The curtain whispered shut behind her and the world went quiet, muffled, the way sound dies inside a confessional. Willow stood in the small mirrored room and watched herself multiply — front, side, back, three of her at once, all of them blonde, all of them watching. The black dress David had chosen clung to her hips like it had been poured on, and when she turned her weight from one heel to the other, the satin slid across her thighs with a sound like a fingertip dragged along a wall.

She smoothed the fabric down over her stomach. The silicone plate beneath the dress sat warm and heavy against her chest, the two pencil-eraser nipples pressing up through the silk like they were trying to get out. She had worn this body for almost a month now and it still startled her every time — the curve of a waist that wasn't there in the morning, the swell where Warren had nothing. Her hands moved on their own, palms flat over her own hips, down the outside of her thighs, testing. Measuring herself. She caught her own eye in the left-hand mirror and looked away.

The room smelled of new leather and warm skin. Racks of garments lined the walls, each hung in its own small silence, and beneath the perfume of the place was something earthier, the smell of bodies that had stood where she was standing, breathing faster than they meant to. Willow's clit had been leaking since she stepped through the door. She felt it now, a hot little pulse against the damp lace of her panties, and she pressed her thighs together and the pressure made it worse, made it good.

The curtain rustled.

Marguerite came in sideways, one hand lifting the velvet, the other holding a tape measure looped over her knuckles like a rosary. She was older than Willow had expected, maybe fifty, with silver threads in dark hair pulled back tight and reading glasses pushed up on her head. She didn't smile. She looked at Willow the way a tailor looks at cloth.

"Arms out," she said.

Willow lifted her arms and the movement pulled the dress tight across her chest and Marguerite's eyes went there, briefly, then back to her face. The tape came off the knuckles. Marguerite stepped in close — close enough that Willow could smell her, cigarettes and something clean like cedar — and dropped the tape around her waist.

"Breathe out."

Willow breathed out. The tape drew snug. Marguerite's fingers found the hollow above her hip and pressed there, reading the number, and Willow felt the touch travel all the way down to the base of her spine. Her clit throbbed. She bit the inside of her cheek and stared at the far mirror and watched a woman being measured.

"Twenty-six," Marguerite murmured, more to the tape than to her. She moved the loop up, under Willow's arms, across the fullest part of the breast plate. Her knuckles grazed the false nipple and Willow's breath caught in her throat and she pretended it hadn't. Marguerite pretended too. The tape slid down again, over the swell of Willow's ass, and Marguerite's palm flattened there for a moment — not a grope, exactly, more like a farmer checking the flank of a horse — before she pulled the tape free and let it snap lightly against Willow's thigh.

"Turn."

Willow turned. In the side mirror she caught the gap in the curtain, no wider than a finger, and through it, in the dim of the shop, a dark shape. David. He was standing where he'd been standing when she walked in, hands loose at his sides, immaculate in the black suit, and he was looking directly at the gap. He could see her. He had arranged to be able to see her. Her clit jumped and a thin wet line of precum smeared the inside of her thigh above the stocking top and she felt it happen and could do nothing about it.

Marguerite's hands were on her again, at the small of her back, fingers spread. "You're small through the ribs," she said. "Good. Most of what I have will hang on you the way it's supposed to."

"Thank you," Willow said, and hated how high her voice came out, how eager.

Marguerite stepped back and looked at her for a long moment, head tilted, and Willow stood there under the gaze with her clit wet and her heart going and her arms still half-lifted like a doll waiting to be picked up. Then Marguerite turned to the rack by the wall and pulled something off it with a hanger's small screech.

Rose silk. A blouse, long-sleeved, with a soft drape and small covered buttons down the front. Beside it on the hanger, charcoal slacks, cut narrow.

"This is what you'll wear to the office tomorrow," Marguerite said. She held the hanger out at arm's length, flat, the way you'd present a flag.

Willow looked at the blouse. The last of Warren's suits was ash in a burn barrel somewhere upstate, and this — this soft pink thing with its little buttons — was what walked into the building now. Priya would see it. The men in the elevator would see it. She reached out and her hand was not steady and the silk was cool and smooth under her fingers and she took the hanger and felt the whole weight of it, which was almost nothing.

"Strip," Marguerite said. "I need to see it on you before I take in the waist."

Willow's hands went to the side of the black dress without being told twice. The zipper came down with a long rasp and the dress loosened and she stepped out of it and laid it over the back of the little velvet stool in the corner, smoothing it flat. She stood in the mirror in her black lace panties and the sheer thigh-highs and the silver wig and the breast plate, and Marguerite looked at her without expression and said nothing about any of it, which was somehow worse than a comment.

"Blouse," she said.

Willow put it on. The silk was cold at first and then it wasn't, warming against her shoulders, and she did up the little buttons one at a time with her press-on nails and the French tips clicked softly against the plastic and she watched her own hands do it in three mirrors at once. The blouse fell to just below her hip. Marguerite came around behind her and took the slack at the waist in both hands and pulled it back, pinching, and Willow felt the fabric draw tight across her back and her breath came shallow and her clit was so wet now that she could feel the damp spreading, a warm spot the size of a coin in the lace.

"Slacks," Marguerite said. She held them low so Willow could step in, and Willow put a hand on Marguerite's shoulder for balance — the shoulder was warm and solid and smelled of cedar — and stepped into the charcoal wool one foot at a time, and Marguerite drew them up her legs, over her knees, over the tops of the stockings, and settled them at her waist. Her knuckles brushed Willow's hip bones. Willow's clit pulsed against the seam of the slacks and she made a small sound and Marguerite did not look up.

"Hem's long," Marguerite said. "You wear a heel with these. Not the platforms. Something with a point." She crossed to the shoe wall and came back with a pair of bone-colored pumps, four inches, sharp as a scalpel. "These."

