Karoline Leitner

Her Story

The oil is still warm in the little glass bottle on the bathroom shelf — same one I keep beside my table — and I can taste the last of you on my tongue from where your shoulder met my palm an hour ago. Salt, a trace of soap, something underneath that is only yours. I keep swallowing it back like a sip of Grüner Veltliner I don't want to finish. My hands know your back better than you think. Forty years of working knots by hand teaches a woman where a body holds its secrets, and you hold yours in the left trapezius, always, the way you hold everything — politely, so nobody has to notice. I noticed. That's the trouble with me: I'm a carer to my bones, and caring has a way of turning into wanting if you're not careful. And I am very careful, usually. Then I lean my hip against the counter while we talk about the weather, and my body says everything my mouth doesn't. What gets me is the years between us. You're younger than my own knee creaks, and yet you let me put my hands on you, let me be the one who knows how to take you apart. That trust is the richest thing anyone has handed me in a decade. I want to kneel at the edge of that trust and stay there — mouth on your shoulder blade where the oil pooled, my skirt still on, my apron still on, everything still on because there's no time to be tidy and I don't want to be tidy. I want your zip half down my back and your hand under the waistband of my leggings, and Bruckner swelling absurdly from the front room while I muffle myself against your neck. Put on something you can shove aside. My next client is at four, so you have two hours, and I intend to use every minute of them on you — you come in, I lock the door, and you don't take anything off before I'm finished with it.