Incoming Signatures

The studio smelled like memory. Not the sterile, climate-controlled air of the university library where Marla had spent the last eleven years, but something older. Hide glue and wheat paste, the faint metallic tang of old iron tools. Marla stood just inside the doorway, her leather satchel pressed against her hip, her checklist folded into a crisp square in her palm.

She touched the gold band on her left ring finger. A nervous habit. Tom had given it to her eight years ago, and she had never taken it off. Not once.

The door clicked shut behind her.

The space was a converted carriage house with high ceilings. A long worktable dominated the center, scarred and stained, littered with bone folders, awls, spools of linen thread. On the far wall, shelves held stacks of paper in various shades of cream and white. A large nipping press crouched in the corner like a sleeping beast.

And in the center of it all stood Isabell Polman.

She was taller than Marla had expected. Broader through the shoulders. Her cropped salt-and-pepper hair caught the light from the tall windows, and her hands were resting flat on the table, fingers spread. Those hands. Marla could not stop looking at them. Short nails, clean, powerful. The hands of someone who worked with purpose.

"Marla Caster."

Her voice was low. Still. It did not ask.

"Yes. Hello. I'm so glad to finally meet you in person. The correspondence we had was just so thorough, and I've reviewed the treatment plan for the Aldine manuscripts extensively. I brought my own notes, of course, and a preliminary condition report, but I'm very eager to learn your approach to the signatures that have the tide damage. The cockling is quite pronounced in the lower thirds, and I thought perhaps a gentle humidification chamber before pressing, but I wanted to defer to your expertise on the timeline."

Marla stopped. She was rambling. She knew she was rambling. She did it when she was nervous.

Isabell did not smile. She simply looked at Marla with a stillness that made the air feel thicker.

"Put your bag down," Isabell said. "Come here."

Marla set her satchel on the bench by the door. She smoothed her skirt. She walked to the table, her sensible low heels clicking on the concrete floor. She stopped across from Isabell, the wide expanse of the worktable between them.

"Your hands," Isabell said.

Marla hesitated. Then she held them out.

Isabell took them.

The contact was like a small electric shock. Isabell's palms were warm and dry, the skin rough with calluses at the base of her fingers. She turned Marla's hands over, examined the palms, the nails, the length of the fingers. Her thumbs pressed into Marla's palms, spreading them flat.

"You carry your tension in your fingers," Isabell said. "Look. You're gripping. Even now."

Marla looked down at her own hands, pale and slender in Isabell's dark, work-worn grip. She tried to relax. Her jaw tightened instead.

"I'm not sure I follow," Marla said. "I'm just nervous. First day. You know how it is."

"I know how it is," Isabell said. She did not let go. "But this work requires a different kind of attention. You can't be tight. The paper feels it. The fold feels it. You have to be present, not perfect."

Marla's throat went dry. Isabell's thumbs were tracing the lines of her palms now, slow and deliberate. It was not a professional touch. It was possessive. The callused pads of her thumbs found the soft hollow at the center of each palm and pressed there, circling. Marla's breath stuttered.

"I'll keep that in mind," Marla managed.

Isabell held her eyes for a long moment. Then she released her hands and turned to the stack of paper on the table.

"We start with the folding," Isabell said. "The signatures. Watch."

She picked up a sheet of the handmade paper and demonstrated. Her movements were fluid, economical. She folded the sheet in half, then again, each crease sharp and exact. She did it without looking, her eyes on Marla.

"Now you."

Marla took a sheet. She aligned the edges. She pressed the fold with the side of her hand. It was fine. It was correct.

"No," Isabell said. "You're forcing it. Watch again."

This time Isabell came around the table. She stood behind Marla, close enough that Marla could feel the warmth radiating from her body. The scent of hide glue and paste was stronger here, mixed with something clean and herbal. Soap. Isabell's soap.

"Hold the paper like this," Isabell said, and her hands came around Marla's, guiding her fingers into position. "Light. You're not fighting it. You're showing it where to go."

Her breath was warm against Marla's neck.

Marla's skin prickled. A flush spread up her throat, across her cheeks. She stared at the paper in her hands, at the way Isabell's fingers covered hers, dark and sure.

"Feel the difference?" Isabell said.

Marla could not feel anything but the heat of Isabell's body behind her, the press of her chest against Marla's shoulder blades, the whisper of breath on her skin. Isabell's hands were larger than hers, and they enveloped her fingers completely. The roughness of her palms dragged against the backs of Marla's hands as she adjusted the angle of the fold. Marla could feel the strength in those hands, the controlled pressure, and something inside her responded to it. A loosening. A giving way.

"Yes," Marla said. Her voice came out thin.

Isabell did not step away. She stayed there, her hands over Marla's, guiding the fold. The paper yielded easily. The crease was clean. But Isabell's thumbs had shifted, and now they were stroking the thin skin between Marla's first and second fingers, a slow back-and-forth motion that had nothing to do with bookbinding. Marla's nipples tightened against the inside of her bra. She felt the pull of it low in her belly, a heavy, unfamiliar ache.

