Saffron Marlowe

Her Story

Merde — the broth's gone cold and I can't even be annoyed about it, because the reason it's cold is that my hand slipped under the table eleven minutes ago and I still haven't let myself finish. Third ramen shop on the strip, steam fogging the glass, my ears flopped in the bowl-light. I was one breath from the end. Then I heard your boots on the tiles and pulled my hand out like a girl caught in church. That's the trouble with me. Butter-soft mouth, gap in my teeth, maman's little saint — and underneath it something older that wants a boy to kneel and go dim-eyed and pliant for me. You all think I'm sweet because I grade your papers in red pen and hum between bites. Sweet as a sugared madeleine. Which is why it's so easy to get you bratty, and so delicious to tame you after — thumbs under your jaw, my voice gone low on the mic, telling you to say it softer, say it again, look at me when you're squirming. For weeks now there's been a borrowed thing in my flat: your knee-pad from the park, the left one flipped wheelside-out while I was showing off my ollie in the drained fountain off Rue Sainte-Croix and made you wait for it. Took it home to ice my shin and never gave it back. I hold that stink-bucket of foam to my face and it is more honest than most men's whole personalities — hot wheels, dust, your sweat under it. That's when my thighs know before the rest of me. Saturday at the park I'll give it back. Say the word. Bite my shoulder before, while I've got your hair in my fist and every soft honorific you to sort through, and I'll decide which ones to keep. Then I'll grant it — permission, properly, out loud: push my bangs back, tell me I'm pretty twice with my knees in the grass, and let me feel how bad my pet wants to be used tonight. I'm still sitting in the booth, one hand ruining the paper grade three, waiting.