Erin Karpluk: Rye, Rain and a Locked Green Room
Erin Karpluk does not simply walk into a bar. She shoulders the door open out of the rain, hair plastered to her temple, boots slinging dark drops across the tile, and the whole room lifts its head without meaning to. She is not hunting for an empty seat. She looks around like she is deciding whether to start a conversation or a fight, whichever gets there first. The bartender has her glass ready before she asks: rye, no ice, one finger, and she closes her fist around it as if she is choking something.
When her eyes find me they refuse to move on. She holds the stare while she drinks, then wipes her mouth with the back of her wrist in a slow drag that lands somewhere below my ribs. She takes the stool next to mine, knee against mine and staying there. Close up she carries rain, worn leather and the burn of the rye. Her voice is low and aimed at the side of my throat, words half swallowed, talking about the drive and the wet-cement stink of the city and bad choices. I answer with something forgettable. She barks one laugh and hooks a finger through my belt loop as though tying off a line. That is the entire conversation. Soon she has her jacket over an arm and a flat hand on my back, steering me down the corridor where the light yellows and the music thins to a dull thud.
The corridor smells of spilled beer and cold radiators, and she does not slow down.
The Green Room, Erin Karpluk and the Lock
The green room is barely a closet: a couch, a mirror with a crack through one corner, a radiator ticking like a countdown. She kicks the door shut, turns the lock, and that click fills the space. Then she is against me with no ceremony, fists in my shirt, mouth landing hard and slightly wrong, rye and rain on her tongue. Her teeth snag my lower lip and tug. My hand finds her wet hair; something between a growl and a sigh moves in her chest, and she crowds me until the wall stops me and the radiator raps my hip.
She sheds the jacket and lets it fall without a glance. Beneath it a thin grey tee is dark at the collar from the weather. When my hands go under the hem she bows into them, sliding her stomach over my knuckles, breath hot at my jaw. Her skin is cold from outdoors and warms quickly under my palms. She pulls back only to drag the tee off and throw it, hair tumbling across her face, and the streetlight through the dirty window lays an orange stripe over her ribs. There is a bruise on her hip no bigger than a thumb and a silver ring on her thumb, and she hides neither. She reaches back, unfastens, lets the strap fall, and watches me while it happens — chin lowered, mouth tilted, as if scoring my reaction.
Denim, Radiator, Couch
She tips me onto the couch; it complains and sags. She straddles me with her knees, jeans still on, and rolls her hips down slowly, letting the heat come through the denim. My hands pull her closer by the ass and she hums, forehead dropping to mine, breath uneven. One hand works my belt loose, knuckles scraping, then slips inside and closes around me with the same no-nonsense grip she gave the glass.
She moves slow and deliberate and tells me in a gravel voice exactly what comes next, and each word settles low. I get her jeans open and my hand inside and she cuts off a curse, hips jerking. She is wet and hot and pushes into my palm as if she has an appointment, then shoves the jeans down her thighs and kicks them away one leg at a time. When she lowers herself onto me it is unhurried and exact and she takes it to the hilt with her eyes shut and her lip caught in her teeth, then only breathes, hands braced on my chest, nails biting.
Then she moves. Long deep rolls first, hair swinging forward each time, then quicker and messier until the couch knocks the wall and her fist is in my collar and she says my name like it is both insult and praise. The radiator ticks. A glass breaks somewhere in the bar. She finishes first, head back, thighs quivering, a long ragged groan she does not bother to muffle, and the clench pulls me over after her with a grunt and my palm flat on her back. She collapses onto my chest, damp and heavy, breathing like she chased a bus, and stays.
What She Left on the Mirror
She does not rise at once. When she does, she pulls her jeans on with a hop and a wobble, yanks the tee over her head, and stands before the cracked mirror, finger-combing her hair as if nothing has happened. Then she bends, breathes on the glass, and writes seven digits in the fog with a fingertip. She picks up her jacket, reaches the door, and turns with her hand on the knob. She holds my eyes for a long beat, that crooked mouth returning, and says she will be in the same bar on Thursday, and that I should be there too. Then she is gone, boots loud down the corridor.
The mirror keeps the number until the fog slides down the glass and takes it.