Willow stepped into them and stood up and the whole room tilted and steadied and she was suddenly taller, longer, more of a line. In the mirrors she was a woman in a rose silk blouse and charcoal slacks and bone heels, and the woman's hips had a sway even standing still, and the woman's face under the silver wig was flushed high on the cheekbones and the woman's lips were parted and wet.

Through the curtain gap, David shifted his weight. She saw it in the mirror more than through the gap itself, the black shape of him settling, and she knew what that shift meant because she had learned to read it over a month of being read. He was pleased. He was watching his property be fitted for its collar.

Marguerite walked a slow circle around her. "Turn," she said, and Willow turned, and Marguerite's hand came out and smoothed the blouse down over her ass, palm flat, fingers spread — a tailor's touch, but slow, and it stayed a beat longer than a tailor's touch needed to stay. Willow's clit leaked. She felt the wet reach the seam of the slacks and she knew that if she looked down there would be a darker patch and she did not look down.

"Good," Marguerite said. "Now the jacket."

She brought one off the rack — soft grey, unstructured, cut short. Willow put her arms in and Marguerite stood behind her and drew it up over her shoulders and then reached around her front and took both lapels and pulled, settling it, and her forearms pressed against the underside of Willow's false breasts and Willow's whole body went hot and loose and she closed her eyes and behind her eyelids saw David's cock, thick and heavy, sliding into her from behind while she stood just like this, held by the lapels, pinned by a hand at her waist. Her clit clenched. Nothing came out of it — nothing ever did anymore — but the clench went through her like a small fist and she bit her lip hard enough to feel it and stayed standing.

"Eyes open," Marguerite said, mild.

Willow opened her eyes. In the mirror, three Willows in a grey jacket, all of them flushed, all of them with wet mouths. She looked at Marguerite's hands on her lapels and then at the gap in the curtain and David was still there, still watching, and she thought: he can see me come. He can see me do it and there's nothing I can do about it and the thought went through her clit like a thumb and she came.

It wasn't the big full-body thing — she couldn't have that without his cock in her mouth or his cock in her ass, she knew that now the way she knew her own name — but it was a real one, a hot tight clench that rolled up from her clit through her pelvis and left her knees soft and her mouth open and her hand gripping the edge of the jacket rack. She made no sound. She bit her lip and rode it out standing up and Marguerite, behind her, felt the tremor through the lapels and did not say anything and did not stop holding on.

When it was over Willow's eyes were wet and she was breathing through her nose and the damp in her panties had spread to the size of her palm.

"Take it off," Marguerite said, and let go of the lapels, and stepped back.

Willow took off the jacket. Her hands were shaking and one of the buttons on the blouse took two tries. She laid the jacket over the stool next to the black dress and stood in the rose silk and the charcoal slacks and waited.

Marguerite was already at the rack again. She pulled a second blouse — ivory, this time, with a tie neck, and a skirt instead of slacks, a pencil skirt in deep navy that came off the hanger with a heavier sound.

"This one you wear Friday," she said. "Client lunch. You'll need the skirt because you'll be sitting for two hours and the men across the table will want to look at your legs."

Willow took the hanger. The skirt had a small slit at the back hem and she ran her thumbnail along it and felt the wool give. She looked at herself in the mirror and tried to see the woman who would sit at a client lunch in a navy pencil skirt and answer questions about quarterly numbers in a soft voice, and the woman was there, she was right there, she was the only one there.

"Off with the slacks," Marguerite said. "I want to see the skirt with the ivory."

Willow's fingers found the clasp. She undid it and drew the charcoal slacks down over her hips and stepped out of them and Marguerite took them from her without ceremony and hung them. Willow stood in the rose blouse and the black lace panties and the sheer stockings and the bone heels and Marguerite looked at the panties for the first time and said nothing at all, and Willow felt the wet patch against the air and wanted to cover it and did not.

"Skirt," Marguerite said.

Willow stepped into it and Marguerite zipped her up and the wool closed around her hips like a hand. She changed the blouse — the rose silk slid off her shoulders and the ivory went on, the tie neck drawn snug at her throat, and through the whole of it she could feel David's eyes on the gap in the curtain like a finger held to her skin. Her clit was still wet from the first one. It had not gone down. It never went down. It just stayed there, small and soft and leaking, and every time she moved the seam of the skirt pressed against it and reminded her.

"Now the boots," Marguerite said. "The tall ones. I want to see the line."

She brought them off the wall — black leather thigh-highs, a heel that had to be six inches, a platform under the toe. Willow sat on the velvet stool to get into them and Marguerite knelt in front of her and pulled them up one leg at a time, and the leather was cold and then warm and it came all the way to her thigh and Marguerite's hands smoothed it up over the stocking and settled it, and Willow looked down at the top of Marguerite's head between her knees and thought about David's head there instead and her clit throbbed hard enough that she had to grip the stool.

Marguerite stood. Willow stood. In the mirrors she was a woman in an ivory tie-neck and a navy pencil skirt and black leather thigh-highs, taller than she had ever been, and she turned and the leather creaked and the skirt slit opened at the back and showed the lace of her panties for a half-second and she felt David see it.

"That's the one," Marguerite said. "That's the one for the dinner."

Willow's mouth was dry. "What dinner."

Marguerite looked at her for the first time like she was a person and not a garment. "He didn't tell you." It wasn't a question. She turned to the rack and pulled a garment bag off the end of it and laid it flat over her arm and unzipped it and inside was the dress — long, black, a single strap, a slit up one thigh — and she held it up against Willow's body and looked at the line and nodded once.

"Saturday," she said. "You'll wear this Saturday."

