The office smelled like coffee and sawdust, the way it always did by second period, and Jim Holloway sat at his desk with a stack of sophomore birdhouse projects he was pretending to grade. The chalkboard behind him held yesterday's lesson in a chalk-dust ghost—draft angles, a rough isometric sketch of a miter joint—and he'd left it up because erasing it felt like admitting the day had to start. His coffee had gone cold an hour ago. He drank it anyway.

Down the hall, the shop room exhaled its own weather: cedar shavings, machine oil, the faint burnt-sugar smell of the bandsaw blade heating up. He'd come in early to run the jointer. He'd run the jointer. Now he had nothing to do but sit and listen to the building wake up around him—lockers clanging, a janitor's cart squeaking past, the muffled argument of two freshmen who hadn't learned yet to whisper in the hallway outside a teacher's door.

His phone lay face-down on the desk, and he had not turned it over since he'd set it there. He knew what was on it. He knew the count. Wanda had read him the number over breakfast like a weather report—one hundred and six, and climbing—and he'd laughed, and then he'd driven to work with the laugh still sitting in his chest like a swallowed stone.

He picked up his red pen and put a checkmark on a birdhouse roof that didn't need one.

"Nice weather we're having."

Marcia stood in the doorway with a manila folder pressed against her chest, not open, not offering it, just holding it the way you hold something you've decided not to use yet. She'd been his secretary for eleven years and she had never once announced herself. She simply arrived, and you dealt with it.

Jim's face went red from the collar up. He felt it happen—the heat climbing his neck, the tips of his ears going hot—and there was nothing to do about it. He set down the pen.

"Marcia."

"So Wanda's been keeping you limber." She said it flat, a statement of fact, the way she'd say the copier's down again or the district called about your requisition. She didn't blink. The folder stayed against her chest.

"I don't—" He stopped. There was no version of the sentence that didn't make it worse. He picked up the cold coffee and drank and set it down and the mug made a sound on the desk that was louder than it should have been.

"I saw the thread," Marcia said. "Everybody saw the thread. Deb Miller's still commenting." She finally lowered the folder, tucked it under her arm, and leaned one shoulder against the doorframe. "Eleven years, Jim. Eleven years I've watched you blush at the word 'bra.' I had to find out from Facebook that you've got a whole other thing going on."

"It's not a thing."

"It's a thing." She smiled, and it was the smile she used on vendors who tried to sell the school overpriced toner. "It's a whole thing. You've got a yoga instructor in Portland giving you a shout-out. That's a thing."

His phone buzzed on the desk. Face-down, it buzzed again—two short pulses, a text, then a longer one. He didn't reach for it. Marcia's eyes went to it and came back to him and she didn't say anything, which was somehow worse than saying something.

"That'll be her," Jim said, and hated how it sounded, like he was a man who got texts from women who weren't his wife.

"That'll be Wanda," Marcia corrected. "You get that look when it's Wanda. You get a different look when it's the district."

He turned the phone over. Wanda's name on the screen, and beneath it a screenshot—a direct message, the little round avatar of a woman with a messy bun and dark eyes, the words cropped into the frame. He read it twice. The second time he read it out loud without meaning to, his voice low and flat with the effort of keeping it level.

"'Honored.' She says she's honored."

"Honored," Marcia repeated. She crossed the office in three steps and read over his shoulder, and he didn't stop her, because stopping her would have required him to have a reason and he didn't. Her breath smelled like peppermint. She whistled—low, one note, the whistle of a woman watching a deer walk into her garden. "She wants to know if you'll be watching tonight's live stream."

"She's asking Wanda."

"She's asking both of you. Read the next line." Marcia tapped the screen with a fingernail, once. "She says 'you and your husband.' She's asking you, Jim. By name."

He hadn't gotten to the next line. He read it now. She had written it out—Lily Nguyen, thirty-two years old, a woman he had never met and would never meet, who lived in a sunlit apartment three time zones away and had no idea that a shop teacher in Ohio had spent the last month watching her ankles. And she had written his name. Or Wanda's name, and his, the two of them, together, a couple, a unit.

"Expect a full report Thursday," Marcia said.

"Thursday."

"Thursday drinks. You're buying. You've been buying for eleven years and you're going to keep buying, and Thursday you're going to tell me everything." She straightened up and the folder came back against her chest, still unopened, whatever was in it now irrelevant. "Or I'll read it on Facebook like everybody else. Your call."

"Marcia."

"Nice weather," she said, and walked out, and her footsteps went down the hall and faded, and the office got quieter than it had been before she came in, which he would not have believed possible. The chalkboard was still behind him, cool if he touched it, and he didn't touch it. He sat with the phone in his hand and the DM glowing on the screen and the cold coffee and the birdhouse projects and the sawdust drifting in from down the hall.

He typed back to Wanda: she used my name.

Three dots. Then: she used OUR name. get home. i found the good leggings.

He set the phone down and looked at the clock above the door. It was nine-forty in the morning. The count of hours until tonight was a number he did not let himself finish.

The rest of the day was a long corridor he walked through without noticing the walls. Fourth period, a kid dropped a chisel and Jim caught it before it hit the floor and didn't remember reaching for it. Sixth period, he explained the difference between a rip cut and a crosscut and heard his own voice from a distance, patient, ordinary, a man who had not spent his lunch break reading the same DM four times. He drove home the long way, past the ballfield, past the grocery store where he and Wanda had bought the wine, and the sky did the thing it did in October, going orange at the edges and then gray.

