Mona was on top when the pain seized her gone arm came without warning. Her whole body tensed up, and Carlos doubled up and yelled, and she dismounted, massaging her right bicep uselessly. She stumbled into the bathroom and opened up the mirrored cabinet door. She wasn't tall enough to get her shoulders level with it. "Carlos," she said. "Bring me a stool or something!" She choked back a sob.

"A stool?" Carlos walked bowlegged into the bathroom, his erection gone. "You put a kink in my dick and now you want a stool?"

"Then hold me up. It's my arm, Carlos. Get me level with the mirror."

"I look like I can pick you up?"

"Try!"

Carlos wrapped his arm around her and picked her up. She bumped against the mirror and swung it away, then repositioned it perpendicular to herself. She could hear Carlos grunting and shivering with the strain. Mona was not overweight, but she was no swimsuit model either. "Move me forward," she said to Carlos, and he did; the mirror was between her breasts now. She put her arms up in the conducting position and unfurled her hands, her gone one and her flesh one. She felt her gone arm relax.

"I gotta drop you," said Carlos.

"Please don't," said Mona. "I just need a minute."

"Can you at least get your leg up on the sink, take some weight?"

"No! I have to stay level with the mirror."

Carlos set her down gently.

"Fuck it all, Carlos!" she said, before she could stop herself. She could feel his shoulders tense. "Sorry, baby, I'm sorry." She leaned on the sink with her hand. "I'm so sorry. But you see why we need one of those boxes?"

Carlos looked back up but didn't reply. Mona closed the mirror and looked his reflection in the eye. "Baby, you OK?" she asked.

They stood for a few moments, both sweaty and panting. Mona felt his erection against her thigh, and moved her hand back to grasp it. She looked back in the mirror; his eyes were closed. "Come on, baby," she said. "You earned this."

She guided him inside her. He began to move; she arched her back as best she could with only one hand to support herself against the sink. His hand was in the center of her stomach, pressing on her bladder, instead of on her hips where it would have been if he'd had two. The whole configuration was unbalanced; they were both straining to stay upright, a tightrope act on a tile floor. He slipped out, let her go to try to guide himself back in. She braced her shortened arm on the sink and reached back to do it herself. His second entry was hard and sudden, and the pressure on her stump made her bite back a yell. The pain in her gone arm returned, and when she gasped it was for that, not for his half-hearted fucking. Neither of them looked in the mirror. Carlos finished with the rapid frottage of a boy afraid it was now or never.

"I'm sorry," said Carlos, still inside her but shrinking.

"It's my fault," said Mona. "I made you do what I thought you wanted."

"I meant about not being able to hold you up," said Carlos. "I should have been able to do it. I can curl 100 pounds, you know that?"

"People are harder to hold than weights," said Mona. "There's no good place to grip onto them." She gasped in pain again.

"What's wrong?" said Carlos.

"My arm. It's back."

"Did it ever go away?"

She shook her head.

"Hold on, baby. I got a few books, we'll get you level with the mirror."

Mona washed herself off as Carlos ransacked the house for books. She tried to think of what sex had been like when she'd had both hands, tried to imagine clasping her gone hand gently around Carlos's penis; but inevitably it spasmed shut, and the accompanying image made her heave with revulsion.