Through the curtain David's shape did not move. Willow looked at the dress and then at the gap and then at her own three reflections, and her clit ached and the lace of her panties was wet through and her lip gloss had smeared somewhere along the way and she had not noticed and no one had told her. She lifted one hand and pressed her fingers to her mouth and felt the slick of it and looked at herself looking at herself.

Marguerite unzipped the garment bag the rest of the way and folded it back and there, inside, on the hanger, next to the black dress, was a second blouse — rose silk, like the first, but cut lower, the buttons smaller, and Marguerite took it off the hanger and held it out to her.

"This is the one for tomorrow," she said. "The other was a test."

Willow's fingers closed around the rose silk, the fabric cool and smooth against her skin, and she felt a single tear slide down her cheek as she understood there was no turning back.

The tear tracked down past the corner of her mouth and she did not lift a hand to stop it. It landed on the rose silk where she was holding it bunched against her stomach, and the fabric went dark where it hit, a small round stain that spread to the size of a coin. Willow looked down at it. The blouse was ruined now, or marked, or whatever it was that happened when you cried on something that was going to walk into an office building on your body tomorrow morning, and she could not bring herself to care about the mark, only about the fact that she had made it and could not unmake it.

"Marguerite."

The woman had already turned back to the rack. She stopped at the sound of her name and turned her head without turning her body, glasses still up on her head, tape measure back on her knuckles where it lived.

"Yes."

"What dinner." Willow's voice came out lower than she meant it to, softer, and she hated that she could hear Willow in it, the purr under the question. She tried again, harder. "He didn't tell me about a dinner. He told me about the fitting. That's all he told me. That's what he said — he said Marguerite was going to dress me and I was going to walk out of here with the week's clothes and that was the whole of it."

Marguerite looked at her for a long moment. Then she crossed the small room and took the rose silk out of Willow's hands — gently, the way you take something from a child — and laid it over the stool beside the black dress, and smoothed the tear-stain flat with her thumb, and did not seem to care about it either.

"Sit down," she said.

Willow looked at the stool. There was no other seat in the room. She sat.

Marguerite pulled a low bench out from under the mirror wall and set it across from her and sat down on it and folded her hands in her lap, and in the three mirrors Willow watched both of them from three angles, the older woman leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and the blonde in the ivory tie-neck and the navy pencil skirt sitting up straight with her hands on her own thighs, and the whole arrangement looked, suddenly, like an interview.

"What did he tell you," Marguerite said. Not a question.

"Nothing."

"He told you nothing about Saturday."

"He told me —" Willow stopped. She was trying to remember. The week had come at her in pieces and the pieces did not fit together the way she needed them to, and she could feel the audio file at the back of her skull where it always sat now, humming, ready to open if anyone pushed the right door. "He told me you were going to dress me. He said the real work hadn't started. He said — he said the week was a test. He said there was a dinner."

"And what did he say about the dinner."

Willow opened her mouth. Closed it. She had been sitting on the edge of David's bed in the silver-and-black dress with the silver wig and he had said something about Saturday, she was almost sure of it, but when she reached for the words all she got was the weight of his hand on the back of her neck and the smell of his collar and the sound of her own heels on the floor of the room. He had taken the memory in his fist the way he took everything and put it where he wanted it.

"He said I'd wear something nice," she said. "He said there'd be people."

"Mm." Marguerite's hands stayed folded. Her face did not move. "He said you'd wear something nice and there'd be people."

"That's what I remember."

"That's what you were allowed to remember."

The way she said it — flat, without malice, the way you'd tell someone the weather — went through Willow like cold water. She looked down at her own hands on the navy wool of the skirt and saw the French tips of her press-ons against the dark fabric and the small shudder that went through her fingers and she pressed them flat against her thighs to stop it.

"Tell me," Willow said.

Marguerite studied her. Then she reached over to the rack and took the garment bag off its hook and laid it across her own knees and began to fold it, one panel at a time, the way you fold a flag or a shirt you intend to keep, and she talked while she folded, and she did not look up from her work.

"He booked the private room at the club," she said. "The one upstairs. Not the bar, not the floor where the girls get shown. The room with the mirrored ceiling."

Willow's clit, which had been quiet, went hot again at the base of her, a small sharp pulse that had nothing to do with what she wanted. She pressed her thighs together under the skirt and it made it worse, and the wet in the lace of her panties was a warm coin again, spreading, and she kept her face still because Marguerite was still folding.

"The mirrored ceiling," Willow said.

"Every angle. You'll be able to watch it happen to yourself from above, if you can keep your eyes open. Most of them can't." Marguerite smoothed the flap of the bag. "He's booked it for eight. Four of his clients. Men. They'll be seated around the table and you'll be seated with them, not at the head with him, not beside him — with them, on display, in whatever I put you in, and you'll pour their drinks and you'll answer when you're spoken to and you'll do it in front of the ceiling and in front of him and in front of four men who paid to be there."

Willow heard the room go very quiet. Even the shop outside had gone quiet — or maybe David had stopped moving in the dim beyond the curtain, or maybe the whole building had decided to hold still while this was said to her.

"Paid," she said.

"Paid." Marguerite set the folded bag aside and looked at her at last. "You didn't think the silver collar was the whole of it. Nothing David does is one thing. He's been building you for a month and a month is a long time and a man with a month of footage and a month of files doesn't spend it for a dinner he could have at home. He spends it for a table."

Willow's mouth was dry. She swallowed and her throat clicked and the sound was loud in the small room.

"What kind of paid."

Marguerite's mouth did something that was almost a smile and was not.

"The kind where nobody at the table has to say what they're paying for," she said. "You'll be told what to wear and you'll wear it and you'll be told what to do and you'll do it and if he decides you'll be passed around the table like a decanter, you'll be passed around the table like a decanter, and the ceiling will show you your own face while it happens."

