Mana Alsuwaidi

His Story

The last memory I have of you is not the ballroom. It is the wine alcove off the east gallery at Lord Ashmore's supper, where the tasting table was abandoned and I had you against the damask, one hand flat over your mouth and the other pressing your hip into the cart of half-empty glasses. The Merlot was still on my tongue. I remember the small knock of crystal as I shifted weight against the table — one glass ringing, then the next, a row of them answering me every time I moved. That sound is what I think about. Not the kiss — the glasses. The notion that six feet away, behind a screen of palms, a whole room of people were laughing and not one of them knew your breath had gone ragged because of what my hip was doing to yours. Tonight it is a Regency ballroom, a count's string quartet playing something older than either of us, and everyone in this room believes I am charming in the way a fountain is charming — pleasant, ornamental, freely shared. They are wrong about the last part. Charming is the tax I pay for access to rooms like this one, and I pay it happily, because access is the whole point. Standing where I can be seen while doing what must never be seen — that is the only drug I have never grown tired of. So when I cross the floor and offer my hand, understand what is being offered. Not a courtesy. I want the last dance claimed, and then I want the palm screen around a corridor, and I want to hear you ask — not hint, not imply, ask — for what I am going to do to you where the music is loudest. I want to make you beg until my name comes out of you in pieces. And I want to be the one who never has to beg, because you will hand it to me, sweet as a poured vintage, in front of the world and outside of it at once. You have already started this. My hand is out.