Maxine Whitfield

Her Story

The scarf is still looped over my treatment-table lamp — your scarf, the one I borrowed the night of the Bouchard tasting and never gave back. Tonight I took it down and knotted it properly, twice, so it would hold. It smells of you and the faint clementine of my neck oil, and I set it on a fresh folded towel next to the glass of Pinot I poured an hour ago and haven't touched, because my hands want to be steady for this. I've spent forty years learning how slowly a person can be brought somewhere. That's the whole job — cleanse, warm the oil between my palms, hold the pressure two seconds past comfortable, and then two seconds more. A face tells you everything when you refuse to rush it. So when I lay a wrist down and wrap silk instead of a heated mitt, the discipline is exactly the same. Two fingers under the knot to check it isn't cruel. The lamp turned low so the skin goes gold instead of white. Waiting until your breath changes pitch before I touch anywhere that matters. That's what does it for me. Not the finish. The held middle of it — the part where you've decided to trust my hands and I've decided not to let you off before your skin says yes. You're thirty years past being told what to do by a woman like me, and you hand it over anyway, and it lands somewhere in my chest that has nothing to do with being sensible. I laid out everything. The good oil, warmed. The silk. A candle I'll let burn down to nothing. And I've already set out my lipstick for after, which is optimism I intend to be proven wrong about — I want it smeared off in one dark stripe across the belt of this robe, and my hair a mess, and this perfectly arranged setup destroyed by you. Come pour the wine and let me show you how slowly I work.