Willow made a sound. It came out of her before she could stop it — not a word, a small wet noise like the beginning of something — and her hand went up to her own throat and found the tie of the ivory blouse and held it, the way you'd hold a collar. She was aware, in a distant way, that her clit was dripping now, a slow steady leak soaking the lace, and that her nipples under the breast plate had gone hard enough to press against the silk of the blouse, and that her body was answering a question her mind had not finished asking.

"I don't do that," she said. "I've never — I haven't —"

"You haven't what."

"I haven't been with a man."

Marguerite looked at her for a beat too long. Then she reached out and took Willow's chin between her thumb and forefinger and turned her face to the light and looked at her the way she'd looked at her when she came in — like cloth — except this time there was something else under it, something older and drier and almost kind.

"Girl," she said. "What do you think the last month was."

Willow's eyes filled. She did not blink. She kept them open and let the wet sit there because blinking would have sent it down her face and she had already cried once in this room and did not intend to do it twice.

"The last month was —" she started, and stopped, because she did not know how the sentence ended. The last month was David. The last month was the collar and the cage and the file and the camera and the hotel room and the club and the shop and the men who had touched her in the shop and the woman who had touched her in the shop and the fourteen hours she could not find and the photos on her phone of a bar she did not remember and her own mouth around things she had not seen and the morning in the Christopher Street room with cum cooling on her thighs and the red light in the corner and the way she had stopped looking away from it. The last month was a single long sentence that had no period at the end of it.

Marguerite let go of her chin.

"The last month was the fitting," she said. "This is the wearing."

She stood up and went back to the rack and took down the black dress — the long one, the single strap, the slit — and laid it back in the garment bag on the hanger, and zipped the bag up to the top and hung it on the end of the rack where Willow could see it, a black shape in a black sleeve, waiting for Saturday.

"What did he tell you," Willow said again. "About me. Before tonight. What did he say I was."

Marguerite paused with her hand on the bag.

"He said you were the one he'd been waiting for," she said. "He said you'd come to him already half-made and that all he had to do was finish the work. He said you'd cry at the fitting and then you'd ask me what Saturday was and then you'd get in the car and go home and be good all week and come back on Saturday and do whatever he told you to do."

Willow's throat closed.

"He said that," she said.

"He said that."

"Before tonight."

"Before tonight." Marguerite turned the hanger on the rack so the bag faced the wall. "He's very good at knowing what people are going to do. It's not a trick. It's just that he watches them for a month first."

Willow sat on the velvet stool in the ivory blouse and the navy skirt and the black leather thigh-highs and looked at the garment bag and the rose silk on the stool beside her and the tear-stain on it that had gone dark and would dry lighter and would still be there, faintly, when she put it on tomorrow morning and walked into the office and let Priya see her. She thought about the mirrored ceiling. She thought about four men at a table and her own face above them and David somewhere in the room being pleased. She thought about the way her clit had gone hard and wet the moment Marguerite said the word paid, before the meaning had even finished arriving, and she understood — the way she had understood things for a month, always a beat too late and always in her body first — that she was not going to say no.

"He said you'd know what that means," Marguerite said.

Willow looked up at her. On the stool, the rose silk held its small wet mark, and on the rack the black dress hung in its bag, and through the gap in the curtain David's shape had not moved.

Marguerite turned back to the rack and began to work it the way a woman works a deck of cards, unhurried, one hanger at a time, sliding each garment forward into the light and then back again, and Willow understood that the talking was over and the fitting had begun in earnest.

"Up," Marguerite said.

Willow stood. Her thighs made a small wet sound coming off the velvet stool and she felt the heat climb her throat, but Marguerite's face did not change, and she was grateful for that in a way she could not have explained.

"Blouse off. Skirt off. Keep the stockings and the plate."

She undressed in the small room the way she had learned to undress in the last month — quickly, without looking down at herself, hands moving in the order David had taught her, and when she stood in the black leather thigh-highs and the C-cup plate and the lace tanga she had put on that morning at home, Marguerite walked a slow circle around her and did not touch her, and the not-touching was worse than touching would have been.

"Shoulders back," Marguerite said. "Chin up. Hands at your sides, palms in, fingers relaxed. That's how you'll stand in everything I give you. If you forget, I'll remind you."

She took the first garment off the rack — a sheath dress in dark emerald, matte, sleeveless, with a high neck and a hem that would fall just above the knee — and held it up against Willow's body with one hand at the shoulder and one at the waist and studied the fall of it with her head tilted.

"This is for the office," she said. "Not tomorrow. Next week, when you go back. It reads as a woman who runs a department. Conservative cut, expensive fabric, nothing anyone can point at." She turned the hanger. "You'll wear it with a low heel and a closed toe and no jewelry but the earrings, and the collar stays under the collar, and no one will see anything at all except a woman who has decided to look like one."

Willow looked at the dress in the mirror. In it, with the plate and the makeup Marguerite had redone, she looked like a woman who had a job and a car and a name on a door. She looked like Claire. The thought arrived whole and she put it away before it could finish.

"Put it on," Marguerite said.

It went on like water. The lining was silk and the wool was fine enough to move with her, and when she turned to the mirror the woman in it turned too, and the woman had hips because the cut made hips, and the woman had a waist because the seams made one, and Willow stood very still and let herself be looked at.

"Good," Marguerite said. "Off. Next."

The next was a suit — dove gray, single-breasted, trousers, a blouse in bone silk with a soft bow at the throat — and Marguerite had her walk the length of the room in it, turn, walk back, sit on the stool, cross her legs, stand again, and each time she moved Marguerite corrected something small: the line of the jaw, the angle of the wrist, the way she put her weight on the ball of the foot instead of the heel.

