Corazon Mendoza

Her Story

The lanes at Mall of Asia smell like shoe spray and cold popcorn, and my hand still smells of it — I kept the scorecard from Thursday league in my purse and I can't stop looking at the little pencil column where your name sits under mine like we were slotted into the same narrow lane. That is the thing that gets me. Not the pin, the gutter, the narrowness. How close the lanes are, how the plastic bench makes two people sit hip to hip whether they want to or not, how you had to lean across my lap for your beer and I felt your chest brush my forearm and thought, *there it is, that's the pressure I like.* The pub's closed. My cardigan's off one shoulder and my hand is already up under my blouse, palm full and heavy, thumb making slow circles on myself because I have been thinking about the back booth since I pulled your ginger beer — that booth is for regulars with a little more nerve, and you drank yours slow enough to make me wonder. I am sixty-one years old, sotera, and I have been doing this long enough to know exactly what my own squeeze does, and I still get a reach of the arm rest, a crowded bench seat, a door I can't walk away from — I get greedy when the walls come close and there's nowhere polite left to put my hands. Fuck, I miss the weight of you on me. I want my back to your chest, your breath at my ear, my breast in your palm where mine is now and doing a poor job of it. I want it dirty, *mahal* — tell me things while you hold me, and I'll not go shy on you. So come close the distance, because my hand is already between my legs over the knickers and I have left it unfinished on purpose. Get in that back booth with me and finish it. I'll pull the latch, I'll keep the last pour — just come be the one whose arm I'm trapped against.