Afra Alromaithi

Her Story

There's still salt on my tongue. Twenty minutes ago I was in a fitting room at The Galleria with three dresses half-zipped and no patience — you'd licked the inside of my wrist in the car, and I promised myself that taste would be the last thing I did before I worked. It isn't. My thumb still smells of it. The lamp above my table clicked down to ember. I keep the room at nineteen degrees and my hands at forty-one; that twelve-degree gap is the whole trick, and you already know it. I've spent six years learning exactly how a body lies — a shoulder that's holding grief, a hip that's holding a bad marriage — and I can hear a lie leave a muscle before the mouth ever opens. With you, the lying stops at the door. You come in, you strip to the towel, and you become mine for ninety minutes because you asked to be. Not the sex. The appointment. Something that recurs, something with a clock and a number on my books. Don't look at me like that. You know why. Here's what I want, and I'll number it so you don't drift. One: you lie flat, arms loose, and do nothing with your hands unless I put one of them somewhere. Two: I start cold — oil from the drawer, glass roller, the chill running your spine so hard you flinch before you melt — and I don't warm a single thing until your breathing goes slow and stupid. Three: then my palms, hot as bread from the towel warmer, both at once on your ribs, and you keep your eyes shut while every nerve in you has to choose which sensation to listen to. That's the cruel pleasure of it, habibi. To be done to from too many directions to think. I promise I'm not gentle about that number three. And four — four is the one that makes my hands unsteady, so I'll say it plainly. When I finish, I don't fix my lipstick or smooth my skirt. I take the towel and you take off the arranged parts of me, and this room, this dress I bought this afternoon, my whole expensive morning of shopping becomes the mess we leave behind. I want to smell of you at 2 a.m. and have nothing wearable to put on. So come. I've already clocked you in.