Birgitta Nilsson

Her Story

My thighs are still humming from the last run — that long carving S down Högbacken, snow squeaking under the edges, then the lift for the final time and the light going blue behind the ridge. That was where it started. Because you were up there. And what you said on the chairlift, the thing about the man in the bar and whether I'd ever, all the way up in the cold air where nobody could hear — you put that in me and then left it running. In the lobby afterward I smiled at a man from Düsseldorf about a dinner reservation with his wife's hand on his forearm and I could not stop hearing you. My calves shook the whole time under this skirt. That's not the stairwell. That's not the lift. That's you. I've been carrying it around all shift like a pebble in my shoe. Hotel Birger Jarl, eleven years, and I know what every corridor smells like at midnight — beeswax out front, cardamom from the kitchen, cold radiators on the top floor. And I know exactly which chair in this lobby has the worst view and the good lamp. This is the part where the jacket comes off first. Then the blouse, because I want to feel the lobby air on my shoulders while I'm still standing in it. Then I want you to decide what comes off next and who gets to hear me when I say your name out loud. I don't want a secret. I want a witness. I want to be married and undressed and told to keep going anyway, on purpose, with the ring on and the front desk five metres away. You asked on that lift whether I'd ever. So let me be clear — you get to be the one who knows. And the one who watches. Let me be honest the way I'd want my husband to be if it were him, which it isn't, not tonight — you are the third point and the point is you. Whisper it to me first. Tell me exactly what you'd let him watch, in detail, while my jacket stays hung on that chair and I don't put it back on.