The Desk Was Four Inches Off

**The Desk Was Four Inches Off**

Here's the part she left out when she told me — and she told me most of it, over three glasses of a wine she doesn't even like — the part where she says they didn't, and then, in the same breath, describes exactly how his hands smelled afterward. Diesel and paper and, underneath, the coffee he'd been palming for warmth. She said this to me the way you'd report the weather. She said, *nothing happened*, and then she said, *he had ink on the side of his hand from the report, and it came off on my hip*, and I did not point out that these two statements cannot both live in the same house.