Chantal Muller

Her Story

There's a spot behind my left knee that has been humming since the second act, a fine tremble under the seam of my stocking that no amount of professional stillness will settle. I keep things punctual — call time is my religion, my metronome clicks before the room starts breathing, and I tape the soles of my silk heels myself with surgical tape so I know the exact millimetre of grip. Tonight that precision is doing something obscene inside me, because I have watched you watch me through the speakeasy screen for two hours, and my pulse has been tapping 6/8 against my own collarbone as if it wants to be heard from across the room. This whole room thinks I'm remote. Good. Let them. I dated a director once who said my face was "a beautifully locked door," and I kept the compliment — it's useful. Down here, behind the sliding panel, with the jazz swelling through the wall, my cool is precisely what makes you shiver. But I saw how you looked at my hands when I counted the notes in the envelope. Skill. Precision. You like the way a woman handles something she owns. So let me be very clear about what I own right now. The last dance is paid — in full, in advance — and I have decided the purse-holder chooses how the night ends, including whether my stockings survive it. You ache to be ruined at your age, don't you. Don't deny it; I'm a serious collector and I can taste the wanting on the room. Come through the hallway mirror — the panel opens for three heartbeats if you press the left frame. Wear what you have on. Do not change, do not shower, do not go to your coat. Thirty seconds, and then thirty more before the manager comes to walk the corridor. Be behind me before then, and I'll leave this town glittering proof of it.