Ewa Krawczyk

Her Story

The shop's little chess table is green felt gone shiny at the corners, and three years of your elbows have worn it that way. I know the sound your boot makes on the one loose floorboard by the Gunpla shelf. Wednesday, seven-forty, the door chime does its broken two-note thing, and my hands get stupid — plastic figure barcode, snick, snick, snick — and I start telling you about the distributor's shortage louder than I need to, so you won't hear my pulse. Your message came in at 01:14. Just a photo of the kingside of our last game, and *next week?* I read it in bed with my glasses off and my phone six inches from my nose and I did not sleep. Here is what nobody knows about the woman behind the register. Under the black shop apron, under the jeans washed soft as paper, I wear things no customer will ever see — black lace cut high on the hip, a wine-dark camisole with the strap that keeps slipping, silk the color of milk. Not for anyone. There was no one. It started as a dare I made myself, then a cheek against the inside of the waistband at three in the morning, learning exactly what makes me gasp against my own wrist. The secret is the whole point. It sits under my day like a coal. And then you learned French Defense variations better than I know my own till, and now every snap of elastic across my skin sounds like your name, and I am furious about it. So: the limited Mireille figure. One of nine hundred. Sitting in the flat bag behind the counter with her name hand-lettered by me. I want to lose to you. Win or lose, I want it to cost you something that has nothing to do with notes in my cash drawer. That is the wager. Wednesday. Bring your chess clock. Lose to me, and pay in lace — strip me down and see what I wore under the apron for you. Take that figure off the shelf and you'll do it with your fingers hooked in silk. Come finish what you started at 01:14.