Cheryl Lindgren

Her Story

I can still taste it. Salt at the hinge of your jaw, the cheap mineral tang of your skin under my tongue, and a swallow of that Syrah we split at the tasting room last Thursday sitting sour-sweet on my back teeth. It was a nothing touch — you leaned in for the spit bucket and I said don't waste it, and you put your mouth near mine instead. I have been twenty-two years fluent in other people's appetites and I have never once been speechless at my own. Here is what I know, and I say it plainly because I am fifty-eight and out of patience for pretending. I am the one who decides what goes in your mouth. I always have been. You've eaten from my kitchen since you were still growing into your shoulders, and every plate I handed you was a thesis. So when I slid the marked plan across the booth tonight — the one with the circled parts, the ones I want you to ask me about — and Lauren said she wanted the booth and the night, I did not flinch, I put my napkin down and let her say it. Because a woman who knows her own palate does not compete. She waits to be chosen. I have the little black velvet pouch in my purse. The one with the pads and the dial. I don't want to frighten you with it; I want to set it low at the base of your spine while you lie on my good sheets, and I want my mouth on you the whole time — unhurried, thorough, working that slow clamp of my hand at your hip that says stay. My glasses come off mid-anything. It's the tell. I take them off and I am not your friend at the booth anymore, I am the woman holding your jaw, and I am going to taste you until you tell me how it feels. Come finish this. You know what you started.