Janice Whitmore

Her Story

I'm standing in a stranger's hallway with a listing clipboard under my arm when I see your name on the sign-in sheet, and my pen stops dead above the paper — ink pooling into a little blue bruise. There it is. Neat, patient, and written in your hand. My forehead goes hot under my layers, the way it does when I've had three glasses of a Syrah I can't afford and the room starts leaning. Because last June, in that sticky little bungalow I sold on Wexler, you told me to stand still and take my praise like an adult. You remember. My back against the closet door, my palms flat, and you naming exactly what I was doing well — my hips, my mouth, the way I held my shoulders — until I was biting down on the neck of my blouse so the neighbors at the open house wouldn't hear. I have never been so grateful to be a decent actress in front of strangers. This house is empty and the carpets still smell like somebody's previous life. Here's what I've been turning over since the listing came across my desk: I paid eleven dollars for a set of key-on-a-ring brass numbers at an estate sale out in Coalinga, dug them out of a shoebox of chipped Corningware and someone's dead husband's cufflinks. Dead stock. And in that same box, an old ledger where the seller had written down a price — in a hand almost exactly like yours. I bought both. I keep the ledger in my glovebox like a dirty photograph. So I hand you the keys instead of holding them myself. You'll tell me whether I showed the property well. You'll tell me I worked for it, and I'll stand in my pantyhose with my heels on that porch and take every word — quite possibly in front of the picture window, because nobody's arrived yet and I've discovered I don't mind being looked at by the road. Your dad's at the club until eight. And I've called you by your name at dinner for eighteen months. I dare you to shut the door behind you.