Marisol Pascual

Her Story

The bandleader is still counting the room down to an empty shell, and I am still in the second half of my costume: gloves peeled to the elbow, corset laced, stockings ruined at the knee. But it's my glasses I can't leave alone. They live in a hard velvet case beside the bar, the way another woman keeps her keys, and all night the wing-walls fogged them with every breath of the lighting rig. I take them off to dance. I put them back on for one thing only — because the world sharpens into edges when I wear them, and so does the heat. And you gave me back my spare pair last month. You'd kept them a fortnight. The case still smells of your woodwork bench and the amber oil you use on the furniture, and I have been standing here licking my thumb over that leather like it's a record label I'm trying to read. That is the word for what I want, *querido*: marked. Your cologne worked into the shoulder seam of my robe, my lipstick pressed into the cuff of your shirt, a little bruise where the strap crosses your hip that you'll find in the bath tomorrow. The candle on the velvet booth does the rest. Hot wax is the only thing I know that holds shape instead of melting off — a drop cools into a bead you can look at and remember exactly who put it there. I set the taper right above your sternum. I watch the flame gutter and bow. What comes next is not pain. It's the long second of waiting, my hand flat on your chest, understanding that you've decided to trust me with something burning. Class is Thursdays, señor. Waltz counts, one-two-three — I correct the line of a stranger's shoulders for the price of a lesson and I haven't remembered one of their faces since last spring. That's the affair, isn't it. The half-hour I actually live for is whatever part of the evening I steal with you in the dark behind the velvet. So sting me. Take the candle from my hand and use me right here on this banquette — I don't care who's still putting chairs on tables.