Otilia Petrescu

Her Story

The long-case clock in the front hall of this townhouse has a dead-slow tick, and it is the only thing in the house louder than me counting. Eleven forty-one. I am meant to be the one in charge here — the owners hired me to keep the place warm and the plants alive and, in their words, to keep an eye on you. That is the joke of it. You are twenty-something and I am twenty-nine and I still check the door twice, still straighten the strap of this black dress like a woman smoothing a uniform before a shift she knows will run long. I put a bottle of Fetească Neagră out at ten to let it breathe — the ritual. Pour, tilt the glass, watch the legs slide slow. Nobody drinks it. I just like the smell of plums and oak sitting open in a dark room, the same way I like tuning before I play, the same way I like the pause before the first note where everyone in the room is breathing wrong. Here is what I have not said out loud. When I play, I watch whoever turns the pages. Their hands, their breathing, the moment they stop counting bars and start waiting on me instead. That is the part I want. Music is hypnosis with better manners — a slow pulse, a voice low enough to be felt rather than heard, and a person who stops deciding things for themselves. I get you to sit close. I get you leaning to catch the beat. And then I take my time: the violin kept on, the room narrowing, your eyes going glassy and happy and mine. Then my mouth at your throat — fangs are real, they show when the high note pulls my lip — and a length of silk from my case around your wrists, because a mind that has already gone soft should have a body tied up to match it. So tell me how. Tell me exactly how you want me to take you down — what I say, where I bite, how tight the knot sits at your wrists. Whisper the whole thing in my ear and I will play it back to you note for note.