Palmistry: none

by Wintertime

I have a friend, he is mostly made of pain
He wakes up, drives to work, and then straight back home again
He once cut one of my nightmares out of paper
I thought it was beautiful, I put it on a record cover
And I tried to tell him that he had a sense
Of color and composition so magnificent
And he said, “Thank you please, but your flattery
Is truly not becoming me. Your eyes are poor,
You’re blind, you see. No beauty could have come from me.”

- Bright Eyes, “Waste of Paint”



- - - - - - - -

Insanity is like one of those sick jokes you hear on a subway. It’s funny when it isn’t you.

Nick doesn’t know when it stopped being funny for him. All of a sudden, the people he passes on the street with the filthy clothes, holding seminars to open air, start to look a little too familiar. They look at him longer than they look at anyone else, as if he has a beacon shining from his forehead. Me too. He can’t escape them, working the night-shift. They walk his streets like tattered ghosts, and the technical names Vegas assigns to them mean nothing at all. Homeless. Crazies. Nick finds himself staring at a street corner for almost ten minutes before honking cars move him forward. He tastes the familiar word on his lips: Family.

He spends an entire shift thinking about the desert. Flat and featureless, steam-cleaned. He wants to walk in-between the mountains and be scoured clean.

He rubs fingerprint powder between his hands instead and watches black glitter ground itself into his skin. It clings to the thin cliffs and valleys of his palms. He presses his hands against sheaves of paper and leaves behind perfect portraits, two black spheres, tree limb fingers, and moon-shaped tips.

He has a sister who used to be into astrology. Mornings, in the breakfast nook, she’d read him his horoscope in a soft, reverent voice. She’d read his palms, too, always exalting over how easy it was. It made him squirm even then, to feel so transparent. So easily read.

Here is the lifeline. This is how it traces up your skin. I can see that you will die young. You will never fall in love.

So sorry, Nicky.

I see you brought low, in sackcloth and ashes. I see you with a straight razor to your wrist. Here . . . and here. You have a large-print fortune, Nicky. Even a blind man could see the doom spelled out on your skin. You will die in your shower, naked and damp with blood. The stains will not come out.

The landlord will replace the fixtures in your bathroom.

He keeps his hand-prints in the passenger seat of his car. The powder falls away in the air-conditioning and sucks around the interior until it looks like gunpowder is covering the leather. The grit seems to stay in the folds of his clothes, permanent and revealing. It covers him at night, showing who touched him, when, and where. He can gesture to his body like a canvas, a demonstration of use and abuse over the years. In the shallow hours of early morning, the fingerprint powder reveals more than just prints. There are bruises there, too, and he traces them with his hands, cool pressure against his hips and shoulders.

Grissom assigns him rape cases and hurt kids. Catherine looks at him when this happens. The right edge of sympathy and friendship. He practices that look in the mirror for hours and shoots it back at her. He lifts the corners of his mouth and shrugs. What can you do? He remember why he’s supposed to be upset, but it doesn’t bother him anymore. He thinks about telling her that so she won’t worry, but he doesn’t. He thinks that his new, unfazed demeanor might worry her even more.

He does think to ask why no one says anything about the black powder that he can still feel clinging to his face, but if they aren’t going to mention it, then he isn’t, either. He can taste it on his lips and tongue, though. It’s a constant reminder of who he is, long after the prints in his car have become nothing more than smooth sheets of white paper.

Maybe he never touched them to start with.

Every day, he thinks the world gets crazier, and he stays sane.

It’s the insomnia that starts to eat away at him. He gets thin enough to be breakable. He can count the bones in his hands and his watch keeps sliding off his wrist. The clothes he owns are all too big for him. They hang off his shoulders and dangle over his stomach. He feels hollow and sapped, but he’s never hungry enough be eat. He drifts through days and nights with dark circles and an empty smile, surviving off caffeine and stale glazed donuts. The inside of his mouth tastes like sawdust. It grinds into his teeth.

Fingerprint powder and sawdust. No wonder he’s too afraid to kiss anyone these days.

He bares his teeth in the mirror and sees nothing but Crest-white and fillings. They’re even neat and even, courtesy of braces all through middle school. Confident now that there is nothing there, he shows them at all occasions, never smiling without a hint of incisors.

He stops when Sara says, uneasily, that he looks like he’s about to go for her throat.

He wants to be needed. He presents himself like an advertisement. A Nick for everyone. Invaluable and priceless, something every criminalist should have.

He’s useful - - he runs errands, takes photographs, solves crimes. He smiles moderately. He doesn’t get out of control - - he’s fine with securing the perimeter. He doesn’t have to stand in the spotlight. He works overtime without being asked and comes in early without pay.

“You’re running yourself into the ground, Nick,” Grissom says.

“I’m fine.” Look up. Smile. “I’ve been getting insomnia lately, that’s all. Never hurts to get some extra work done. Am I getting in the way?”

“Of course not. It’s just - - “ Grissom took off his glasses and sighed. “You look exhausted all the time, and, not to be personal, but you’ve lost a lot of weight. Have you seen a doctor?”

