you’d think my dumb ass would know. He grinned, a gold crown winking along with the holidays. So Maya’s gone. That knife I got for Christmas is gone. My childhood’s gone. My gut, all that baby fat that hung out all through my younger years… He smacked his stomach, taut sounds of a snare drum. Gone, man. Even that tree, Lucky. Chopped down. Took the stump right out the ground, in case some little idiot should… hurt himself. He laughed. Shook his head. There’s a thousand jobs I can’t work, a million things I can’t do. Won’t ever fully know if I prefer to jerk off with my right hand, you know? So there’s all that was and never would be…

Manny took a sip of beer and held up his hand. But this… He let me look at the sorry scar where his thumb used to be. An ugly rupture in the earth’s crust. This is proof. Can’t get no more proof than that, can’t get no more real than that. I can say that happened. I can say, every time I look at this nasty bit of work and say to myself, shit, I can only hitchhike south today… I can say I had that kiss with Maya, and that’s what changed my life, man. That’s what. This.

I nodded. Lit a cigarette and slid the pack two stools down. Merry Christmas, Manny.

Manny lit his own, with his left of course, and quietly serenaded, Bleedin’ through a winter wonderland.

The both of us laughed more than we had any right to.

Manny and I exchanged gifts in golden brown, matching shot glasses.

A toast to love’s miraculous, indiscriminate slaughter.

Kept it going past closing, and the weather outside was frightful.

###

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so long and thanks for all the pish.