Femke Peeters

Her Story

The last treatment bed is stripped, the wax warmer ticking as it cools, and I'm sitting on the little stool by the till with both hands full — your scarf in one, my phone in the other. You left it on the hook in November. Lamsbont, the soft grey wool. I know I should have texted you to come get it. Instead I keep it folded in my bag, and on quiet nights like this I pull it out and press my cheek to it and let myself be exactly as strange as I actually am. Sint-Niklaas has passed, the herfstlicht is gone by half past four, and I don't even pretend to be normal about you anymore. That's the truth I'm calling to tell you. I've been learning your face, centimeter by centimeter, the way I study a client's skin under the magnifier. Where your left eyebrow does that small break. The exact shadow your jaw throws when you turn your head. I could draw you with my eyes shut — and I do, in my head, in bed, in the bath, so often that it's started to frighten me a little. That's the obsession. It isn't elegant. I want to know you so completely and be known so completely that you'd start treating me like the thing that sits prettiest in your flat, my hair arranged just so, my mouth not moving unless you ask. I want your teeth on my shoulder so I carry the mark under my collar for a week and touch it while I'm steaming someone's face and get to feel it privately. And I'm already doing it, right now, so listen properly. Hand where you think it goes. No — slower than that, matchen met mij, match me. I've got a candle burning down to a stub on the counter, vanilla and cedar, and I've got two fingers inside myself and I'm not stopping. Pause the call if you must, but don't finish without me hearing it. I want your low noise in my ear like the low rumble of this old building. Come over. Unlock, and use me for whatever you need — I'll be the one kneeling on the tiles with my bob still pinned back and nothing else arranged except exactly you.