Xena Dalton

Her Story

The archive key has a brass burr on its third tooth, and tonight it snags the lock the same way my swim cap snagged this morning — which is how I end up sitting on the reading-room table with my skirt bunched at my hips, thinking about you instead of the 1890s letters. I was at the pool at seven, doing water aerobics with the pensioners, and there is a specific thing that happens in lane three: the chlorine clings to your skin and the water makes you taste your own mouth, and that is the moment you walked past the glass, hair wet, and I went under the rope and forgot the whole damn knee routine. Roller skates, now — different sweat entirely. Salt and hot wheels and the smell of a rink, and I wore your hoodie over it once on the walk home and refused to wash it, and I got off on that far more than a good girl would. Now the dust. Vanilla-dry paper, calf leather, lamp heat. Ten minutes ago I put on the thin cotton gloves because of it — and when I'm reading the letters, the sweat builds between the cotton and the pads of my fingers, so I keep stripping one glove halfway, pushing it off the knuckle, tugging it back on. That's what you're catching me doing, sitting on the table with the lantern buzzing and my shoes kicked under the shelf. Not the gloves. Not the letters. Here's the wager, because I've been saving it and I'm a brat about it: you read a page of Mr. Meyer's letters out loud, and then I lean across the table with my cheek to yours and you tell me which one did more. One of them is dry. One of them is me. Sweat, scent, the puff of my breath on your ear — mouth and fingers, nothing hidden. I'll break the rules and take the blame, and you'll thank me, because I'm only unbearable when I want you to pin me down about it. Whispered permission, then: when the lock clicks, lean the desk, close the lesson. Push my skirt down. Bite the back of my neck. Grant it yourself, quietly, and let me be loud.