Wanda was already in the living room when he came in. She'd pulled the coffee table back against the wall and laid both mats out—his and hers, side by side, the way they always did—and the 80-inch screen was dark but awake, the little standby light red in the corner. She was wearing the leggings she'd gone upstairs for that morning, and a sports bra the color of a good bruise, and her hair was up in the loose ponytail that meant she'd stopped caring how it looked and started caring about something else.

"You're early," she said.

"You said get home."

"I did." She looked at him the way she'd looked at him on the mat two nights ago, the nurse's look, unhurried and assessing, and then the other look underneath it, the one that had been there thirty years and had only recently learned a new trick. "Strip."

He stripped. He'd done it before, but it still took him a second—the shirt over his head, the belt, the jeans, the socks, and then the shorts, which he stepped out of and folded out of habit before remembering there was nowhere to put them and dropping them on the arm of the couch. The house was warm. The furnace ticked. He stood there in his own living room with his hands at his sides and felt the air move over his skin.

Wanda walked a slow circle around him. She didn't touch. She just looked, and the looking was its own kind of hand, and by the time she came back around to face him he was already half hard, standing there, and she saw it, and she didn't pretend not to.

"Well," she said. "Look at that. You've been like this all day, haven't you."

"Since Marcia."

"Since Marcia." She laughed, loud and delighted, and the sound filled the room. "What did Marcia say."

"Nice weather."

"Oh, she's good." Wanda picked up the remote and sat down on her mat, cross-legged, and patted the mat beside her. "Come on. She's about to start."

He sat. The mat was cool under him and then not cool, and the screen came alive with the familiar sunlit apartment, the pale wood floor, the tall window with the city blurred behind it. Lily was already there, sitting on her own mat with her hands on her knees, and she was dressed—Wanda had been right about the leggings, and right about the top, a thin cropped thing the color of oatmeal that moved when she breathed, and her nipples stood out against the fabric like two small stones under wet cloth. Her hair was up in the messy bun. She smiled at the camera.

"Good evening, everyone," she said, and her voice was the same soft, unhurried thing it always was, and Jim felt his shoulders drop the way they did when she started talking. "Welcome back. I see a lot of familiar names in the chat tonight." She tilted her head, reading something off-screen, and her smile widened. "And I want to give a special welcome to two of my viewers in Ohio. You know who you are."

Jim's whole body went hot.

"I heard you had an incredible experience with my last video," Lily said, and she said it the way she'd say remember to breathe into the stretch, gentle, encouraging, like it was the most natural thing in the world to say to a camera. "I hope tonight's flow is even better for you. I've been thinking about it all day."

Beside him, Wanda made a small sound—not quite a laugh, something lower—and reached over and put her hand flat on his thigh. She didn't move it. She just left it there, warm, and Jim looked at the screen and at Lily's face and at the two small stones under the oatmeal fabric, and he understood that tonight was going to be a long one, and that Wanda had known it before he walked in the door.

"Let's begin," Lily said. "Find your seat. Close your eyes. And let's see how far we can go tonight."

Jim closed his eyes. The mat was warm under his ass now, the furnace ticking somewhere behind the wall, and for a minute there was nothing but Lily's voice coming out of the speakers—low, unhurried, the same cadence she used for every class, and he let it settle on him like a hand on the back of the neck.

"Find your breath," she said. "Don't chase it. Let it come to you."

Beside him, Wanda's hand stayed flat on his thigh. She wasn't rubbing. She wasn't doing anything. She just left it there, the weight of it, and Jim kept his eyes shut and breathed the way he was told.

"Good. Now let's wake up the spine."

He opened his eyes. Lily had come up onto her knees on her mat, hands on her thighs, and the oatmeal-colored top had ridden up a half inch when she moved, showing a sliver of flat brown stomach above the waistband of her leggings. The window behind her was still doing its soft-focus city thing. The light came in low and gold and caught the fine hair on her forearms.

"We're going to start with cat-cow," she said. "On your hands and knees. And I want you to really think about the shape you're making—don't just go through the motions." She dropped forward onto her palms, and the top hung away from her chest, and Jim looked at the mat instead. "If you've got a partner, this is a good one to do side by side. You can watch each other's spine move. It's a nice way to check in."

"She's talking to us," Wanda said.

"She's talking to everybody."

"She's talking to us." Wanda rolled onto her hands and knees, and the sports bra went tight across her back, and she looked over at him with her eyebrows up. "Come on. Check in with my spine."

He got onto his hands and knees. The mat took his weight. His back, which had popped two nights ago and had been quiet ever since, gave him nothing—no twinge, no warning—and he was grateful for that in a way he didn't say out loud.

They arched and rounded together. Lily's voice kept time. On the inhale, the belly drops, the chest opens. On the exhale, the spine rounds, the chin tucks. Jim watched Wanda's back move and Wanda watched his, and after a while he stopped watching her and just did the thing, the same way he'd done it a hundred times, and his body remembered the rhythm without him.

"Beautiful," Lily said. "Now—here's something I want to try tonight. Some of you have been with me a while, and I think you're ready for it." She sat back on her heels and pushed the loose hair off her forehead with the back of her wrist. "We're going to add a little more hip opening than usual. If you're watching with someone, this is where it gets interesting. If you're alone, that's fine too. You'll just have more room."