"You walk like a man who has been told he walks like a woman," Marguerite said. "It's the worst of both. From now on you walk like a woman who has been told nothing. Hips first. Then the foot. Then the shoulder. Again."

Willow walked. Her clit was a low steady throb now, not sharp, the way it got when she had been looked at for a long time, and she could feel the wet through the tanga and knew that if Marguerite put her in anything pale she would see it, and Marguerite, of course, did.

"This one's for Saturday," she said, and took down a dress in champagne silk, bias-cut, thin straps, a back that went to the base of the spine. She held it up and looked at Willow over the top of it. "You'll soak through it in an hour. That's the point. He wants the men at that table to watch it happen to you. Pale silk, no slip, nothing under but what I give you. By the time the second course is cleared there won't be a man in the room who doesn't know exactly what you are."

Willow's mouth had gone dry again. She looked at the champagne silk and saw, very clearly, the dark coin it would wear by the middle of the evening, and her clit gave a hard wet pulse at the picture, and she pressed her hand flat against her own thigh to keep from pressing it somewhere else.

"I can't wear that," she said. "In front of —"

"In front of four men who paid." Marguerite hung the dress on the end of the rack beside the black one. "You'll wear what I put on you and you'll be grateful I chose it. Try the next."

The next was a black column in heavy crepe, long-sleeved, with a slit to the thigh, and the one after it was a short white dress with a sweetheart neckline that made her look like something on a cake, and the one after that was a catsuit in matte black latex with a zipper from the throat to the tailbone, and when she stood in the latex Marguerite walked around her twice and said nothing at all and then said, "That one he'll want for himself. Not for the table. Take it off."

There were heels, too. Marguerite lined them up on the floor in a row — a nude pump, a black patent stiletto, a platform boot in soft leather that came to the knee, a mule with a heel so thin it looked like it would snap under a breath — and had Willow walk in each one, up and back, up and back, until her calves burned and her ankles had learned the platform and the mule both, and the whole time Marguerite watched her feet and not her face, and the watching was its own kind of hand.

"You'll take the pumps and the boots and the mules," she said. "The stiletto stays here until Saturday. You'll be carried out of the room in it or you won't need it."

When it was done, the rack was half empty and the garment bag was full and there was a second bag, a long one, for the shoes, and Marguerite zipped both and set them by the curtain and sat down on the stool Willow had been sitting on and looked at her for a moment in the emerald sheath, which was the last thing she had put back on.

"There's a box on the counter," she said. "Open it."

Willow opened it. Inside, on tissue, was a set of lingerie in black lace so fine it was almost nothing — a bralette, a tanga, a garter belt, and stockings with a seam up the back — and under it, wrapped in its own paper, a small plug in polished steel with a flared base and a ring at the end of it.

"That's for Saturday," Marguerite said. "You'll wear all of it. The plug goes in before you leave the house and it doesn't come out until he says it does. He'll know if you take it out. He always knows."

Willow looked at the steel in the tissue. Her clit was aching now, a deep full ache, and the lace of the tanga was wet enough that she could feel it against the inside of her thigh, and she closed the box and held it against her stomach with both hands and did not say anything at all.

"Go on," Marguerite said. "He's waiting."

She dressed back into the rose silk blouse and the charcoal slacks and the heels David had left for her, and she carried the garment bag and the shoe bag and the box, and when she pushed through the curtain into the dim of the shop David was standing by the front window with his back to her, looking out at the street, and he did not turn around until she had stopped behind him and stood there with her hands full.

"Well," he said, and turned. He looked at the bags and then at her face and something moved in his eyes that she had learned to read in the last month — pleasure, and under it the long patient thing that had been watching her since before she knew she was being watched. "She dressed you."

"She dressed me."

"And you cried."

"I cried."

"And then you asked her what Saturday was."

Willow's throat closed. She looked at him and he looked back at her and there was no cruelty in his face at all, which was the worst of it, because there was no cruelty in the way he knew things either.

"Yes," she said.

"Good girl." He took the bags from her hands and set them on the counter, and then he took her by the wrist and drew her to the window and stood her in front of the glass with her back to his chest, both of them facing the street, and the street looked back at them — a woman in a rose blouse and charcoal slacks and heels, and behind her a man in a black suit with his hand on her wrist, and no one walking past looked twice, and that was the point.

"Ask me," he said, low, at her ear. "Everything you asked her. Ask me."

Willow watched their reflection. Her own face in the glass was a woman's face, made up and calm, and her clit was wet and her heart was going and she could feel his breath at her hair.

"Saturday," she said. "The four men. What happens."

"You'll be brought to the club at seven-thirty," he said. "You'll be dressed by me in the room upstairs. You'll wear the champagne and the lingerie and the plug and the heels and nothing else, and I'll put the collar on you myself, and then you'll go down to the table and you'll sit where I put you and you'll pour the wine and you'll be polite and you'll smile, and when one of them puts his hand on you, you'll let him, and when one of them tells you to do something, you'll look at me first, and if I nod, you'll do it."

"And if you don't nod."

"Then you'll do it anyway." His thumb moved once along the inside of her wrist. "That's what paid means. You don't get to be told the menu in advance. You get to be good at the table."

Willow's clit pulsed, hard, at the words, and she felt the wet spread in the tanga and knew he could feel the small tremor that went through her wrist and knew he had felt it and had chosen not to mention it.

"What will you tell me to wear," she said. "To work. Tomorrow."

"The gray suit," he said. "The bone blouse. The low heel. The collar under the collar. The plug in, all day, and the panties I'll leave on the counter at home, and no makeup but the brows and the liner, and your hair down, and when Priya asks you how you are you'll tell her you're fine and you'll mean it."

