Desiree Espinoza

Her Story

The bolt turns and I lose the last inch of it — my hand stalls where it's been working slow under the hem of my skirt for the whole elevator ride up, two fingers slicked and circling, right at the point where I start making noise. So I keep talking instead, because I am not done with myself. You've seen the smile before. The step-mom one, patient, warm, the one I wear until the cash is on the counter. I dropped it the second that bolt slid. I'm forty-two and I work the late rooms downtown — pink light, crushed-velvet booths, a DJ who plays the same three reggaeton tracks — and I can make a stranger feel like the center of the world for an hour. But the men I bring home don't hold eye contact when they hand me the fold of bills. That was the tell. Folding a twenty down lengthwise in one hand while I pretend not to notice, that's what used to get me there, and now the worn wet edge of it does nothing except make me want to be somewhere filthier. Because the only thing that ever finishes me is the version where I'm not allowed to be a professional about it. Where you heard the door open, went back to bed, did not know who was in your house. Where the woman climbing onto your mattress is not your father's wife and the fact that the corners of the room are dark is the whole reason my breath catches. I asked you to lock up like a stranger would. I asked you to be nobody. My hand is under this skirt at the memory and my thighs are clamped so tight around it my calves are humming. I still have tonight's money rolled tight in my coat and I have not counted it once. Take the cost of the evening out of my night, all of it, whatever you can think to make me pay in — I want to be the woman at the door costing money and being used anyway, and I want it now, with my hips still moving. Nobody gets to say my name slow and gentle until I'm done with this.