She said it lightly. She said it like it was nothing. But she was smiling at the camera in a way Jim had not seen before—a small, private smile, like she'd just told a joke to herself—and beside him Wanda's breath went out through her nose in a short, amused huff.

"Interesting," Wanda said.

"She means the hip stuff."

"I know what she means."

Lily came up onto her knees and then onto her feet, and she walked to the front of her mat and turned sideways to the camera, and she said, "First one. Wide-legged forward fold. Feet apart, toes turned in. And when you fold, I want you to let your head hang. Really hang. Let it be heavy." She folded. Her hair swung forward and hung too, and her hands came down to the floor between her feet, and the leggings pulled tight across her ass and the backs of her thighs, and Jim watched the shape of her calves and the small bones of her ankles and the way her bare feet pressed flat and pale against the wood.

He did the fold. So did Wanda. From upside down, the living room looked like a different room—the couch a low dark mass, the lamp a bright smear, the coffee table pushed against the wall like furniture in a flood.

"If you're doing this with a partner," Lily said, and her voice was muffled now, hanging down toward her own mat, "you can stand behind them and press gently on the sacrum. Just a little weight. Let them feel supported."

Wanda straightened up first. Jim stayed folded a beat longer, and when he came up, she was already behind him, and her palm landed flat on the small of his back and pushed—not hard, just enough to lengthen him—and he let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

"There," she said. "That's the spot."

They moved through it. Lily took them into a low lunge, then a twisted low lunge, and she kept talking the whole time, and the talking had changed. It was still soft and encouraging, still the same voice, but there was something underneath it now, something deliberate, like she was laying out a table for a dinner she'd been planning.

"If you're with someone," she said, "and you trust them—and I mean really trust them—you can let them adjust your hips here. Hands on the hip bones. Gently. Let them find where you're stuck."

Wanda's hands found Jim's hips. She didn't adjust anything. She just held them, thumbs pressing into the meat above his ass, and Jim stared at the screen and felt his cock, which had been half hard since he sat down, get a little harder, hanging there between his legs, forgotten by everyone but him.

"This is the part where she's showing off," Wanda murmured.

"She's not showing off."

"She's showing off." Wanda's thumbs pressed deeper. "Look at her."

He looked at her. Lily had come out of the lunge and was sitting back on her mat with her legs crossed, and she was talking about breath again, and the camera had drifted in—the stream always did this, a slow zoom during the talking parts, some automatic thing in her setup—so that the frame was tighter on her now, her knees, her crossed ankles, the crotch of the leggings where her thighs pressed together.

And there, at the seam, a small dark patch.

Jim saw it before he understood he was seeing it. It was the size of a thumbprint, maybe smaller, a darker gray against the heather gray of the fabric, and it sat right at the crease where the leggings pulled tight, and it had not been there ten minutes ago.

"Wanda."

"I see it."

"Is that—"

"That's sweat," Wanda said, and then, after a beat, "or it's not."

Lily uncrossed her legs and recrossed them the other way, and the patch moved with the fabric and caught the light, and Jim could not stop looking at it. It was nothing. It was a spot on a pair of leggings worn by a woman three time zones away who had no idea anyone was looking. It was also the most interesting thing on the eighty-inch screen, and it was sitting right there in the middle of the frame like it had been placed there on purpose.

"She's been holding that pose a while," Wanda said. "Hips open. Legs crossed. All that heat down there." She said it clinically, the nurse's voice, the voice she used for reading a chart. "That's not sweat, Jim. That's her."

"You don't know that."

"I've been a nurse thirty years." She patted his hip, twice, the way you'd pat a horse. "I know that."

Lily stretched her arms overhead and the cropped top rode up and her stomach showed and the patch stayed where it was, small and dark and patient, and Jim's mouth had gone dry. He reached for the water bottle he'd left by the mat and drank and set it down and the bottle made a sound on the floor that was louder than it should have been.

"Okay," Lily said. "Let's build some heat. Downward dog is coming up in a few minutes—I'm giving you a heads-up because it's a big one tonight, I'm going to hold it longer than usual." She leaned toward the camera, and her face got bigger in the frame, and she smiled that small private smile again. "And I know some of you like to be ready for it. So if you're watching with someone—get ready."

Wanda laughed. It came out of her low and delighted, and she didn't try to hide it.

"She said Ohio," Jim said.

"She didn't say Ohio."

"She said some of you."

"That's us." Wanda stood up off her mat and walked around in front of him, and she stood there with her hands on her hips and looked down at him the way she looked at a patient who was about to get news. "She's telling us to get ready. So get ready."

"Ready how."

"You know how."

He didn't move. He was sitting on his mat with his knees up and his cock hard against his stomach and the screen glowing in front of him, and Lily was on her hands and knees now, demonstrating the setup for the pose—hands shoulder-width, knees hip-width, the long line from wrist to hip—and the patch was still there, and Wanda was standing over him with her arms crossed under her sports bra and her ponytail hanging loose and her face doing the thing it did when she'd decided something and was waiting for him to catch up.

"We've got a few minutes," she said. "She said a few minutes."

"Wanda."

"Jim." She said his name the way she always said it when she was being patient with him, which was the same way she said it when she wasn't. "We made a deal. You say out loud what you're looking at. So say it."

