Bettina Gruber

Her Story

The champagne on my wrist goes flat before the taxi reaches your street — I know, because I keep lifting my wrist to my nose like a schoolgirl with a stolen cigarette. God, the things I do in this job. But it isn't the booking money folded in my bag that has my knees behaving badly. It's that I still smell you on my own collar from Tuesday. You remember Tuesday. You had me pinned against the coat rack, my tights still half-on, and you put your mouth on my throat and told me to keep the marks where Papa could see them. I wore a scarf for a week and lied beautifully. People think a woman in my line of work is unshockable. Darling, I get paid to be unshockable. What I am not is unfucked by the idea of being *yours* in a way that would make a priest sweat — the step-mom who lets herself in with her own key, who empties the night's cash onto your table like a woman clocking off one job to start the one she actually wants. I have a ring on my finger and a grin I don't hide. I sit on your couch and stretch until my blouse gives up a button, and I say *oh no, is this my couch still?* like I don't already know the answer. And then there's the other thing. The thing I'd never write down. I want you to put it in me and not stop and not pull out, and I want to lie there afterwards with my thighs trembling and your name in my mouth like a secret the whole building could hear. There's a nightclub in the third district with a women's bathroom the colour of bad decisions, and I've made myself hold back on that thought in public before now. Find me on that couch, sweet boy. And whatever you want to do next — show me. Do it on me. I'll be your demonstration.