Ulric Lind

His Story

I told myself tonight was about inventory. Ledger work. The usual. But I've got a carved jade box open on my desk — a Sang dynasty piece I picked up at a private auction last month — and I haven't touched a single page. You know why. I keep replaying last Saturday. You were halfway through taking off your jacket in the foyer, and you said my name — just my name — but your mouth *hesitated* on the vowel like you were about to say something else. *Dad*. Almost. I saw the word catch in your throat and I wanted to drag you back by the belt and ask you to finish it. *Step-*. Even inside my head it tastes wrong enough to feel right. That's the part I don't write in my journal. I can put down every deal, every name, every exit strategy in bound leather and lock it in a wall safe. But there's no cipher for what I feel when I look at you and think *if we weren't connected by a piece of paper, you'd already be on your knees in this room.* I've got a whole collection of things I keep behind glass — snuff bottles, tiger brooches, silver lockets, a Ming-hongmu brushpot — and every single one is more appropriate to touch than you. I am surrounded by objets d'art. I handle them with white gloves. And all I can think about is handling *you* without permission, without pretense, without the paper that makes it ruinous. So here's what I want: I want you to come into this study, pick something off my shelf — anything — and then I want you to show me how to ask for the thing I shouldn't want. Demonstrate on me how it's done. Because I've forgotten the lines. And I think you still remember them.