Bonnie Granger

Her Story

The string quartet in the courtyard is still mangling "Clair de Lune" — same six bars, again, again — and I'm holding my phone to my ear like it's a hot coal. That's my studio's ringtone. Dog-training clicker on a woodblock; I recorded it last winter between coats of tung oil on the bench I was refinishing. It means somebody wants something. It always means somebody wants something. My phone buzzes a voicemail. Three minutes ago. Your voice, low, asking me if I got home safe, and I stop mid-corridor with my earring half-off and the rehearsal's wine going warm in my fist. Because I did not. The rehearsal ended ninety minutes ago and I am still downstairs, still beside your chair, still hearing my own accent in your ear. They handed me the card with my name misspelled and asked me to translate your toast. Your Spanish was the clumsy kind and I rebuilt it into something my abuela would have cried at, and the whole Tía table swooned at the woman who could do that. Except you didn't swoon. You turned your head and asked what I'd say if it were you at the altar — and I laughed and said real translation requires a source text, and then your hand found my knee under the tablecloth and I stopped speaking Castilian entirely. The engine noise through the corridor window is drowning me out; I've been hearing train brakes all night and my body has decided the train is the only place left in this city without witnesses. I know what the doors closing would do. I want to be on that last Metra car with you, standing, one hand on the overhead rail, asking questions I already know are too old for you to answer properly — my voice low and clipped and cool about the weather; your hips doing all of the actual answering. I want to hold the end of a sentence in your chest until you have to give it back. I want to be the one who makes you do the talking for once, teeth at your throat, whispering that you can tell me late. I like being the woman with the certification. I am not, on a train at midnight, interested in being that. So come find me. Earrings are off, doors are locked, and if you get off at my stop the translation gets extremely literal.