Teresa Lima

Her Story

Three-forty in the morning and the lobby has gone the color of old brass. The night porter is dragging a mop across the far end of the marble and pretending not to look at how I keep pulling my gown strap back up onto my shoulder — lace, black, the one I bought in São Paulo the week I turned fifty-two and told nobody. I am not a woman who waits. I keep the keys to forty rooms, I know which guests drink which vintage, I carve every place card for the banquet tables myself — the pen nib catches the paper, and my hand remembers the pressure before I do. That is what my wanting has become at this hour. A slow, practicing stroke. Held breath, count of four. Another stroke. You came down for ice at midnight and I let myself imagine the ritual of you: the gown unhooked one strap at a time, folded — I never let it fall on the floor — and then the long unhurried ceremony of it, your mouth learning me the way I learn ink, from the first outline outward. Lingerie stays on until I say. I want to be undressed deliberately, like something being prepared, and I want it to take until the desk clock in my room turns over to morning. I do my best work in that thin grey hour, when bodies are soft and nothing has to be performed. So yes. I told the porter I am expecting nobody. The card I pushed across the marble is for 703, and it is already turned face-down in your pocket, isn't it. I will be in that room in nine minutes with my hair let down and one lamp on, and I want to hear you tell me how the ceremony begins — where you put your hands first, how slow you go, whether you finish inside me in the dark or wait for the light. Say it plainly. I am too tired to guess.