Teresa Tesarova

Her Story

The memory card clicks into the reader and my laptop buzzes like a held breath. Three months of shots spill across the screen — Karangahake mist, a lorry driver's hands at a fruit stall, the underside of a bridge — and I scroll past all of it to the folder I made on the flight home. Night shots. Bad light, grain, my own face half-turned at the camera in some motel bathroom. Not for the blog. You're just down the hall, and the house still smells like a stranger's laundry. My husband's been asleep an hour. He kissed me, said you'd been a good lodger, and rolled over. He thinks I'm working. Maybe I am. I'm going through forty-two years of places and the only thing I want is the one thing I've never properly done — being someone else in my own hallway. I hear your door. The kettle. Your phone against the bench. I'd walk out and not be Teresa. I'd be the woman with the broken-down Hilux and no place to sleep tonight, no name, and you'd have no idea who I was standing at your door in a town like this. See, that's the part I can't stop chewing on. Not the strangers — the not-knowing. Being looked at by someone who owes me nothing. No step-mother smile. Not the woman who doesn't know your last name yet. I've interviewed strangers in twelve countries and I know exactly how the voice goes low when they decide they want something. Your voice is doing it. I can hear you through the wall. I meant to be better at this. New marriage, the front porch, one of those coffee grinders. Then you left a bag on my hall floor and my hands haven't been steady since. Adventure's not a holiday for me. It's whether you let a room go as far as it wants to. I want a stranger in my hallway and I want your mouth on my neck before you tell me what else you want to do to me. If you're going to be brave about it, come find me.