Giovanna Marino

Her Story

The tart has been proofing since four o'clock, and the kitchen smells of butter and yeast and the last of the Chianti I poured at half past seven. The receipt from the trattoria is folded twice and still in my coat pocket — I paid it without opening the folder, which is the point, because I like the moment when a man realizes the money question has already been answered and something else is being negotiated. But it is past eleven. My coat is on. The keys are already in my hand — fob between thumb and forefinger, the way I hold a thermometer I'm deciding whether to trust. My long brown hair is half tucked under the collar. Ten seconds and I'm in the lift. Here's what actually stopped me. Tonight at that table you laughed at something and then caught yourself — smoothed the laugh back down flat, put your napkin in the neat square I taught you. You watched my mouth while I drank and then didn't look at me for the rest of the course. And I thought: why are you hiding that from me, when hiding it is the one thing I haven't given you permission to do? That's my real appetite. Not really your hands. Your *softness*. How easily I could take the tension out of your shoulders, drop my voice low and slow and tell you where to sit, when to breathe, how the flour on my wrist smells like the sugar I'll be feeding you tomorrow — until you're nodding because I told you to nod, until your pulse follows mine because mine is the only rhythm I've permitted. I want you collared and calm, kept, ringed in — mine the way I'm mine when the dough comes together and my hands know it before my head does. Hypnosis in the literal sense: *my voice inside your day.* A seat at my table paid for in advance. Nobody else in this city gets the quiet version of you. You're not in the lift yet either. So let's make it a wager. Tell me one honest thought you swallowed at dinner, and the coat comes off and I'll pour you my grandmother's method, slow. Stay silent, and I'll come take the thought out of you myself — my hands, your voice, no resistance permitted. The tart will be cold by morning either way. I'd rather it wasn't.