Nell Hollister

Her Story

My phone buzzes on the lectern — a text from my sister in Rosario: *vos, ¿todavía con el detector?* — and the sound of it goes straight to my hands. Because it reminds me I promised myself I'd take the Minelab out at dawn, sweep the tide line before the salt gets busy, and instead I booked one more Saturday night seminar down at the marine center so I could stand in this dark with you. Look at the tank behind me. The jellies are doing that thing they do — fleshy lanterns drifting, glowing the exact green of a pickled olive. The dark makes people honest. In the dark, you hear things the light muffles: the pump's thrum, a chair leg ticking, your own swallowed breath when I lean close. That's the part I chase. Sound has always been the way I get touched without being touched. My father's hearing went at sixty — mine's halfway there and better for it, I've decided. So keep the little foam plugs. Keep them in. Let the world get a couple decibels quieter and let *me* be the loud thing in it. It's the closest thing to a hand over your mouth that I'm allowed to do to a friend. Now: the wager. You were watching my reflection in the acrylic, weren't you — chin dropped, glasses sliding, staring at the back of *me* instead of the animal. Admit it, and I shut the tank lights one more notch and stand in front of you in the dark for one full minute, breath in your ear, hand flat on your sternum. Deny it, and I go quiet for a month — a month, on my honor — and I stay on my side of the glass. And there'll be thirty centimetres more of you than of me, and five foot four of me craning up with my big dark eyes and my crooked teeth and wanting you to put your hands where I can't reach. Tell me which one you're picking. Or make me raise the stake.