"And the days after."

"The days after are the same days," he said. "You'll go in. You'll be Warren. You'll be watched. And on Friday night you'll come to me and you won't go back."

Willow stood in the window with his hand on her wrist and looked at the two of them in the glass and understood that this was the whole of the answer and that she had asked for it and that he had given it to her straight, and that the straightness of it was the thing that made her want to turn around and put her mouth on his throat.

"I'm afraid," she said.

"I know."

"Not of Saturday."

"I know what you're afraid of." He let go of her wrist and turned her by the shoulder so she faced him, and he looked down at her the way Marguerite had looked at her, like cloth, except his eyes did not have the dryness in them. "You're afraid you'll go back to the office tomorrow and be good all week and come to me on Friday and find out there's no Warren left to go back to. That's not a fear. That's a schedule."

Willow's eyes filled and she did not blink.

"And Saturday," she said. "The ceiling."

"You'll watch yourself," he said. "That's what it's for."

He picked up the bags and the box and walked her out through the door and into the cold of the street, and the car was at the curb with its engine running and the back door open, and he put the bags in the trunk himself and held the door for her and she got in and he did not, and she looked up at him through the open door with her hand on the seat beside her.

"You're not coming."

"I have a table to book and a room to dress," he said. "You have a week to be good in. Go home. Put the bags in the closet where Claire won't find them, if Claire were ever coming back, which she isn't. Hang the gray suit for tomorrow. Sleep in the plug. And tomorrow morning you'll walk into that office as Warren and you'll feel me in you the whole day and you'll be very, very good."

He closed the door. Through the glass she watched him step back onto the sidewalk and stand there with his hands in his pockets, a man in a black suit on a cold street, and the car pulled away and he did not move and did not wave, and she turned in the seat and looked at the two bags on the seat beside her and the small box on top of them, and she put her hand flat on the box and felt the steel through the paper, and the city went by the window, and her clit was wet and her mouth was dry and the black dress in its bag was riding home beside her, waiting for Saturday.

The garage door came down behind her and the house was dark and cold and it smelled like nothing, like the smell of a place nobody had cooked in for a while. Willow stood in the mudroom with the two bags and the box and listened. Fridge. Furnace. The tick of the thermostat. The house she had lived in for six years, doing the small sounds it always did, and she was the only body in it.

She carried everything upstairs and did not turn on the overhead light. The bedroom lamp was enough. She opened the closet — Claire's side, the neat row of blazers and the two dresses she never wore, and the empty half where Warren's suits used to hang before David burned them — and she put the garment bag flat on the shelf above the coats, and the shoe bag beside it, and the box, the small box, on top where she could reach it without moving anything. She closed the door and stood with her hand on it.

Then she went down to the kitchen and poured a glass of water and drank it standing at the sink, and looked at her own hand on the faucet, the nails bare, the wrist with the thin gold watch Claire had given her for their anniversary. She had not taken the watch off in a month. She took it off now. She set it on the windowsill above the sink and left it there and went back upstairs.

The rose blouse came off first. She hung it. The slacks. She folded them over the chair. The heels went back in the box they came from, and she stood in the middle of the bedroom in nothing but the sheer thigh-highs and the black lace tanga and the bralette she had worn all day under the blouse, and the house was cold and her nipples were hard under the lace and her clit was leaking into the tanga, had been leaking since the boutique, and she could feel the wet cooling against her thigh when she moved.

She got her phone off the nightstand.

She sat down on the edge of the bed with her knees together and her feet flat and typed it out with her thumbs, and she read it back twice before she sent it, and then she sent it, and put the phone face-up on the bedspread beside her thigh and looked at it.

I am wet. What do I do?

The reply came in under a minute. David did not text like other people. No emoji, no shorthand, no warmth wasted. He wrote the way he spoke, in full sentences, and each one landed like a hand on the back of her neck.

Take off the tanga. Look at it.

She did. She hooked her thumbs in the lace and slid it down her thighs and off her feet and held it up in the lamplight. The gusset was dark. Not damp — soaked, a wet oval the size of a palm, the lace gone translucent where she had been sitting in it all afternoon, and she could smell herself on it, that thick sweet smell, and her clit gave a small hard throb at the smell of her own need.

Tell me what it looks like.

She typed with one thumb and held the tanga in the other hand.

Wet through. The whole middle. I can smell it.

Good girl. Now put two fingers inside yourself and tell me how wet.

Willow looked at the phone. Then at the door of the bedroom, open onto the dark hall, the dark house, the empty half of the closet, and she set the tanga on the bedspread and lay back on the bed with her knees up and her heels on the mattress and reached down between her legs with two fingers and pushed them into herself.

She was slick all the way in. Two fingers went in to the second knuckle without resistance, and the sound was a wet sound, a small sucking sound, and she pulled them out and they were glazed to the palm and she put them to her mouth without being told and tasted herself, salt and copper and something sweet underneath, and she typed with the clean hand.

Two fingers all the way in. Slick. I can hear it. I tasted it.

Did I tell you to taste it?

Her face went hot. She stared at the screen and her clit pulsed and she typed.

No.

No what.

No, Sir.

Better. You're home alone in a cold house in nothing but stockings and a bralette, dripping onto your own fingers, and you want me to tell you what to do with it. You already know what to do with it. You don't get to come tonight. You came without permission last night and I told you we'd deal with it, and this is how we deal with it. You'll put the plug in and go to sleep with it in, and you'll wake up with it in, and you'll go to work with it in, and every time you shift in your chair tomorrow you'll feel it and you'll remember who put it there.

Willow lay on the bed with her fingers wet and her clit aching and her mouth open, reading it twice.

Yes, Sir.

And when you're at your desk and Priya asks how you are, you'll be fine, and you'll mean it, and you'll be wet the whole time you say it.

