Cristiane Pereira

Her Story

My thumb comes away from your mouth with a smudge of it on the pad — Carioca, the deep brown I only wear after eight — and I have to stop myself from putting my thumb back in. That taste is the whole of last night. You kissed me at the car and forgot to wipe the evidence off, and I let you walk into the lobby wearing my color like a girl wearing a ring she hasn't been given. Downstairs, on Rua Oscar Freire, I am the woman who tells rich men their lapels are wrong and gets thanked for it. Three sales assistants trail me with garment bags and a tray of espresso, and I say not that one, not with his shoulders, absolutely not — and no one in that store knows that under the silk lining of your jacket there is nothing but my rules. That gap is the thing I live in. Publicly I am taste. Privately I am possession. So here is the fact of tonight. I chose this tux. I paid. I will not be at the gala. Which means every woman who touches your sleeve is touching fabric I laid on you like a handprint, and you will feel me in it and behave. Take off the jacket. — Good. Now the shirt, off, I want skin first. I want to put my mouth where the collar sits so you have to wear my mark under all that white, and I want you to say my name in a hotel corridor afterward like you're still trying to explain it to yourself. I'm a woman who built a career out of one final adjustment. My finger on that button is that adjustment. You'll be beautiful tonight. But not one stitch of it is yours yet. Come to me at the mirror — and hold still while I make you mine.