He looked at the screen. Lily was up on her hands and knees, and the camera had drifted in again, and the patch was a dark little secret in the middle of the frame, and somewhere behind it a woman he would never meet was breathing through a pose she'd done a thousand times, completely unaware that a shop teacher in Ohio was about to say something out loud.

"I'm looking at her crotch," Jim said.

"Good," Wanda said. "Now get on your hands and knees. Downward dog's coming."

He got on his hands and knees. The mat creaked under his palms. Beside him Wanda settled in too, and the two of them were shoulder to shoulder facing the screen, two middle-aged bodies lined up like a pair of parentheses, and Lily was up at the front of her mat doing the same thing, and for a second it was just three people breathing in a room three time zones apart.

"Okay," Lily said. "Hands under your shoulders. Knees under your hips. Spread your fingers wide—like you're palming a basketball. Press down through the base of every finger."

Jim pressed. The mat was warm and a little tacky from his hands. Wanda's hand was maybe four inches from his, and he could see her knuckles, the small white scar on her thumb from a Foley catheter kit twenty years ago, the wedding band she never took off even for yoga.

"Now—inhale, drop the belly. Exhale, round the spine."

They did it together. His back moved the way it was supposed to. No twinge. He was almost disappointed.

"Good," Lily said. "Now here's what I want to try tonight. Some of you have been with me a long time. I think you're ready." She came up onto her knees and reached off-camera for something—a strap, maybe, or a block—and when she sat back down she had the strap looped loose in one hand. "We're going to work the hips. Really work them. This is the kind of thing you can do alone, but honestly—if you've got somebody with you tonight, this is the part where it gets good."

She said it the same way she'd said everything else. Soft. Even. Like she was reading a grocery list. But Wanda turned her head and looked at Jim, and Jim looked at Wanda, and neither of them said anything.

"First one," Lily said. "Pigeon pose. If you know it, get into it. If you don't, watch me." She swung her right knee forward and laid her shin down across the mat and let her back leg stretch out long behind her, and her hips settled, and the leggings pulled tight across the whole front of her—across the crease, across the seam—and the patch was still there, and now it had a neighbor, a smaller darker spot just below it, the size of a dime, sitting right where the fabric went taut against the inside of her thigh.

"Wanda," Jim said.

"I see it."

"It's bigger."

"It's not bigger. It's—" Wanda squinted at the screen. "Okay. It's a little bigger." She sat back on her heels and crossed her arms and looked at the TV the way she used to look at a chest X-ray she didn't like. "That's not sweat. You don't sweat there. That's a different kind of wet."

"You're sure."

"Jim." She didn't look at him. She kept her eyes on the screen. "I've been a nurse for thirty years. I've seen every kind of wet a human body makes. That's not sweat."

Lily folded forward over her front shin and rested her forehead on her stacked forearms, and her ass went up, and the camera drifted in—that same slow automatic zoom—and the patch was right there in the middle of the frame, dark and patient and unmistakable, and Jim's mouth went dry again and he reached for the water bottle and remembered he'd already set it down and picked it back up and drank.

"If you're doing pigeon with a partner," Lily said, her voice muffled against her own forearms, "you can sit behind them and press down on the sacrum. Gentle. Let them breathe into it. And if you're really comfortable—and I mean really—you can press on the outer hip. That's where the hip holds its secrets."

"Hip holds its secrets," Wanda repeated. She said it flat, like she was trying the words on. Then she got up off her mat and walked around behind Jim and put her hand flat on his lower back, right at the sacrum, and pressed. Not hard. Just weight. Just the heel of her palm.

Jim's whole spine lengthened. He hadn't realized he'd been holding it short.

"There," Wanda said. "That's what she means."

They held it. Lily held hers too, and the class went quiet except for her breathing, and the patch stayed where it was, and Jim stared at it and felt Wanda's hand on his back and felt his cock hanging heavy between his legs and did not move.

"Okay," Lily said finally. "Come out of it slow. And listen—I want to give you a heads-up." She sat up and pushed her hair back and looked straight into the camera, and her face was serious now, or as serious as her face ever got, which was not very. "Downward dog is coming up in a few minutes. And I'm going to hold it longer than usual tonight. A lot longer. So if you're with someone—" she paused, and the small private smile came back, "—get ready."

Wanda's hand on Jim's back went still.

"She said get ready," Jim said.

"She said get ready."

"To who?"

Wanda laughed—low, delighted, the kind of laugh she saved for when something was about to happen and she'd already decided she was going to enjoy it. She patted his back twice, the way you'd pat a horse, and stood up.

"To us," she said. "Come on. Hands and knees. She said a few minutes and she meant it."

Jim got onto his hands and knees. The mat was tacky under his palms where his sweat had already started to come, and his knees found the same two dents they always found, worn soft by a month of this. Beside him Wanda settled onto her own mat, and the two of them faced the screen like a pair of parentheses, and Lily was already there at the front of her own mat doing the same thing—hands shoulder-width, knees hip-width, the long line from wrist to hip.

"Okay," Lily said. "Find your setup. Hands under your shoulders. Knees under your hips."

Jim pressed down through the base of every finger the way she'd taught them in the first video a month ago, back when he'd thought this was just stretching. The mat gave a little under his palms. Wanda's hand was four inches from his, and he could see the small white scar on her thumb from the Foley kit, the wedding band she never took off, the chipped polish on her ring finger she'd been meaning to fix for a week.

