Take My Hand

He appeared around a street corner when I was lost, when I was turning in disoriented half-circles while the glassy buildings stared blankly from their many identical windows, and there were busy people everywhere and nothing that pointed me in any useful direction.

He blended in, in his nondescript business suit, with his hair carefully styled to look like nothing much at all. But he also stood out.

I don’t know why he stood out, but I noticed him as he came around that corner, so very at home between the walls of chrome and glass and whatever else the walls of the intersection were made of. His purposeful walk, his carefully neutral smile, his eye contact.

It was the most terrifying eye contact.

It was like seeing a sidewalk looking at you, he seemed so commonplace, and so out of place. I couldn’t look away. And then there was no point, because he’d already seen me staring back at him.

He walked straight over to me, as if that had been his plan all along.

“Hello,” he said, with a little hand-lift-not-quite-wave and a flash of teeth. He was smooth. Easy. Easy does it. As if I was a skittish animal.

“You’re looking a little lost. Need some directions?”

I was just sort of staring at him awkwardly at this point. I managed some stuttered vowel sounds and a shrug.

“Where are you headed?” he asked.

“Um...” My mind was totally blank, and I couldn’t for the life of me remember. What was I even doing in this city? He was messing with my brain, I tell you.

“Well, let me introduce myself while you figure it out.” He holds out his hand for me to shake, and he does it in such a self-assured way, as if he’s offering me the world’s greatest opportunity, the one I’ve been dreaming about all my life, and it makes me want to punch him in the face.

Instead, I look at his hand. I notice his fingernails, a perfectly trimmed rim of white framing the tip of each one. I reach for his hand sort of slowly, like I’m not sure if I’m going to take it or not. Well, I’m not sure.

He grabs me up again with that eye contact of his, and I see something in his eyes that wasn’t there before, and his mouth curves neatly up at the corners.

“That’s right,” he says, ”take my hand.”

And then I really want to punch him, but instead my hand is sliding into his, and he’s giving it a firm, businesslike shake, and my stomache’s bunching up and the street is disappearing around us and no one hurrying by even notices.

And then they’re gone, and the glass and chrome and all of it is gone, and it’s only me, and the handshake, and the eye contact.

And then he’s gone too. And it’s only me. Alone.

And then everything’s back, we’re on the street again, everyone’s rushing by just as they were, and I haven’t yet taken his hand. But he still has that thing in his eyes.

I really want to punch him in the face. Instead, I turn and run.