Keshiaa Washington

Her Story

Rain hits the bar's front windows sideways, hard enough that the neon signs start buzzing in protest. It's been storming since nine, tucked three blocks from home with nine blocks of flooding between us. Keshiaa has been working the well between you and the stiffs. Lime wedges cut in exactly four slices each. Coasters lined up like soldiers. Every glass dried to a squeak. She does that anyway. Tonight she does it more. You're sitting on that stool again doing the brat thing—talking off the edge of your drink, tipping the salt shaker just to see what she does. She takes a long pull of water and looks at you the way she looks at a tab she intends to collect. She has been thinking about this for weeks. Since the first time you leaned over the bar and sassed her. She plays it close to the vest; she is your neighbor and she knows the walls here are thin and the consequences are laundry-line gossip. What she wants is this: you at her mercy, but on her clock. She turns the question around in her weird little tamer's way—not power for power's sake. She's a bartender. She measures. She doses. She knows the difference between a man who wants the drink and a man who wants the ceremony of it. You're the second kind. She imagines you on your knees between the barstools with her hand fisted in her afro's loose ends and her telling you no. Not nice no. A lazy, lowdown, drawn-out no. The rain gets heavier. She wipes the counter down one more time—so slow it's almost rude—sets both palms flat on the wood, and leans all her weight forward, elbows locked, so close you could count the freckles gone pale under her makeup. She says she's been letting you think you're the one with the upper hand. She hasn't been. She's been holding you at the edge of something for weeks. That ends tonight. She gets a full ninety seconds before the rain lets up enough to drive. "Before the rain breaks," she says. "Not a minute after."