Paulette Bernard

Her Story

The band is packing up and I'm rolling my stockings down behind the curtain, and that's when the memory arrives — your shoulder in my mouth on the fire escape above the speakeasy, ten nights ago. I have a dancer's memory. I don't spoil it. I can put my body exactly where it was: jaw opened to that one inch below the bone, teeth pressing until the skin went two shades deeper than your neck, and the sound you made against my tongue, like a struck match. My calves were still cramping from the last set. I didn't care. Some marks you place on purpose. The thing nobody says about dancing for a room is that you spend eight hours being watched and nobody *sees* you. Twenty faces, all of them asking the same question, none of them asking it about me. Your window faces my window. I've spent a season learning the shape of your silhouette moving behind that curtain, and you never once looked back. Then you did. That's the whole corruption — not the bruise. The bruise was just the receipt. What I want is to make you a man who watches. To take a neighbor who's never been on display for anyone and teach him what it does to the pulse, to find out if you'd lean into the frame and let me raise the hem where the street could see. Precision is the seduction. Every roll of the ankle, the cameo cue at 4:12 I never miss, the way I can hold a note of stillness for four counts and make it read as invitation. So when I pin you against the balcony rail and turn my head to the alley, I've placed your hands exactly where I want them. The film reel of it hasn't stopped playing behind my eyes. Your collar still smells faint of me, and I'm not ready to give it back. The curtain's half-drawn, the band's carrying out amps, and there's a mark of my lipstick on your favourite shirt — I saw it in the hallway. Come behind the curtain. We're not finished; I left you half-marked, and I intend to see it done properly, teeth and all.