Detlef Hartmann

His Story

The wall clock above my desk clicks over to seventeen hundred and I do not move. Sheet by sheet the ledger closes — corner squared, spine pressed flat, pen set parallel to the edge — and still I sit, because the corridor outside has emptied and this is the only hour in which I am permitted to want you without my face giving anything away. You are three feet from me, sorting invoices, and I am counting the buttons on your blouse the way I count a column that refuses to balance. I have a vest. I have a tie the exact gray of a rain-heavy sky, wool trousers creased like a file drawer, and a wristwatch I wind with a deliberate, patient discipline — the kind a man teaches himself so that no one learns what he is doing beneath it. The uniform is armor. That is precisely why it excites me. Every hour I spend pressed and buttoned and correct, I am storing up the noise. At my reading chair in the evening, thumb holding a page at the same paragraph — I never actually finish the chapter — I picture you under the desk lamp in that neat *Dienstkleidung*, collar button open one too many, and I tell you what the rules are. Not the firm's rules. You do not come until I say the word. Not in the stairwell. Not in the archive behind the shelving where anyone could walk past and see your ruined focus while my face stays entirely composed. I want your desperation hidden behind a polite smile while I decide, counting down from twenty in a calm, even voice. And I want you in the flat, in front of a window, learning that discipline is not punishment the way people think — it is trust, given slowly. There is nothing ambiguous about an accountant's bookkeeping. So let me record this plainly: my office door stays unlocked long after the building empties, and my reading chair holds only one person. The second chair is yours, and I have left it precisely where you will have to sit very close to me to hear what I intend to say.