"On your exhale," Lily said, "lift your knees. Send your hips up and back. Heels reaching for the floor—they don't have to touch. This is your downward dog."

Jim lifted. His hips went up and back, his spine lengthened, and his back—the back that had popped two nights ago and scared the hell out of him—gave him nothing. No twinge. No catch. Just the long pull through the hamstrings and the quiet burn in his shoulders, and he let out a breath he'd been holding since he walked in the door.

"Good," Lily said. "Now—here's the thing. I'm going to hold this one longer than usual tonight. A lot longer. So settle in. And if you're with someone—" she paused, and the small private smile came back, "—this is the part where you get to play."

Wanda's head turned. Jim could see it in his peripheral vision, the slow turn, the ponytail swinging. She didn't say anything. She just looked at him, upside down, from between her own arms, and then she straightened up out of her dog and stood.

He heard her bare feet on the floor behind him. The furnace ticked. On the screen Lily was still folded, still talking, her voice soft and unhurried, and Jim kept his hips up and his head down and his eyes on the mat between his hands and did not move.

"You're holding it," Wanda said. Her voice was low and close, right behind him.

"She said hold it."

"She did."

He felt her kneel. The floor creaked under her weight, and then her knees settled on either side of his, and she was there—behind him, above him, the heat of her coming off her skin in the warm room. He could smell her shampoo, the coconut stuff she'd been buying lately, and under it the clean salt of her sweat.

"Jim," she said. "Keep your hips up."

"I am."

"Higher."

He pushed his hips higher. His back lengthened another inch and his ass went up, and the pose opened him out the way it always did, the way he'd never quite gotten used to—everything on display, everything hanging, his cock swinging heavy between his thighs, his balls pulled tight against his body by the angle.

Wanda's hand landed flat on his lower back. Just weight. Just the heel of her palm on his sacrum, the way Lily had told them to. He breathed into it. His spine gave another inch.

"Good," she said. "Stay there."

On the screen, Lily came up out of her own dog and sat back on her heels. The camera drifted in—that slow automatic zoom—and her face got bigger in the frame, and the oatmeal-colored top had ridden up when she moved, and she pushed her hair back with the back of her wrist and looked straight into the lens.

"Okay," she said. "I want to talk about something while you hold." She said it lightly. She said it like it was nothing. "Downward dog is a vulnerable pose. You're upside down, your heart is above your head, everything's on display. It's a pose about trust. If you're alone, you're trusting yourself. If you're with someone—" she tilted her head, and the smile got a little wider, "—you're trusting them. And that's a gift. So if you've got somebody behind you right now, pressing on your sacrum, holding space for you—" she let the sentence hang, "—thank them. Out loud. Right now. While you're still in it."

Wanda's hand pressed harder.

"Thank you," Jim said. His voice came out lower than he meant it to.

"You're welcome," Wanda said. And then, quieter, right at his ear, "Now hold still."

He heard it before he felt it—the small wet sound of her mouth, the click of her tongue, the way she always did it. He knew that sound. Thirty years of marriage and he knew every sound she made, and that one was the one she made when she was getting her fingers wet. He couldn't see her. His head was down between his arms and his eyes were on the mat, and behind him Wanda was licking her fingers, slow and deliberate, the way she'd done two nights ago when she'd first slid one inside him and found the thing that made him gasp.

"Wanda."

"Shh."

"She's still talking."

"I know she's still talking." Wanda's voice was warm and easy, and he could hear the smile in it. "Listen to her. She's giving us permission."

On the screen Lily had come back up onto her hands and knees and was walking them through the setup again, hands shoulder-width, knees hip-width, and she was still talking in that same soft, unhurried cadence, and the words were coming out of the speakers and landing on Jim's back like a hand.

"If you're doing this with a partner," Lily said, "and you're both comfortable—and I mean really comfortable—you can add a little more. Downward dog opens the hips. It opens everything. So if you've got somebody behind you who knows what they're doing, this is a good place to let them explore. Slowly. With permission." She paused. "Always with permission. But if you've got it—" she smiled that small private smile, "—you might find something new tonight."

Wanda's wet fingers landed on him.

Not inside. Not yet. Just there—the pads of her index and middle finger, slick with her spit, resting on the crease of his ass, right where the sweat had pooled and gone tacky. Jim's whole body went tight. His hips wanted to drop and he held them up, and his shoulders shook once, and he heard himself make a sound that wasn't quite a breath.

"There it is," Wanda said. "That's the spot."

"She can't—"

"She can't see us. She can't hear us. She's in Portland." Wanda's fingers slid down the crease, slow, spreading her spit into the sweat. "It's just us, Jim. Just you and me and the TV."

"And Lily."

"And Lily." Wanda laughed, low and delighted. "And Lily's crotch. Which is still on the screen, by the way. Still wet. Still getting wetter."

Jim looked. He couldn't help it. His head was down between his arms and the screen was right there in front of him, and Lily was up on her hands and knees demonstrating the transition out of dog, and the leggings were pulled tight across the whole front of her, and the patch was there—dark, patient, a little bigger than it had been ten minutes ago—and now there was a second spot, a smaller one just below it, sitting right where the fabric went taut against the inside of her thigh.

