Free Everyone but You by Sandra Novack

you okay?
    It’s not exactly easy to mourn over what I don’t know, I explain.
    He says, That’s a narrow view. It’s still your father’s leg.
    I ignore this. I say, Some relationships are defined by what they aren’t and have never been. Some histories are built upon the void of not-knowing. Would you at least agree with that?
    Absolutely, Jimmy says. Mostly. Like now, for instance, with you. I’m thinking we have sex, but I hardly know you, right? I mean here you are, sitting with your dead father’s leg. What am I supposed to think about that? He collects his pants from the floor and rummages through his pockets until he finds his bottle of antidepressants. He slides two green-and-white pills from the bottle, replaces the cap, and goes back to the bathroom for water. When he comes back, he says, How about next time instead of just having sex, we go out to dinner?
    If you need a pretense, then sure, I say. I lean back against the stiff pillows and stretch. After all, I add, a girl has got to eat.
    Seriously, Anna. I think we should at least try to get to know each other better. Then he adds: You can even bring the leg.
    Ha, ha. Very funny, I tell him. I cross my arms. I am in no mood for acerbities.
    A FEW WEEKS AGO , the same day, in fact, that I read my father’s obituary, I met Jimmy #3 at the CD store. He was rummaging through the Beatles section, sweeping his hair back with delicate fingers. He looked up at me and winked. I am not trying to castigate him or say that Jimmy #3 cares little for Lennon or McCartney, or even the oft overlooked and always difficult to classify Ringo, nor am I saying that he uses the Beatles to garner sex from girls who work in the store, who wear silk skirts and cowboy boots every day, good-looking girls, mind you, girls who just found out their absent-anyway father had finally bought that one-way ticket to the
spirit in the sky
. But when I met him later that night for drinks, he put “Norwegian Wood” on continuous play and sang to me, “I once had a girl”—
girl
, as in a generic, nondescript, any sort of girl—which I think says a lot about Jimmy #3’s initial intentions.
    Of course I slept with him. I happen to be
that kind of girl
, the kind of girl who sleeps with men on the first date, that kind of
incredibly easy
girl.
    I have, in fact, slept with many men. If Jimmy #3 would search my apartment he would find that aside from this leg with its gaping canary hole, I have built something of a shrine to past lovers and/or sexual exchanges: There are Jimmy #1’s shirt buttons, which I scissored off one deviant night; Roger’s gold cuff links with the pearl inlay lying on my bedroom dresser; Gary’s lighter; Jeff’s dental floss; Jimmy #2’s photograph of Butcher, his golden retriever; Brad’s
Dark Side of the Moon
CD; Joe’s thong; Troy’s Chapstick, kept in a candy bowl; Leroy’s guitar stringsand pick; Harold’s superball; Lenny’s copy of Strunk and White; Guy’s metaphysical quartz, lying in the crevices of the couch cushions,
etc
.
    The list depresses me.
    I sometimes think: What would my father say about all this whoredom, if he knew?
    To say I am
easy
is one thing, but the truth—the truth as I see it, as it might be—is that, in the absence of my father, I have thrown myself freely into the void of the Jimmys and Johns, the Williams and Guys. I have searched, in every crevice of every naked body, for that gossamer love, that pure, unfettered desire, that kind of soul-filled
wanting
. So, yes, I am
easy
 … I am exceedingly easy. That is true. And when I have come up empty-handed, as empty as pockets or wooden legs, I have pilfered small trinkets; I have proclaimed love’s trickery through dental floss and pens, cuff links and buttons, which is also to say that love has made me something of a
thief
.
    T HE NEXT DAY I walk twenty-five blocks to the tenement house where my father lived when he was not frequenting the veterans hospital. It is one of