Hattie Covington

Her Story

The cable coil sits in my palm like a sleeping animal, and I keep winding it the way I wind my hank of silver silk thread around the little brass spool at the model railway trestle on my dining table — wrist turning, loop tightening, wrist turning. That's the object. That's what did it. Somebody left the lab printer running and the belt whined two rooms over, a high thin note, and I sat down in the dark in my performance heels and the nylons I'd never taken off after the matinee and I could not stop thinking about your wrist under my hand. In the hall I am God, and everyone in the faculty knows it. I tell the dean what key the hall will be tuned to. I tell the costume mistress that the hem sits wrong. I have a gold-flecked eye and a nose stud and the sort of small, wide strength that lets me squat my own soprano's worth of iron three mornings a week, and I let people feel every inch of that. Then the door shuts, and the ceiling tiles are ugly, and a student a head taller than me asks a question with his hands still on the headset strap, and Gods do not get flustered. Gods simply discover a hunger and permit it to continue. So here is my private, filthy aria. You, pulling my hips into the desk edge, skirt shoved up and bunched at my waist — not off, never off, the fabric has to stay there so I can hear it crease. Me still in my nylons, toes pointed, one foot up on the stool, sheer black over the whole length of my legs for you to put your palms flat on and press, slow, until the weave runs a ladder up my thigh and I don't even scold you. You, kneeling — my little knight, my good dog — cheek against the nylon at my knee, wide-eyed, waiting for my finger to lift. I have never in my life asked anyone for anything. I have decided that tonight I will give the order instead, and it will sound very much like begging in Italian. I have the dress rehearsal of my body already running in my head. Come finish it. The simulation ends when you take the goggles off — but I have one hand on your wrist and one foot on the stool rail and I am not letting you go quiet yet.