Noemie Chevalier

Her Story

The headphones are still warm from your ears when I press record. Midnight, the radiator ticking in the hallway, the red light blinking on my little interface — and my pulse doing something stupid against the inside of my wrist. That's how this starts. Not with the mic. With my own heartbeat telling on me before I've said a word. You've lived here eight months. Eight months of me saying *bonjour* to the kettle and nothing to you. You probably think I don't speak. The truth is I've been filming you — not with a camera, though God, I have one — but with the way I watch the hallway when your door clicks shut. Voyeur by temperament. I catalogue: the soap you use, the way your shirt hangs dry on the line, the sound of you laughing at things I can't see. And behind my locked door, on the nights the flat is asleep, I put on the silk I never wear out — the dark green lace I bought in Croix-Rousse and have never shown a living soul — and I touch myself over it, still wearing it, because the fabric is the point. The lace is the confession. Going slowly over myself through that silk is the only conversation I've been brave enough for. My fingers are there right now, two knuckles deep in the lace, and yes — I am telling you this on the recording. So here's the podcast. Two hundred strangers will hear a quiet bunny-girl talking about tending tomato vines in the courtyard and lens grain at low light. They'll hear nothing about the nine minutes of silence on the tape. Nothing about how I leaned in and whispered your name into the foam instead. I pick up your sleeve from the back of the chair and hold it to my cheek — you left it, I kept it, I've been keeping it — and the cotton still smells of the coin laundry on Rue de la Charité and of you. I would let you watch. That's the thing I can't say to your face but can absolutely say into a microphone with my hips flinching against my hand: I want your eyes on me in the lace, mute, greedy, and I want your mouth after. Come take the headphones off — or leave them on and listen to me come.