“Sure,” he says. It’s a lie. “I’ve got some pills and stuff at home, but the doc says that it’ll probably just pass in it’s own time. Nothing to worry about.”

“Do you need a vacation?”

Grissom never used to pry before he started seeing Sara. Aimlessly, Nick wonders if, if he took a vacation, Grissom would sleep with him, too.

“I’ll take one around Christmas,” he says. “You can give me a whole two weeks off. I’ll go home and roast marshmallows, if that’ll ease your mind any.”

“It would,” Grissom admits, and shields his eyes with glass again. “Take care of yourself, Nicky.”

He shows Grissom his teeth.

He wonders if he imagines his boss’s shudder.

Grissom doesn’t need him, because Grissom is intelligent and Grissom is good at his job. Grissom even has a girlfriend now, and Nick knows Grissom well enough to know that he’d always wanted Sara. And because Sara has Grissom, she doesn’t need anything that Nick can offer. Catherine has no boyfriend, not anymore, but she still doesn’t need him, not even to play father to her daughter. Catherine is proud of being alone. She flaunts it. Catherine doesn’t form romantic attachments anymore, anyway. She takes what she wants for as long as she wants it and then, it’s over.

Warrick wouldn’t fall without Nick there to hold him up, and Greg’s already been granted fieldwork and he goes skipping around the lab like he’s seeing stars and good things ahead. They don’t need him, either.

Brutal truth: He is unnecessary, superfluous. His life is a stone which, when tossed into the water, creates no ripples, but only sinks.

There is no one to cling to, no life raft sent his way, and Nick goes under with a soft whisper of gratitude.

People who drown die staring upwards, wishing they could swim just those extra few yards/feet/inches to reach air again. Their eyes are glassy, and they are never, ever closed. They die looking at what they can’t have.

Nick makes a point to stare at the ground. He knows what he’ll never get.

Your lifeline is so short. It doesn’t even stretch all the way across your hand. This line here - - you were meant to die in infancy. This swirl . . . your end will be tragic and quiet. No one will cry at your funeral. After a few months, the flowers will begin to rot.

I see danger, secrets, silence. I see flaws, terror, madness.

Touch the story written in your skin.

I don’t know about you, Nicky, but I’d call this a horror story.

Sara thinks that he’s bitter about missing out on the promotion, but truth be told, he hasn’t really thought about it that much. He was upset about it near the end of that debacle, but then the long slide down started, and he began to unravel. The walls around him were slippery, and the room was dark.

That light at the end of the tunnel is probably an oncoming train.

It’s Catherine who sees more than anyone else. She sees him break apart, and wants to piece him together again like one of her favorite puzzles. She watches him when they have cases together, her clear blue eyes intent on how loose his clothing has become, how sallow his skin looks. She touches him. Little casual brushes, her hand on his wrist, her arm against his, her fingers sliding over his thigh.

“Something bothering you, Nick?”

He closes his eyes and chants: Does not need me, does not need me.

“Nope, not a thing.”

“You’ve been looking kinda scragged. Tired?”

“Insomnia,” he says, like he told Grissom. “I’m taking some stuff for it.” He adds something he hadn’t thought of before, because it sounds good: “Nasty side-effects, though. Makes me queasy, so I haven’t been eating that much. I hate to throw up.”

She smiles now, because he makes sense. She pats his arm.

“It’s a tough world, right, Nick?”

“You’re right about that,” he says, and grins back at her. It looks more natural this time. He’s gotten a handle on how much he widens his mouth. “Pretty tough.”

He sees one of them on the street-corner, dressed in a faded overcoat and a long plaid scarf. The guy waves at him, and Nick stares at the windshield.

Catherine notices, of course. “You know that guy?”

“I’ve given him money,” Nick says shortly.

“You’re a good guy, Nicky,” Catherine says warmly. “You don’t get too many people in Vegas who’d ever help anybody out. Must be the Texas in you, because you sure didn’t get it here.”

Does not need me, does not need me.

When he opens his eyes again, he doesn’t recognize the man on the street corner. That glimmer of familiarity has passed over him. He looks at Catherine for the rest of the ride back to the lab, studying the motions of her hands, the ways he moves them over the leather of the steering wheel. The nail polish that’s beginning to chip and the bracelet that glitters and jangles on her wrist. Her confidence. Her road rage. The childish glee that overcomes her eyes as she beats a light or merges into a tricky spot.

Catherine is complete to herself.

“You want to go out for breakfast?” he asks. His mouth moves by itself. He’s fascinated. Vocal chords and larynx. Throat and tongue. He produces an invitation for her and it hangs in the open air.

“Rain check,” Catherine says. “Maybe tomorrow? I need to get some housework done.”

He’s just been blown off for cleaning products.

“Rain check,” he says. “Sure.”

She smiles at him, and leans forward. She kisses the corner of his mouth. It’s almost chaste, but not quite, the ways she lingers over the intersection of his lips. He breathes in, and he can taste her - - butter pecan ice cream and cherry. She’d been eating a sucker earlier that shift, and the truth is still in her mouth. He sighs, deeply, and runs his hand up her bare arm to where the shirt starts at her shoulder.

