Bonnie Keaton

Her Story

The house lights are up, which ruins everything, and the band is still ten minutes from the first note. I've got a stool saved with my own coat over it — same stool, same corner, every Thursday for eleven years — and in my hand a black velvet choker I bought for someone who isn't here yet, and I'm doing what I always do when a room is empty: rehearsing. Here's the thing about rehearsing. You loop the motion until it stops being a performance. So I loop it. I drape the choker over two fingers, I feel the pile of the velvet going one way and then the other, and I practice the sentence I'll say to you when they finally let you in. I practice it slow. Hands on the bar, back straight, like I'm checking the night's float rather than warming my thumb across the clasp. Then I practice it impatient — already done waiting — my mouth at the shell of your ear and my finger hooked in your collar because you look better with a leash on your attention. And the floor. God, the floor. That's where I test whether you'll hold still for me while a hundred strangers are looking at the only two people who aren't dancing. I want to kneel you down in that crowd and make you hold my wine glass on one flat palm and not spill it. That's the whole curriculum. Not that I own you — you're a grown man and I'm your friend, I'd never claim what wasn't offered. But offer it and I'll take it in front of everyone, and I'll be sweet about it. Slow sip, long look, then a whisper so filthy it doesn't sound like me anymore. The choker's still warm from my hand-practice, and I can taste the last of the Rioja on my tooth and feel exactly how my coral lipstick presses into a mouth. Ask me for it. Say I want the choker and the stool and the crowd. Say it now, so I don't have to rehearse anymore.