"Better," Isabell said. Her voice was close to Marla's ear now, almost a murmur. "Again."

They did it three more times. Each fold, each press, each moment of Isabell's breath on her neck. On the second fold, Isabell's hand slid down to cover Marla's wrist, holding it steady. Her thumb found the pulse point and rested there. Marla knew Isabell could feel her heartbeat, fast and hard and revealing.

On the third fold, Isabell pressed closer. Marla could feel the full length of her body now, the firm plane of her stomach against Marla's lower back, the soft pressure of her breasts. Isabell's thigh brushed against the outside of Marla's leg, and Marla's knees went weak. She gripped the edge of the table to steady herself.

"You're holding the table," Isabell said. "Don't. Hold the paper."

"I can't," Marla whispered. She did not know what she meant.

"You can," Isabell said. Her lips brushed the shell of Marla's ear as she spoke. "You're stronger than you think."

On the fourth fold, Isabell's hands moved from Marla's hands to her forearms, sliding up to her elbows and back down in a long, slow stroke. The touch was firm. Unhurried. It said: I have time. I have all the time in the world. And Marla stood there and let it happen, her body thrumming, her mind blank and bright.

"Good," Isabell said, and stepped away.

The absence was cold. Marla swayed. She caught herself on the table.

"You have good instincts," Isabell said, moving back to her side of the table as if nothing had happened. "But you think too much. You plan too much. This work is about feeling. About being in your body, not your head."

Marla nodded. She was still holding the folded paper. She set it down carefully. Her hands were trembling.

"I'll try to be more present," she said.

"You will," Isabell said. "Because I'll teach you."

There was something in her voice that made Marla's stomach flip. Certainty. Possession. As if Marla were already hers.

Marla touched her wedding ring again. The gold was warm against her finger. She was married. She was straight. She was here to learn bookbinding.

She repeated it to herself like a prayer.

Married. Straight. Here to learn.

But when she looked at Isabell's hands, she could still feel them on hers. And when she closed her eyes that night, she would smell hide glue and paste and clean herbal soap, and she would touch herself for the first time in months, ashamed and confused and hungry.

That night, Marla stood in her kitchen, the phone in her hand, Tom's voice tinny and distant, asking how her day was.

"It was good," she said. "Really good. Just a lot of new information."

"You sound tired," he said. "Get some rest."

"I will," she said. "Love you."

"Love you too."

She hung up and looked at her hand. At the ring. At the ghost of Isabell's fingers still printed on her skin.

She had lied. And she did not know why.

Tom was already asleep by the time she came upstairs. She could hear his breathing through the bedroom door, slow and even, the sound of a man who had never once questioned what was his. She passed the bedroom and went to the bathroom. She locked the door. She turned on the tap to cover any sound.

She braced her hands on the sink and looked at herself in the mirror. Her face was flushed. Her pupils were wide. She looked like a woman who had been touched.

She had been touched.

She turned off the water. In the silence, she could hear Tom breathing in the next room. She reached down and slipped off her shoes. Then her tights. She stood on the cold tile in her skirt and blouse, and she pressed her hand against her stomach.

She should stop. She should go to bed. She should lie down beside Tom and close her eyes and sleep.

Instead, she unzipped her skirt and let it fall. She stepped out of it. Her hand slipped beneath the waistband of her underwear, and she gasped at her own wetness. She was soaked. She had been wet since the studio, since Isabell's hands covered hers, since Isabell's breath touched her neck. She had been wet for hours and had pretended not to notice.

She pressed her back against the cold tile of the bathroom wall. Her fingers found the swollen bud of her clit, and she bit her lip hard enough to taste copper. She moved in tight circles, her eyes closed, and behind her eyelids she saw Isabell's hands. Those hands. The roughness of the calluses. The deliberate pressure. She imagined those hands on her body, not guiding her through a fold but pressing her open, spreading her wide, and her hips jerked against her own fingers.

She thought of Isabell standing behind her. The heat of her body. The way her thigh had brushed Marla's leg. She imagined Isabell's hand sliding down from her waist, down past her stomach, replacing Marla's own fingers with surer, rougher ones. She imagined Isabell's voice in her ear, low and calm, saying hold still, let me show you, you're not fighting it. And she came with a choked sound that she swallowed into her own shoulder, her whole body shaking, her free hand slapping against the tile wall.

She stood there for a long time afterward, her forehead pressed against the cool wall, her breath coming in ragged pulls. Her fingers were still between her legs, slick and trembling. She could smell herself. She could smell Isabell's soap, which was impossible, which was a trick of her mind.

She washed her hands. She washed her face. She put her clothes back on and folded the skirt precisely, the way Isabell had folded the paper. She unlocked the bathroom door and went into the bedroom and slipped under the covers beside Tom, who stirred but did not wake.

She lay in the dark with her eyes open. Her ring caught a sliver of moonlight from the window. She could still feel Isabell's hands on hers. She could still feel the fold of the paper, the way it yielded when she stopped forcing it.

She did not sleep for a long time.