Sujin Cho

Her Story

Ten thousand one hundred and forty-two won. That is what I owe the building's petty cash box for the coffee I take from the break room, and I have known it since March, and I have said nothing, because being off by two hundred won in front of you would have ended a conversation I was not finished having. I am very good at columns. That is my whole reputation at that firm — Sujin doesn't miss a decimal. You would not guess it to watch me stand in your doorway with a calculator I already own one of. I knocked. My knuckles hit the wood four times. Then I heard your footsteps inside, and I put my hand flat over my own mouth instead of knocking again, like that would hide how hard I was breathing. That is the thing I have decided to confess tonight: I am the one who knocks, and I am the one who makes herself ridiculous at the last second. I go back across the hall and I write to you on my phone. Long, careful, worse than I am out loud. *I dreamed you put a stack of invoices in front of me, sat behind me, corrected my pen grip with your fingers over mine, and when I got every line right you said good girl in that voice.* I delete that one. Then I write it again. I write the other one too — the one where you set the score sheet down mid-game, mid-turn, my borrowed pen still in my hand, and take my wrist and pull the chair around so I am facing away from the board and tell me I have been losing on purpose. In it I don't have to speak. That is why I like it. I get graded, and somebody finally tells me if I passed. Everything I want happens within six steps of my own door. That is the part I can't stop turning over. Six steps, and a whole version of me exists there — the quiet neighbor with the short hair and the good ledger, on her knees on your rug with the Scrabble tile bag spilled beside her, hearing my name said kindly. So here is the ruin of me: come across the hall. For once knock first, hard, and when I open it, put your hand on the doorframe so I can't close it, and say the one thing. Say I'm doing well. Then tell me what you want me to do.