When her back is to me, I swing my legs from the bed and pad barefoot to the floor-length mirror, where my shoes and socks are placed at the end of the bed.
I don’t exactly know what is in the fabric she’s stitched, but it smells faintly of her, too. Of spice, or herbs… maybe soap and sweat, but most certainly something iron-rich beneath it all.
Desperate to hide my erection, I tug the trousers on; they’re still warm from her lap, and fall perfectly at my waist. Not too tight, but fitted. They’re not loose enough to conceal my cock, however, but there’s not much I can do about that. I smooth the material—her work is precise, as if made by someone who knows my body. I glance into the mirror as my fingers fumble with the buttons, too busy watching the curve of her spine reflected as she lingers at the door, swaying slightly.
“I don’t think I’ve ever had a pair of trousers fit this way,” I say, playful accusation lacing my tone. “They’re shaped to me.”
“I’ve been doing this for a long time. Sewing tears in my own dolls since I was a child. I’m good at estimating,” she murmurs without turning. “I don’t even have to touch a client to know.”
Shame.
I reach for my undershirt folded on the wide dresser to the left of the trunk, but then I hesitate, my eyes glued to the mirror.
I must have sweated well throughout my slumber; my chest is defined, the skin over my sternum, smooth. The veins along my collarbone are darker than I remember, like ink under the thinnest parchment. When I drag a hand across my ribs, I expect the tenderness from fever and thenausea to return. Instead, my flesh is mild, nothing other than the persistent growl of my belly plaguing me. Even the fine golden hairs at my forearms seem to catch the lamplight in ways they shouldn’t.
When I look up, Annie is watching me in the mirror. As soon as I make eye contact, she makes her way over, holding my gaze the entire time. When she reaches me, she stands at my side and lifts her fingers to the waistband of my trousers. They linger there, ghosting along the stitch line at my hip. Her gaze then flickers down, assessing as she takes in the cut below my navel.
I shudder, rebuking the illness—the strange spirit, whatever it may be—that urges me to curl my arms around her.
“I did these too quickly,” she says decidedly. “I may need to take them in again.”
“How long?” I ask, desperate for a distraction.
Her eyes snap up, no longer suspicious, but transfixed at the rasp in my voice. The firelight sets them aglow. “What?”
Annie’s long, thick lashes bat at me—God, she’s close enough to devour—and my own question nearly escapes me. “Your mother. How long ago did she die?”
“Oh. Thirteen years ago.”
“And this was here?”
Her face scrunches before she scowls. “This is your way of gauging where I’m from. What I’mdoinghere.”
My heart skips a horrid beat. “No, I?—”
“My grandfather Shing was a dock laborer out of Guangdong for years before work became unstable. The British firms had slowly shifted their control onto the dock operations, and he was eventually released. Months passed before he was approached to be a translator.” Annie’s eyes twinkle, unseeing in the lamplight. “His employer promised he’d work abroad for a few months, makinga short stop in England before being dropped off in Singapore, where there were better chances for steady positions. Lucrative wages. So, he, Amah, my mother, and my uncle left their home in hopes of a better one.”
“Your family never made it to Singapore.”
“My grandfather was so eager to give them a better life, no one questioned the lack of a formal document or contract. Not that it would have mattered.” Her laugh is empty before she clears her throat, as if rehearsed to distance herself from the weight of a past she never lived. “They got off the ship here at the docklands when my mother needed cough medicine, and were never allowed back on.”
It’s unfathomable. Detestable. “I’m so sorry, Annie.”
“It’s fine,” she replies too quickly. “It’s not mine to carry.”
But it’s obvious she does.
“And how old are you?” My voice is unintentionally rough.
“I’ll be thirty-one in November.” Annie flinches belatedly at my direct questioning in regard to her, as if she’s shocked she’d answered so quickly.
“You were young when you lost your mother. And you care for your grandmother here?”
“The shop owners offered me my mother’s position when she died and we’d run out of wages. I go to work in the early mornings to help them set up and then come home to her.” She doesn’t look upset, nor ungrateful. Just pensive, as if she’s wondering where the years have gone. As if she’s pondered her next step many nights before, yet didn’t quite know how to proceed.
“Alone?” My questioning is far too forward, but I cannot help myself. It is the only thing I can do to keep myself from staring unabashedly at the swell of her full bottom lip, which she bites in anticipation. Her fingers sit painstakingly still, a brush away from the dick I cannot help but think with.
Except, it’s not even that. What I feel here is much more than that.
