Nabakov's Butterflies

The lab lights always buzzed before they turned on—fluorescent blinking awake. We dragged two stools up to a table and you handed me the alcohol wipes you had in your pocket before you broke into the supplies closet.

I ran my fingertips along the outer edge of one of the packets, small, square, and stiff.

You slid a rubber mat, like a mouse pad, and some plastic sheeting under my arm. You wrapped two canvas straps around the table, bracing my elbow and hand against its surface, tightening, and testing the hold. You asked, "Can you recite the names of the bones in the human hand?"

I watched you uncap a marker and draw a line across my wrist, another across the fleshy part just below my elbow, and a long, nearly straight line connecting them. I said, "It's been a while."

You unwrapped an alcohol wipe and ran it along the lines you’d made with the marker. You held up a scalpel and studied my arm. "How about the carpals? Try?"

I watched you drag the scalpel across my wrist, the marker path dividing by a thin red line. "Scaphoid" I said, as you made a cut along the inside of my elbow. "Lu–" I stopped as you connected the parallel lines, an elongated capital "I" carved deep into my skin.

You didn't look up. “What’s next?”

“Lunate."

"Good, and?"

"I can’t remember."

Using the tip of the scalpel, you lifted a corner of skin from the center of my wrist—where there had never been a corner of skin. Without looking up, you said, “She. Looks. Too. Pretty; Try. To. Catch. Her.” The mnemonic hung between us as you slid the blade gently along the inside of the incision, peeling back a page of flesh. You open a small plastic box, dumping out straight pins.

I am surprised at the lack of smell and realize that I'd expected formaldehyde, a familiar scent in any dissection I'd witnessed. I wanted to close my eyes, but looked at you instead. "I could never keep the T's in order," I explained.

You held my skin against the plastic and rubber, trapping it with a straight pin in each corner as I watched you from several feet away. "Try."

"Looks. Too. Pretty: Lunate. Triquetral. Pisiform. I always thought triquetral should go with 'try,' but I guess that wouldn't make sense in the sentence."

You looked at my face for the first time since we turned on the lights, then picked up a piece of gauze and wiped some perspiration from my forehead. You said, "If not for the Russian Revolution, Nabokov said he probably would've become a full-time lepidopterist."

The lights seem to be humming louder, but realize it's just because I'm listening to them again.

"As it was, he identified a new species and predicted migratory patterns. They didn't take him seriously, but he was right." Your eyes reflected the fluorescence from above and as it reflected off the plastic sheeting. "He might never have written."

"The tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth."

You pinioned the other swath of skin, and my arm lay mounted before you. "You're only halfway there. What are the rest of the carpals?" You squirted a small plastic bottle of fluid into the mass of muscle and blood, revealing the slick white bones.

"Is it the "flying trapezes?" I have to stop and remember which one comes first, alphabetically.

You ran a fingertip along the length of the ulna and asked if I could feel anything.

"Trapezium and trapezoid. Yes, they start the distals." I was proud of how calm I sounded.

"You have so much to learn." You slipped your fingers among veins and arteries, pressing muscle, identifying functions and names.

I tried not to interrupt.

You pointed to a tight mass on the side of my forearm. “There, a small, clean biopsy of the extensor brevis."

I didn't shake as I took the scalpel from you.

You watched, your fingers at your lips, my blood on the gloves pressed to your mouth—with no effort at all you could taste it. You could paint your lips with it. Your eyes did not leave the blade.

"Capitate and hamate," I whispered, cutting. Just a small, clean piece, a communion wafer of me, small enough to melt on your tongue.