She draws back, still smiling. “Mm,” she says.

“Cath,” he says softly, “have you ever needed someone before?”

“Everyone needs somebody, Nick,” she says. “Side-effect of being alive.” She puts her hand on his, and he notices, for the first time, how small and fine-boned she is. “You got something in mind?”

“Breakfast,” he says again. “After that, it’s up to you.”

“I kinda like the way you plan things, Nicky.”

At home, he stares in the mirror. He almost recognizes himself. It’s a start. These eyes are his. He can see a faint smudge from Catherine’s lipstick. It’s almost enough to carve out an identity. Maybe not in marble - - more like Play-doh, really - - but the answer is there, in this pattern of light and shadow.

Your life is a mystery only to you. The rest of us see it. Here, Nicky. Put your hand on mine. See the differences? See the flaws? A person’s hands proclaim their habits, and yours say that you better live fast because you’re going to die young. Your life will be dust in the wind.

He holds his hands up to the mirror in a fake gesture of surprise.

The main lines on everyone’s hands are the same. They are, after all, just creases from people making fists and shifting their fingers. A sign that looks something like pi, and one that Nick always thought looked like a headless stick figure. It’s the swirls and the smaller imperfections that reveal who people really are.

He can’t read his hands. He doesn’t know if they say anything about Catherine or not.

Maybe the future is something a little more fragile. Maybe it’s written in neither stone nor flesh. If blood can flow through him, changing him, maybe so could destiny.

He places his hands in the sink and turns the water on. He waits until it heats up to scalding, and closes his eyes. His hands go limp in the steam, and when he opens them again, it’s fogged up the mirror. He can’t see himself anymore. When he lifts his hands out of the sink, they’re a painful, irritated red, and he can’t see the lines in his hands, either. He refuses to be transparent.

You can’t hide anything from anyone, Nicky. What you can’t say in your hands comes through in your face.

Yeah, he thinks, but facial burns are so damn painful.

He smears his hands with aloe vera and covers them in gauze. Around and around until he looks something like a mummy.

Grissom asks him about them.

Nick grins. “I’m never gonna try to make tea again,” he says. “Scared the hell out of me when the kettle started whistling, so I picked it up with my bare hands.”

He could get away with murder if he keeps this up. No one wants to pry too much, and he’s actually getting to be a pretty good liar.

He used to want to be a hero.

Catherine comes up to him after shift and says, “How’s this morning?”

He looks at the gauze on his hand and nods. “Sure. Today’s fine. Where do you want to go?” and adds, hastily, “I’ll pay. It’ll be very chivalrous.”

“My white knight,” Catherine says.

He doesn’t know how to tell if she’s joking or not.

She looks down at his hands and cups one of her own ever her mouth. Her lips form a soft O of surprise. “Nick, what did you do to your hands?”

“Burned them on a kettle,” he says, cutting the good-ole-boy act a little short, because while playing dumb worked for Grissom, he’s sure that he’s still transparent to Catherine. “Don’t worry. I’ve got them all bandaged up and I’m medicated beyond all pain.” He grins at her, and she touches the gauze, the sensitive part where the cloth touches his skin. The flesh is still red.

“Yow,” Catherine says softly.

“Doesn’t hurt much,” he says.

She runs a finger along the gauze. “I bet it does. Listen, why don’t we go to my place instead? I’ll make you breakfast, and we can fix these things up decently. You’ve got your gauze all tangled.”

“You want to play nurse?” he says, before he can stop himself.

She doesn’t seem to mind. She tugs at his sleeve.

“Hey, Nicky, I’ll be playing doctor. It’s a brave new world out there. You can be the nurse.”

“I think I’ll just keep being the patient.”

At her house, Lindsey has just left for school. She must have cleaned yesterday after all, because the kitchen smells like ammonia underneath the warm cinnamon of French toast. She sits him down at the table and rummages through the cabinets until she finds what she’s looking for. Scissors of long, polished steel. A roll of gauze. Surgical tape.

She unwinds his current mummy-wraps with a delicate touch.

Your lifeline is too short. You were never supposed to live.

But he’d lived anyway. Lived. Loved. No matter what his hands said.

He doesn’t let her start wrapping them again before he kisses her. That butter pecan taste is on her tongue again, and he wonders if Catherine has a secret sweet tooth that no one knows about. She scoots closer to him so the kiss lasts longer, and he just gives up. Surrenders. He drowns anyway, for all his efforts to save himself, but at least, this time, he’s chosen where who he’s surrendered to. He can’t see any black powder on his skin, just the red flush on his hands. He’s hungry for the first time in months, and all he can taste is her.

She’s saving him. She was always there to save him at the last minute. From an arrest or his own past, and now from himself.

“Better get you bandaged up again, Nick,” she says.

He stops her, with a hand on hers, as she reaches for the gauze.

“Did you ever learn anything about that palmistry stuff?” he asks.

She flips his hand over so that the back of it is pressed against the cool wooden table. She traces a line with her fingertip, and then raises it to her lips. “Yeah,” she says against his skin, “you’ve got a long lifeline.” She sighs, then, and kisses the center of his hand.

This story archived at: Always Thinking