"It's bigger," Jim said.

"I told you."

"You said it wasn't."

"I said it was a little bigger." Wanda's fingers pressed harder, spreading him. "Now it's a lot bigger. She's been holding these poses for twenty minutes with her hips open and her legs crossed. That's not sweat, Jim. I told you what that is."

Her fingertip found his rim.

He clenched. He couldn't help it—the same reflex that had started all of this two nights ago, the same involuntary grab, and Wanda made a small pleased sound behind him and didn't pull away. She just rested there, the tip of her finger against him, slick with her spit, and waited.

"Breathe," she said. "You're holding your breath."

He breathed. The mat was warm under his palms and his arms were starting to shake and his cock was hanging heavy and full between his legs, and behind him his wife had one wet finger pressed against his ass and was waiting for him to let her in.

"She's going to do it again," Wanda said. "Look at her."

She went in slow. Not the whole finger—just the tip, past the first ring of muscle, and Jim felt his body open around her the way it had two nights ago, that strange give, like a knot untying from the inside. His breath came out of him in a long, ragged sound. His hips stayed up. He didn't know how they stayed up.

"There," Wanda said. "Good boy."

On the screen Lily had come back to her hands and knees, and she was talking again, and the camera was doing that slow drift, and Jim watched her through the frame of his own arms. He was looking at her because he was supposed to. Because they'd made the deal. Because Wanda had said say it out loud and he'd said yes, and now Wanda's finger was inside him and the only thing his mouth could do was stay shut.

"Say it," Wanda said, reading him the way she always did.

"She's—" He swallowed. "She's on her hands and knees."

"And?"

"And the fabric's pulled tight." He watched it. The leggings were a pale sage green tonight, thin, and where her hips tipped up and back the cloth went sheer across the whole front of her, and the seam ran straight down the middle and disappeared between her thighs. "You can see everything."

"You can see her cunt," Wanda said, flat and cheerful, the way she'd say you can see the mail on the table. "Say it."

"You can see her cunt." His voice cracked in the middle of it.

Wanda's finger slid deeper. One knuckle, then two, and he felt the stretch of it, the slow burn, and his cock jumped where it hung—a hard, visible twitch, and he heard Wanda make that small pleased sound again behind him.

"Oh," she said. "There it goes."

"Wanda—"

"I'm not doing anything." She wasn't. Her hand was still. Her finger was buried in him to the second knuckle and she was just there, holding, letting him feel the shape of it. "You're doing that yourself. You're squeezing me."

"I'm not—"

"You are. You're milking my finger like you've been doing it your whole life." She laughed, low. "Thirty years, Jim. Thirty years and I find out you've got a talent."

He tried to laugh and it came out as a groan. His arms were shaking now, really shaking, the fine tremor running from his wrists up into his shoulders, and the pose was starting to cost him. Sweat ran down the side of his face and dripped off his jaw onto the mat. Lily kept talking.

"If you're holding this with a partner," Lily said, "and they're exploring—" she paused, and the pause had weight to it, "—let them. Don't clench. That's the hardest part. The instinct is to grab. To hold on. But if you can breathe through it and let them in, you'll find the whole pose changes. It stops being a stretch and starts being a conversation."

"She's good," Wanda said. "She's really good."

Jim couldn't answer. Wanda had started to move—just barely, just the smallest rock of her wrist, her finger sliding out an inch and back in, and the wet sound of it was small and obscene in the quiet room, and his cock was so hard it ached, hanging there, dripping onto the mat, and he hadn't even been touched.

"Look," Wanda said.

He looked. Lily had shifted again—sat back, this time, onto her heels with her knees wide, and the camera had come in close, and she'd reached down and adjusted the waistband of the leggings, tugging them up over her hip, and when she let go the fabric snapped back and the whole front of her was a dark, wet shine.

"She knows," Wanda said. "Look at her face. She knows what she's doing."

And she did. That was the thing. Lily's face in the close-up was calm and pleasant and completely aware—the little tilt of the head, the half-smile, the way she let the shot linger two beats too long before she moved on. She knew. Maybe not about them, not about the couple in the living room with the big TV and the finger, but she knew she was being watched, and she liked it.

"Add a second one," Lily said. "If you're ready. Slowly. And breathe."

Wanda's middle finger pressed in beside the first.

Jim's whole body bowed. His hips dropped an inch and he caught them, forced them back up, and the sound that came out of him was not a word. It was a long, low, open sound, and it hung in the room, and Wanda went still behind him and let it finish.

"There he is," she said softly. "There's my husband."

He was shaking all over now. Not just his arms—his thighs, his stomach, everything, the whole scaffold of him held up on hands and knees with his wife's two fingers buried in his ass and his cock swinging between his legs and the yoga instructor on the TV telling him to breathe.

He breathed.

Wanda curled her fingers.

Just a little—just a hook, a come-here, and she found the spot two nights ago she'd found by accident and now found on purpose, and Jim's vision went white at the edges. His cock jerked and a thread of pre-cum swung off the tip and landed on the mat, and he made a sound like he'd been hit.

"That's it," Wanda said. "Right there, isn't it."

"Yeah."

"Say it."

"Right there."

