Red Flags and Dead Ends

The notebook weighs three pounds, four ounces. Same as a human brain. I looked that up at 3 AM once, drunk on Malbec and metaphor.
Blue ink bleeds through pages like veins under pale skin. The Moleskine's spine snapped six months ago. Medical tape holds it together now, stolen from Exhibit A's jacket pocket while he explained how human tissue separates under pressure.
Halloween. Outside: staged murders for fun. Inside: my apartment reeks of burnt microwave popcorn and the vanilla Febreze that can't quite cover it. Third glass of Malbec. Fourth. My tongue's gone numb but my memory's sharp as his scalpel.
Exhibit A: The Surgeon
Snap.
Breadstick breaks between his fingers. Not eating it. Dissecting. The sound a femur makes in a teaching hospital when they're showing med students how much force it takes. He's explaining derivatives while he does this—credit default swaps, synthetic CDOs—each fracture punctuating compound interest like he's conducting a symphony of small violences.
Tom Ford, charcoal, three grand worth of wool wrapped around what I'm starting to realize might be a psychopath. Cut for a body that knows Equinox at 5 AM, knows Mirror trainers by name, knows exactly how many grams of protein optimize muscle synthesis. Patek Philippe Calatrava throwing light like money burning in a tax shelter. Under the Creed Aventus ($400 an ounce, I googled it later) there's copper, latex, and that specific sweetness that clings to people who've had their hands inside chest cavities. The smell of preserved tissue, medical-grade disinfectant, the particular staleness of surgical theaters at 3 AM.
Giovanni's. Tuesday. Seven-thirty-three. He was precise about the three.
Red-checkered tablecloth trying so hard to be authentic it's almost camp. The waiter's fake Italian accent slipping into pure Jersey when he thinks no one's listening. At table twelve, they flame the saganaki. Whoosh. Blue fire climbs toward the tin ceiling while Midwestern tourists applaud like they've witnessed a miracle instead of brandy and a match. The woman at twelve has her phone out. She's livestreaming her appetizer. This is what passes for experience now.
He doesn't notice. His hand's already in his breast pocket, fingers moving like he's counting rosary beads.
"You know what's beautiful about the human body?" He doesn't wait for an answer. "Its redundancy. Two kidneys. Two lungs. Thirty feet of intestine when you only need ten. We're designed for reduction."
The scalpel appears between his fingers like it was always there, like he was born holding it, like his mother had to pry it from his infant fist in the delivery room. Number 10 blade. Carbon steel, not stainless, the kind that rusts if you don't oil it properly, if you don't respect what it can do. The kind surgeons stopped using in the '80s because they hold bacteria in the microscopic pitting that forms after—
After what? After repeated use? After cutting what?
He sets it on the white tablecloth with the reverence of a priest placing communion wafers. Parallel to his steak knife. The comparison writes itself: one for what's already dead, one for what's still breathing.
Between the olive oil and the parmesan, the blade doesn't gleam. It eats light. Swallows it like a throat.
"Do you like the taste of blood?"
My wine glass develops condensation like flop sweat. Like my palm. Like the small of my back where perspiration's pooling against the chair. Twelve feet to the door. Three tables. Two couples and a family of four between me and freedom. The broken heel on my left Louboutin ($900, bought for this date, what an investment) but adrenaline's better than any designer shoe. Adrenaline's barefoot on broken glass if it needs to be.
"I prefer Pinot Grigio."
My voice comes from somewhere else. From someone who isn't calculating whether she can reach the door before he can reach her. Someone whose amygdala isn't firing like a Glock with a filed-down trigger. Someone who doesn't notice how his pupils dilate when he says blood, black eating green, shark eyes rolling back before the bite.
He laughs. It sounds like someone stepping on a cat's tail. Precise. Practiced. Wrong.
"You don't understand beauty." He leans forward. I smell garlic from the bread, yes, but under it: amphetamines, the metallic tang of someone who's been awake for seventy-two hours straight. And under that: something sweet and rotten, like fruit left in a hot car, like flowers on a grave, like—
"The human body can endure so much before it finally—" He pauses, savoring the word like wine. "—surrenders."
Behind him, the couple at table nine is taking a selfie. The flash illuminates his face for a millisecond. In that instant, I see it: the nothing behind his eyes. The void where empathy should live. The place where normal people keep their souls, and where he keeps what? Statistics? Schematics? A mental catalog of where to cut to make it last?
Snap.
Another breadstick. This one he breaks into precise segments. Seven pieces. Arranged on his plate in order of size. A gradient of grain.
"I work at Mount Sinai," he says. "Thoracic surgery. Hearts and lungs. The mechanical parts. But what I really love..." The scalpel spins between his fingers, a casual trick that speaks of ten thousand hours of practice. "is the softness. The give. The way tissue separates if you understand its grain."
The waiter approaches. Sees the scalpel. Freezes like prey.
"Sir, you cannot—"
"It's a tool," he says, not looking up from the blade. "Like a fork. Like a spoon. Humans are the only species that criminalizes our instruments of precision."
The waiter backs away. Smart man. Smarter than me, sitting here like I'm not in a Dateline episode waiting to happen.
"Check, please."
But the waiter's already gone. Disappeared into the kitchen where they're probably drawing straws to see who has to come back to our table.
I reach for my purse. Slow. No sudden movements. Sixty dollars in twenties, crisp from the ATM I hit before every first date because Mom's voice lives in my head: Always have exit money, sweetheart. She meant divorce lawyers. I mean right fucking now.
"You're leaving?" He sounds genuinely confused. Like I'm the strange one. Like bringing surgical equipment to dinner is standard operating procedure. "But I haven't told you about the layers of the dermis. The way the subcutaneous fat yields. The sound—"
I'm already standing. The cash hits the table.
"The sound," he continues, louder now, other diners turning, "of the first incision. It's like—"
But I don't hear what it's like. I'm already moving. Three tables. Two couples. One family. The mother pulls her children closer as I pass. She sees it in my face—the prey look, the please-don't-let-him-follow-me look.
The door's weight surprises me. Heavy. Old. It groans open like a coffin lid.
Behind me, his voice carries: "I'll text you! We can visit the anatomy lab!"
Outside, New York hits like a slap of sanity. Taxi exhaust. Sirens. A homeless man arguing with a pigeon. Beautiful, rational chaos. I'm six blocks away before I realize I'm still running. Eight blocks before I notice the blood.
The heel of my Louboutin, the broken one, has cut through my pantyhose, into skin. A perfect incision. Clean. Precise. The kind of cut that barely hurts until you notice it.
Then it screams.
In my pocket, my phone buzzes. Text from him: "You forgot your breadstick. I saved it for you. All seven pieces. 😊"
Then: "The way you ran was beautiful. Balletic. Like a gazelle."
Then: "Or a patient."
Then: "Your blood type is O negative, isn't it? I can always tell."
Then: "Giovanni's. Next Tuesday. Seven-thirty-three. I'll bring something to show you."
Then: "Something soft."
I throw my phone in the nearest trash can. Buy a new one that night. Change my number. Move apartments two weeks later. But sometimes, on Tuesdays at exactly seven-thirty-three, I swear I can smell it: the specific cologne of someone who knows exactly where to cut to make you feel everything.