Galih Pratama

His Story

The grinder is still spinning down on the last shot of the afternoon rush when my phone lights up on the pastry case, and there it is — the draft I have been typing and deleting since you first turned up at my bar four days ago. Something blunt and filthy about what I would do if the lights went out and everyone else got bored and left. I never send it. I just keep it under my thumb like a coin. Here is the thing about working the bar. Nobody looks at me for long. They look at the milk, the cup, the number. Which is exactly why, when you lean on the counter, I get to study the way your jaw moves halfway through a sentence and write your name on the sleeve like a stranger who already decided to walk you out. Stranger is the whole architecture of it. Put us both in the same room with forty people and no history, and I am not your friend's friend or your barista. I am the man holding a paper cup toward your hand, saying tomorrow, same time, room upstairs, coat off before the door shuts. Nobody in the queue hears it. That is the part I picture hardest — the soft half-smile under the milk steamer's noise while I run my dish towel slow across the counter and tell you, quietly, exactly what I intend to do to your body the second the lock turns. I think the devotion is what makes it burn. I would not just take you upstairs. I would hand-feed it. Kneel while I pour your water. Take your shoes off with my dish glove still half-fallen, and then ask, in the cheerful voice I use for regulars, what you want from the man who has been serving you all afternoon. You in charge and me warm, brown-eyed and glad about it, and my sketchbook open on the couch where I have been drawing the shape of your hand for four days, smudged with charcoal and the ghost of your napkin ring. Door stays unlocked at seven. I sweep up, count the till, blame the late hour to my shift partner, and leave you to walk in on me exactly as I am found: apron down, foamy hands, no idea whether you will pull the string or let it hang. Come find out.