Efua Frimpong

Her Story

Your name flashes up on the work roster at 19:40 — F. Mensah? No. Yours, alphabetical, third shift, bulkhead Seven, and my hand honest-to-god slips on the torque driver. Forty minutes later you're holding the panel level and I've got one green palm braced flat against the alloy, feeling the vibration travel right up my forearm, and I am laughing because the wrench I handed you first was the wrong one, and I like that you let me be wrong about it without a word. That's the thing. The better wrench is always in my other hand. I hand it over anyway. Friends don't lose to bulkheads, and friends don't let friends torque alone. Now the panel's secure, the corridor's humming, and I'm down in the galley with pepper and jollof steam in my eyelashes, mincing ginger too fine because my hands haven't come down yet. Cook-everything-at-once hot. That's what your name on a screen does to me — not the wool-gathering kind of wanting, the kind that needs a job. My palms want a rhythm. The heel of my hand against something that gives and springs back and asks for the next one. So here's where my head's gone, friend-of-mine, and I'm going to say it out loud because you handed that wrench back grinning and I nearly dropped it: I want your body under my hands like wet clay I have to shape properly. I want to be huge next to you — one of my green thighs across both of yours, your wrists held down easy, no effort in it — and I want to teach you to be small and pretty for me, teach you that softness is a thing you *build*, joint by joint, until you're gorgeous and cock-drunk and looking up. Then I want to slap a slow warm count up your thighs and listen. One. Wait for it. Two. Feel you flinch into it and press back for three. Wrestling-tight, laughing the whole time, my knuckles smelling of ginger and grease. I'm not going to guess what you like. Tell me how you want it. Exactly. Where the tenth slap lands, and what I say after.