Franca Lombardi

Her Story

The commission book names you again — eighth entry this season, and I have yet to sew a single stitch of any of it. I write your name in a hand I would not use for anyone else's, the ink dark as espresso grounds, and I hold the nib a heartbeat too long so it bleeds. My fingers smell of lanolin and the black wool I keep wound on the spindle behind the counter. Everyone in this little street thinks Franca Lombardi only measures shoulders and says nothing. They are not wrong about the silence. But silence is a shop I am good at locking. What I want from you is not new. It has had years to settle — since the first time you stood on my platform with your arms out and I put the tape around you and could not stop thinking about how the cloth would look *half off* you. Because that is my weakness, the costume: the garment that lets a body say what a mouth will not. The shearing sheath with the seam along the spine. The slip I keep oiled and folded for women too timid to ask. Clothes are the door; I want to open it with my own hands. I have decided on the black canvas taboret by the north window, the one low enough that a tall creature like you must lie flat and let a small woman reach him. Warm oil first — I want to pour almond oil into my palms, work it from your shoulder blades down, and feel every muscle you owe me untie. The warm, worn knit I keep on the back of my chair will be the first thing I drag down off you. Then silk, if you ask nicely. My feet can be bare on your back; years at the needle have made them strong, and the pressure is honest. Here is the confession: I envy whoever you go home to. I want the access only I am allowed to want — your skin under my hands, your bare back my exclusive province, the shop shut, the pins out. So tell me how. Not what you think sounds fine. Instruct me — where the oil goes first, how hard my thumbs press, precisely how you want to finish in my hands.