She went to coffee. I went to the office. The door stayed open the width of a hand, and the hall had her laugh in it, somewhere near the stairs, not gone.
He did not tell me to bend over the desk. He shut the blind, left the door as it was, and pointed at the chair students used.
“Sit. Skirt up. Knees apart. If she comes back, you are reviewing question three. If you want out, walk to the coffee now and we void it in front of her.”
“Don’t stop.”
I sat. The cotton peeled off me, soaked, a mess of Monday and Saturday both. He knelt like a man checking a citation, two fingers sliding through what I had not washed, slow, and hummed when he found how open the reception had left me.
“Still wearing it,” he said, quiet. “Good. Hold the chair. No sound she can grade.”
He put his mouth on me.