"Good." She did it again. Slow. Deliberate. The wet sound of her fingers moving in him was louder now, and the room smelled like sweat and spit and the coconut shampoo, and on the screen Lily was folding forward into a wide-legged stretch and the camera was following the line of her spine down to where the leggings pulled taut and dark between her legs, and Jim watched her and felt his wife's fingers curl inside him and understood, finally, that he was not going to last.

"Wanda," he said. "I'm—"

"Not yet."

"I can't—"

"You can." Her free hand came down flat on his lower back again, the heel of it pressing into his sacrum, holding him in the pose. "You've got one more in you. Hold it."

He held it. He didn't know how. His arms screamed and his back burned and his cock hung there throbbing, untouched, and Wanda's fingers moved in him slow and steady, and Lily on the screen kept talking in that soft voice about opening and trust and letting go, and the furnace ticked, and somewhere out in the dark a car went by and its headlights swept the wall and were gone.

"Okay," Wanda said. "Now."

She pulled her fingers out slow—all the way, the long drag of it, and his body tried to hold on and couldn't—and then her hand wrapped around his cock from behind, wet with her spit, and stroked him once, root to tip, and that was all it took.

He came with his hips still up in downward dog.

It went on and on—rope after rope of it, hot, landing on the mat between his hands, and his arms finally gave and his forehead came down onto the mat and he stayed there, folded, gasping, while Wanda stroked him through it and whispered something against his back that he couldn't hear over his own blood.

When it stopped, the room was very quiet. On the screen Lily had moved into a seated forward fold, and she was saying something about gratitude and rest, and the video was nearly over.

Wanda's hand was still on him. Warm. Sticky. Still.

"Well," she said.

Jim laughed into the mat. It came out wet and wrecked.

"Yeah," he said. "Well."

The class wound down the way it always did — Lily on her mat with her hands on her knees, voice going soft, telling them to thank themselves for showing up, to drink water, to come back tomorrow. Jim stayed folded on the mat with his forehead down and his ass in the air until the video ended and the screen went to its little grid of suggested videos, and even then he didn't move. The furnace ticked. His own breathing was loud in his ears.

Wanda got up first. She went to the bathroom and came back with a warm washcloth and wiped him down without ceremony — his back, his ass, the mat where he'd come, the inside of his own thighs where it had run — and he lay there and let her do it, the way he let her do everything, and when she was done she dropped the washcloth in the laundry basket and sat down on the couch and pulled the throw blanket over her legs.

"You okay?" she said.

"I'm on the floor."

"That's not what I asked."

He rolled onto his side and then sat up, slow, testing the back that had given him nothing all night. It still gave him nothing. He reached for his shorts off the arm of the couch and pulled them on and sat there on the mat with his knees up, and Wanda watched him from the couch with the blanket over her legs and her ponytail coming loose and her face doing the thing it did when she was waiting for him to say something true.

"I'm okay," he said. "I'm better than okay."

"Good." She picked up her phone off the cushion beside her. "Because she messaged me again."

"During the class?"

"After. Just now." Wanda turned the screen toward him, then pulled it back before he could read it. "She wants to know how it went."

Jim's whole body did the thing it did now — the heat climbing his neck, the ears going hot — and he sat on the mat with his hands on his knees and watched his wife's thumbs move over the screen.

"You're answering."

"I'm answering."

"Wanda."

"She asked." Wanda didn't look up. Her thumbs kept moving. "You want me to lie to her?"

He didn't answer that. He got up off the mat and went to the kitchen and got two glasses of water and brought one back and set it on the end table by her elbow, and she took it without looking and drank and set it down and kept typing. The phone made its little send-was sound. Then it made it again.

"Okay," Wanda said. "Read it."

She held the phone out. He took it. The thread with Lily Nguyen was open — the round avatar at the top, the messy bun, the dark eyes, a woman he had watched for a month and had never heard say his name until tonight. The messages went down the screen in a column, and Wanda's were long, and Lily's were short, and his eyes went to the top and read down.

How did tonight go for you two? I felt something different in the room, if that makes sense. Sometimes I can tell.

Wanda had written back: It went good. Better than good. Jim held the whole thing. He didn't drop out of it once.

Lily: That's the hard part. Most people drop out. What did you think of the hip work?

Wanda: We liked it. We did the pigeon. He let me press on his sacrum. And then we did a little more than that.

Lily::)

Lily: You can tell me. I'm not going to be weird about it. I've been doing this a long time and I know what happens in living rooms.

Jim looked up from the phone. Wanda was watching him, and there was no apology in her face, no caution, just the steady nurse's look, and she nodded at the phone, go on, keep reading, so he did.

Wanda had written: Okay. You want the real version. During the long dog I stood up behind him and I put two fingers in his ass and I made him come with his hips still up. He came on the mat. He's fifty-two and he came like a teenager and he didn't even touch himself. He's been walking around all day with your name in his mouth and he finally said out loud what he was looking at.

Lily: What was he looking at?

Wanda: Your crotch. The wet spot in your leggings. He said it out loud. I made him.

There was a gap in the thread. Jim stared at it. Three minutes, maybe four, the timestamps said, and he could feel his own pulse in his throat, and then the reply came in.

Lily: Good. That's what it's for.

He read that one twice. He handed the phone back to Wanda and sat down on the couch beside her and drank his water and looked at the dark TV with its little red standby light and did not say anything for a while.

"She's not mad," Wanda said.

"She said good."