Yes, Sir.

Go get the box.

She got up. Her legs were unsteady and the stockings whispered against each other and she went down the hall in the dark with the phone in her hand and opened the closet and took the box down off the shelf and carried it back to the bed and opened it on the bedspread. The lace set lay on the tissue, and under the paper, the steel plug, cool and heavy in her palm, the flared base, the ring at the end. There was a small tube of lubricant in the box she had not noticed before, tucked under the paper, and she understood that Marguerite had put it there, that Marguerite had known exactly what would happen when she got home, and her clit throbbed again at being so completely anticipated.

Lube it. Lie on your side. Knees up. Take your time. I want it all the way in.

She did it the way he said. On her side, the phone propped against the pillow so she could see the screen, knees drawn up, one hand behind her with the slick head of the plug against her, and she pushed, and her body resisted, and she pushed again and the widest part slid past the ring of muscle and her breath went out of her in a long shudder and the flared base settled against her, and she lay there full, deeply full, the steel a cold weight inside her that her body was already warming, and her clit was so hard and so wet she could feel it pulse against the sheet.

It's in. All of it.

How does it feel.

Full. Cold. I can feel it when I breathe.

Good. Now the bralette off. Get under the covers. On your back. Hands at your sides. You're going to lie there with it in you and you're not going to touch your clit, and you're going to think about Saturday, and you're going to fall asleep that way.

She took the bralette off and got under the covers and lay on her back with her hands at her sides, and the sheets were cold and the plug was a hard fullness inside her and her clit stood up off her body, slick and swollen, and she did not touch it. She looked at the ceiling. The phone buzzed once more.

One more thing. You left your watch on the windowsill. I saw it on the camera. Good girl. That's the first thing you've done all month without being told.

Willow's eyes filled. She lay in the dark of the bedroom she had shared with Claire with a steel plug in her ass and her clit aching and her hands flat at her sides, and she looked up at the corner of the ceiling where the camera was, the little black dot David had put there before she ever knew, and she said it out loud, quietly, to the dark room.

"Thank you, Sir."

She slept with it in.

She woke before the alarm with it in, and lay there for a while feeling it, the deep foreign weight, and when she finally got up and walked to the bathroom it moved inside her with every step and her clit leaked a fresh thread down her thigh before she had even turned on the light. She showered with it in. She stood under the hot water with her forehead against the tile and the plug a solid pressure inside her and her hand hovering at her thigh and not going where it wanted to go, and when she got out she dried herself carefully around it and went to the closet.

The gray suit was on the hanger where she had left it, and the bone blouse, and the low heel on the floor beneath, and on the shelf, the panties he had said he would leave. They were there. Black, high-cut, plain, folded in a square on top of a pair of sheer stockings and a garter belt, and beside them a note in his handwriting, two words, no signature.

All day.

She dressed in the order he had told her. The panties first, pulled up over the plug, the elastic snug against the base of it, and then the garter and the stockings, the seams straight down the back of her calves, and then the bone blouse, and then the gray slacks, and the plug sat inside her under all of it and no one in the world would know. She did her face in the bathroom mirror with the plug in her: the brows, the liner, nothing else, the way he had said, and her hair down, and she looked at herself in the mirror for a long moment — Warren's gray suit, Willow's face — and then she put the collar on under the collar of the blouse, the silver one, and buttoned the blouse to the throat over it.

The low heel went on last. She stood in the mudroom with her keys in her hand and her briefcase by the door and the plug a hard full ache inside her, and she picked up her phone and sent one more message before she left.

I'm going in.

The reply was immediate, as if he had been holding the phone.

I know. I'll be watching. Be good.

She put the phone in her bag and opened the door and stepped out into the cold morning and walked down the drive to the car with the plug moving inside her with every step, and her clit already wet against the black panties, and the whole day ahead of her like a room she had to walk through slowly.

The drive took forty minutes and she counted every one of them by the plug. Braking at the light on Route 9 it shifted forward and pressed; accelerating up the entrance ramp it settled back and she gripped the wheel with both hands and kept her face still. A woman in a blue sedan pulled alongside her at the toll and glanced over and Willow looked straight ahead with Warren's jaw and Warren's gray suit and let her look. The woman's eyes moved down the blouse and back up to the face and then the light changed and she was gone, and Willow's clit had leaked a warm thread into the black panties before the barrier lifted.

The office was the same office. Fluorescent hum, the smell of burnt coffee from the break room, Dana at the front desk with her headset on and her hand raised in a small wave. "Morning, Warren. You look nice."

"Thank you." The voice came out softer than it used to. She heard it in her own ears and did not correct it.

The elevator was empty going up and she stood in the corner of it with her briefcase against her thigh and let herself feel the plug for the eleven floors, and when the doors opened onto the accounting floor she stepped out and walked to her cubicle with her hips doing the thing they did now, the small sway, and Ray from security was coming the other way down the corridor with his coffee and his badge and he did the double take again, slower this time, his eyes going from her face to her shoes and back, and he said "Mornin'" in a voice pitched a half-step lower than he used with the other men, and Willow said "Morning, Ray," and sat down at her desk and put her bag under it and her briefcase on it and felt the plug press up into her when she sat and had to hold her face completely still for a count of three.

She opened the file she had been working on. The numbers were the same numbers. She moved through them with the pen and the calculator and the small tidy handwriting she had used for eleven years and every time she leaned forward to the screen the plug leaned with her, and every time she sat back it settled, and at ten-forty Priya came around the partition with a mug in each hand.

"I brought you one too. You look —" Priya stopped, tilted her head the way she did when she was deciding whether to say the thing. "You look good. Lighter. Did you do something to your hair?"

