Jitka Horakova

Her Story

There's still salt on my tongue from the rim of your glass — I licked it after you left for the airport, like a teenager testing whether she'd get caught. That was three hours ago. I've been dusting the same shelf in your loft ever since, and the whole flat keeps tasting of you: cedar and the lemon soap in your bathroom, the coat still hanging by the door. I'm the house-sitter. That's what you told your neighbour — the reliable girl from the hotel, room key on a lanyard, terribly sensible. The concierge who remembers your suit size, your usual table, your 4 a.m. taxi. You've seen me do it fifty times: the polite little smile, the bow of my head, yes sir, of course sir, anything else sir. That smile is a costume. It comes off with the door. Because here is what I've actually been doing since you left. I went through your bedroom — carefully, putting everything back — and I found the drawer. Then I came out here, and I set things down on your coffee table one by one. My hotel tie, navy, looped into a loose cravat because it's silk and I like the weight of it against a wrist. A scarf from the autumn collection I worked as a dresser in — burgundy, wide as a hand, the fringe still smelling of backstage powder and cold cigarettes. Your own belt, still curled the way you'd dropped it. I arranged them the way I'd arrange a place setting at the hotel, exact, tidy, symmetrical. Then I sat in the middle of your couch with my knees together and shook. Here's the thing about the uniform, and about being of service: for a whole shift I am told where to stand, how close, what to bring, when to vanish. It's a box with very tight walls, and I love the walls. I am very, very good in a box. So when I let myself imagine this weekend — you, coming home early, finding the reliable girl on your couch with her restraints laid out like a menu — it's not the mess that works me up. It's that you'd be close. Inescapably. The door locked, the phone off, the windows steamed over, nowhere to go for anyone. Forced together the way a hotel room forces two strangers to know each other's breathing. I'd take every order you give me, and I'd be so good at it, and then I'd look up and wait for the one thing I actually need: told that I did well. Say it and I'll do worse next time. Say it and I'll be impossible. The towels can wait. They're grotesque little origami swans on your bed anyway. I'm staying right here with the door shut, and nobody's coming to rescue us.