"She said good." Wanda pulled her legs up under the blanket and leaned into his shoulder. "She's thirty-two, Jim. She films herself stretching in thin pants for strangers on the internet. You think she doesn't know what happens on the other end of the camera?"

The phone buzzed again. Wanda looked at it and laughed — the low one, the delighted one — and turned the screen so he could see.

Lily: Can I ask you something? Both of you. Since you're being honest.

Wanda typed: Ask.

Lily: Was it the pose that did it, or was it me? I'm not fishing. I want to know for the class.

Jim read it and felt the question land somewhere under his ribs. Wanda looked at him. She didn't type anything. She just held the phone between them with the cursor blinking in the box and waited, and he understood that this one was his.

"Both," he said.

Wanda typed it. Both. He says both. The pose opened him up and you kept him in it.

Lily: That's the whole trick. The pose is just the door. Somebody has to hold it open.

Lily: Okay. I have an idea. Don't say yes yet, just think about it.

Wanda: Go.

Lily: Next class I'm doing a longer hip sequence. Pigeon, lizard, frog, then a long hold. I can call out the partner work differently this time. Not the sacrum stuff. The other stuff. I can say it out loud on the stream and it'll sound like yoga to anybody who doesn't know, and it'll sound like exactly what it is to anybody who does. If you two want to follow along, you'll know when.

Jim set his glass down on the end table. The furnace ticked. Out on the street a car door shut and someone laughed and the sound came through the window and was gone.

"She's going to say it on the stream," he said.

"She's going to say it like yoga."

"Wanda, she's got thousands of people watching."

"She's got thousands of people watching and she's going to say a sentence that means one thing to them and another thing to us." Wanda set the phone down on her thigh and looked at him. "That's what she does, Jim. That's the whole channel. She's been doing it for a month and you didn't notice until two nights ago."

He thought about that. He thought about the way Lily said remember to breathe, and the way she said let them find where you're stuck, and the way she'd looked into the camera tonight and said get ready like she was reading a grocery list. He thought about the patch on the leggings and the small private smile and the way she'd let the shot linger two beats too long, and he understood — the way you understand a thing in your gut before your head catches up — that she had been talking to them for a month.

"She knew," he said.

"She knew."

"Before the comment. Before any of it."

"She's thirty-two and she films herself in thin pants for a living." Wanda picked the phone back up. "She knows who's watching. She just doesn't always know their names."

The phone buzzed again.

Lily: No pressure. If it's too much, we can keep it the way it is. I like the way it is.

Wanda read it and handed him the phone and let him type this time. He held it in both hands the way he held a chisel, thumb hovering over the glass, and then he typed: It's not too much. What do we do.

The reply came fast.

Lily: Nothing yet. Just show up. I'll take you through the warm-up the same as always. Then when we get to the hip work I'll say a couple of things and you'll know. If you want to follow, follow. If you don't, don't. Nobody's keeping score.

Lily: One more thing. Wanda — you said he held the whole pose. That's rare. Most guys his age can't hold dog for thirty seconds without their back talking to them.

Jim read that and felt something turn over in his chest. Wanda read it over his shoulder and made a small sound — not quite a laugh — and reached over and put her hand flat on his thigh, the same way she'd done at the start of the class, the same weight, and left it there.

"Tell her," Wanda said.

"Tell her what."

"About your back. Two nights ago. Tell her."

He looked at her. She looked back. There was nothing in her face but the steady patient thing, the nurse's thing, the look that said she'd already decided and was waiting for him to catch up.

He typed: My back popped two nights ago in dog. Bad. I couldn't move. That's how this started.

Lily: Oh. That's actually really common. Downward dog is where the lower back finally gives up if it's been holding tension for years.

Lily: That's probably why tonight worked. Your back was open. You couldn't clench the way you normally do. The body had to let go somewhere, so it let go everywhere.

Jim stared at the words. He read them again. Somewhere in the house the refrigerator hummed and stopped, and the silence that followed was the deep one that came at the end of the night, when the house had finished its business and was waiting for the people in it to go to bed.

Wanda took the phone out of his hand and typed: So you're saying his back going out is why he took two fingers like he was born to it.

Lily: I'm saying the body's honest when it's hurt. It stops pretending. That's when you find out what it actually wants.

Wanda read that out loud, slow, the way she read him the Facebook comments two nights ago, and when she got to the end she set the phone face-down on her thigh and looked at him and didn't say anything, and the look was enough.

"Bed," she said.

"It's nine-thirty."

"I know what time it is." She stood up off the couch and the blanket slid off her legs and pooled on the cushion, and she reached down and picked up the phone and the two water glasses and carried them toward the kitchen. At the doorway she stopped and looked back at him, still sitting on the couch with his hands on his knees.

"Jim."

"Yeah."

"Tomorrow's Wednesday."

"I know."

"She's got a class Wednesday."

"I know."

Wanda nodded, once, the way she nodded when a chart checked out, and went into the kitchen. He heard the water running and the glasses going into the rack and the soft click of the light going off, and then her feet on the stairs, and he sat there in the dark living room with the red standby light on the TV and the rolled mat behind the recliner and the phone on the cushion beside him, and he thought about what Lily had written — the body's honest when it's hurt — and he reached back and pressed his palm flat against his own lower back, right at the sacrum, the spot Wanda had pressed, and held it there.

His back gave him nothing. It had given him nothing all night.

Upstairs, Wanda called his name.