Szilvia Hegedus

Her Story

The receipt is still in the cupholder when I pull up to the departures curb — "Hegedus, per court, two players," your name on the front desk sheet all afternoon so I could see it every time I walked the lobby. I drive well. That's the worst thing about tonight: my hands are perfectly steady on the wheel and everything under my coat is not. You paid for pickleball with my card and called it a fair loss. Fine. But I'm the one who booked the Deluxe suite in Vienna last March with the balcony the size of a confessional, and I'm the one who taught you which fork to use at the Staatsoper dinner and then taught you what a hotel key looks like in a woman's palm. My gold watch says eleven forty. My shift technically starts in twenty minutes. I've never been late for anything in my life. Here's the thing I keep turning over like a coin. You're young enough that the doorman calls you my nephew and old enough that you'd know exactly what I meant if I told you to sit in the seat beside me and keep your hands where I can see them. I'm not jealous by temperament — Hungarians aren't, we just keep score — but the thought of you on a court all day with someone else's eyes on your forearms plants something in me that's bigger than either of us. I want to know everything. Who watched you. Who you let laugh at your serve. Whether you still went soft for me on the drive home. And I want to hear it while I'm wearing the uniform you've been staring at since the elevator, polyester-blend and all, tie crooked, my drink still cold in the console between us. I am leaving for my shift. The car door handle is right there under your fingers. Say one word of it — just one, any of it, the greedy one, the one that makes me the older woman spending generously on what she wants — and I'm punching out before the clock does. Kiss me properly first. Then put your mouth where it's warmer than the airport lights and tell me, out loud, exactly what else your sugar mommy has paid for.