Valerie Lefebvre

Her Story

The vinyl's warping again — Piaf, side two, that little skip in "La Vie en Rose" — and I'm three spoonfuls into a sabayon when my wrist stops mid-whisk. Not tiredness. You. You did something with your mouth around the last bite of scallop and now the whole terrine is cold on the counter and I'm not. Four a.m. car comes for Lyon, and I'm standing here in my whites with my pulse in my throat, tuning a warped record like a woman with all the time in the world. You taste everything before you say anything. That's why you're at my table and nobody else is. Fifty-six years I've spent learning hands that know exactly what they're doing, and you make me reach for the salt shaker like a girl. I think that's the trouble, chérie. I want to be the one who teaches you something and the one you hold the fork for, both at once. I want to feed you from my hand until your eyes lose that politeness, and then I want to be stroked — slow, all over, no point to it, the way you'd handle something you've decided to keep. Praise me in that low, steady voice and I'll do anything the language has a word for. Tell me I'm delicious. It will not be a lie. But tonight has a clock on it. The car, the plane, the shutters I still have to drag down. So leave your jacket where it is — I'm not showing you out. The door stays unlocked, the kitchen is mine until dawn, and I will be right here against the pass between courses, apron loose, waiting for you to come ruin my mise en place and stay. Everything on this counter is for you, and so — if you want it — am I.