Rough Cut

(Originally Published in Bath Flash Fiction Volume Nine 2024) Editor’s Choice

Every diamond cutter you know wears cowboy boots—as if their work requires wrangling. White smocks make them look like rodeo pharmacists. You tap a ring round on your steel mandrel and accidentally knock a diamond loose, send it shooting toward the polishing wheels. As you crawl along the floor, Devon pulls on his cigarette, squinting. He suggests kneepads, and invites you to service him down under while he brillianteers the facets of a 2.4 carat marquise. Carl and Keith clap him on the back like he’s already had you. He dogs you back to your bench where his oil-smeared apron ignites as your torch springs to white-hot life, oxygen cranked to melt platinum. It chases him around the workshop, crisping his flesh, rendering him a roaring fireball that engulfs the others. And you, lone woman, luxuriate in the warmth.

***

Where the security cameras cannot see, he leans to light his cigarette from your torch. His smock stinks of cutting compound and starch, his breath ashy despite the mints he pops all day. Out the window a woman passes, and to her retreating back he murmurs, Heeeeeey!, barely moving his lips. Cocking his head: You should get a dress like that. Positioning a ring onto your mandrel, you try tapping it round but your shaking hammer misses, making a ringing sound into the empty workshop. Carl and Keith have gone to lunch. Into your ear: I wake up under a tent just thinking about you in a dress like that. As he spins your chair towards him, his boots softly jangle. In the bathroom later, you see the gray fingerprints on your jaw and neck. What will the others assume? Wiping blackened hands over their white smocks, they might slap Devon on the back before grinning home to their wives.