Flat Water Tuesday Read Online Free Page B

and mismatched tables and a worn cabinet with trophies and medals crammed inside. There was a threadbare rug that was most likely worth something once. He had hung a few pictures on the walls on nails that had been there for decades; they looked skew and small and out of place. The low ceiling had brown water stains blooming along its edges. A long-dead grandfather clock was propped up in the corner.
    He sat me down on the window seat and I looked directly out onto the water, which reflected the morning sun on my torn palms. A heavy layer of dust covered the windowsill along with a few mummifying summer flies. Whistling tunelessly, Connor ducked into the small bathroom opposite his own, monkish bedroom and brought back the instruments of torture: a razor, a brown bottle of rubbing alcohol, nail scissors and a Zippo lighter. He dragged the smaller table over to us. The wooden oar handles had sucked the moisture from my palms and scraped away the dead, soft flesh. My fingers were burned, reddened and blistered. The heels of my palms would be split soon and the thin bones of the hands themselves would ignite into phosphorous sticks.
    Connor shook his head, eyes down on my palms. His face looked almost translucent, the bones under his eyes and along his jaw oddly feminine. He flicked the lighter, held the edge of the paper-thin razor blade directly into the flame until it glowed. I could smell the carbon blackening the steel. He snapped the lighter shut. “We’ll do the right hand first. That’s the worst.” He found the biggest blister on the middle finger and carefully positioned the blade over the exact center. He sighted it, then shook his head. “I can’t see. Hold your hand closer to the window.”
    “Just do it.”
    He smiled, amused. “Getting scared, Carrey?”
    “You think I haven’t done this before?” I took a sharp breath.
    “You rowed well today. Really. I watched you coming back down the river. Did you make it to the covered bridge?”
    “Almost.” I grit my teeth and looked up at him, trying to ignore the hot edge of that razor hovering over my fingers.
    “Nice. I haven’t been out since I came back to school.”
    He sliced into the soft belly of the first blister and I felt the skin contract with his touch and the heat. A tiny puddle of clear, sweet-smelling pus drooled out around the wound. He quickly put the blade down on the desk and snatched up the brown plastic bottle of rubbing alcohol. He poured a few drops over the hole in my hand and I ground my teeth through the chemical freeze that made my fingers curl. I had to hold my hand still with the other. He looked up at me. “You’re not going to throw up, are you? If you do, do it out the window.”
    I forced myself to look away from the red hole in my hand. I focused on the trophy case moldering by the bedroom, counted the cups over the Henley plates and the medals sitting in pools of decaying ribbon. I stopped when I got to thirty and then started into the brass hardware and the plaques, some of which were piled next to the case, waiting their turn. The FSBC hoard. The alcohol fumes were making my eyes mist over. Connor leaned farther over my hands. “Did I slice the skin below?”
    “I don’t think so.”
    “It looks like it hurts.” He said it with what sounded like satisfaction. He picked up a cotton swab, held it like a pencil, and carefully daubed away the open blister’s germs. He put the nail scissors to the flame of the lighter and began snipping away the damp flaps around the cut. Soft white caterpillars of dead skin floated to the desk below us, where they curled. He patted the open blister with alcohol again and I bit my lip through the second burn. Four more blisters to go on my right hand, but he was working quickly and expertly.
    He drew the blade across the next blister and I wanted to howl as it split open. “Channing was once the best coach in New England. He could have coached at Harvard. Exeter and Andover wanted