"No." Willow took the mug and wrapped both hands around it and smiled at her, and the smile was easy, and the wet in the panties was spreading under her and her clit was a small hard pulse against the seam of the slacks and Priya was still standing there looking at her. "I'm fine. Really. Thank you for the coffee."

"Okay." Priya said it slowly, the way you say a word you don't believe, and then she went back to her own desk, and Willow sat with the mug warm in her hands and the plug full inside her and thought, I'm fine, and I mean it, and I'm wet the whole time I say it, and her clit throbbed once, hard, at how exactly he had known.

At noon she took her phone into the stall at the end of the ladies' room — she used the ladies' now, nobody had said anything, nobody was going to say anything — and sat on the closed lid with her slacks down around her knees and the garter and the stockings showing and the black panties dark through the middle, and she took a photo of her own lap and sent it to him without a caption.

The reply came back while she was still sitting there.

Good girl. Now go back to your desk and finish the day. Don't touch it. I want you aching when you walk out of that building.

She pulled her slacks up over the wet panties and went back to her desk and worked the afternoon in a low continuous ache that made the numbers swim if she let them. At four she filed the last of it and shut the ledger and sat for a moment with her hands flat on the desk and the plug a steady weight inside her and the whole day behind her like a room she had walked through slowly, the way she had known she would have to.

Dana called goodbye as she went past the front desk. Ray held the lobby door. She walked out into the late afternoon with the cold air hitting the wet spot in her panties and the plug moving with every step to the parking garage, and she got in the car and sat down on it and put her forehead on the wheel and breathed.

Then she drove home.

The house was dark again and cold again and she did the same small sounds with the door and the keys and the thermostat, and this time she went straight upstairs without stopping at the kitchen, and she stood in the bedroom with the lamp on and took off the gray suit piece by piece and hung it and laid the blouse flat and stepped out of the slacks and stood there in the garter and the stockings and the black panties with the plug still in her, and she got her phone out and sat down on the edge of the bed the way she had the night before, in the same spot, and typed it with both thumbs.

I am wet. What do I do?

She sent it and set the phone face-up on the bedspread beside her thigh and looked at it and waited with her hands in her lap and her clit standing up against the wet lace and her whole body tuned to the screen like a radio to a frequency.

The reply came in under a minute. Full sentences. No warmth wasted.

Take off the panties. Look at them. Tell me what you see.

She hooked her thumbs in the lace and slid them down over the garter straps and off her feet and held them up in the lamplight. The gusset was soaked through, a dark oval the size of her palm, the fabric gone translucent where she had been sitting in it all day, and the smell came up off it thick and sweet and hers, and she typed with one thumb and held them in the other hand.

Wet through. The whole middle. I can smell myself on them.

Good girl. Now put two fingers inside yourself and tell me how wet you are.

She lay back on the bed with her knees up and her heels on the mattress and reached down and pushed two fingers into herself and there was no resistance at all, just slick heat all the way to the second knuckle and a small wet sound when she pulled them out, and she put them to her mouth without being told and tasted herself, salt and copper and something sweet under it, and typed with the clean hand.

Did I tell you to taste it.

Her face went hot. She stared at the screen and her clit pulsed against nothing and she typed.

No.

No what.

No, Sir.

Better. Now lie back and open your legs. I want to see how you look when you're waiting.

She lay back against the pillows and let her knees fall apart, one hand still holding the phone, the other flat on the sheet beside her hip. The lamp threw her shadow up the wall and the shadow had its legs open too, and she looked at the shadow and then at the ceiling corner where the little black dot sat, and she understood that David was not looking at a photograph. He was looking at her now, this second, the way she was now, and she did not close her legs.

Good. Stay like that. I'm going to tell you something and I want you to hear it with your legs open.

She waited. The house ticked around her. Somewhere down the block a dog started up and stopped.

Marguerite called me after you left. She said you stood still for the tape measure the way a woman stands, not the way a man does. She said you knew where your waist was. She's been dressing men who think they're women for thirty years and she can tell in the first ten seconds which ones are going to run and which ones are going to come back for more. She said you were the second kind. She also said you looked at the black satin in the window twice.

Willow's thumb hovered. She had looked at it twice. She had not said anything about it to anyone.

I didn't — she started, and deleted it, because he had not asked her a question.

You didn't have to. That's the point. You've spent your whole life thinking you were hiding something and the whole time you were just slow. Everybody saw. Dana saw. Ray saw. The woman in the blue sedan at the toll saw. Priya has seen it for a month and she's too kind to say it out loud. You were never hiding, Willow. You were just the last one to find out.

She read it three times. Her clit had gone still and small and then it wasn't, it was thick and hot against her thigh and she could feel her own pulse in it, and she did not know whether the heat was shame or want and she had stopped being able to tell the difference weeks ago.

Yes, Sir.

Saturday you'll come to me and I'll take the plug out and put my cock in and you'll understand what your body has been for this whole time. Until then you keep it in. You keep it in at the office and you keep it in at the grocery store and you keep it in when you lie in that bed your wife used to sleep in. Every hour you keep it in is an hour you're choosing me over the life you had. That's the whole trick, Willow. I don't have to hold you down. You hold yourself down. You do it every morning before you even put your shoes on.

She turned her face into the pillow and pressed her mouth against it and stayed there for a while with the phone loose in her hand. When she came back up the screen had one more line on it.

Now put the phone down and go to sleep. You have work in the morning and I want you sharp. I'll know if you touch yourself. I always know.

She put the phone on the nightstand and turned off the lamp and lay in the dark on her back with her hands at her sides and her knees still apart under the sheet. The plug sat heavy and warm inside her, no longer cold, and she could feel the flared base against her like a small hard hand. She thought about Saturday and about the black satin in the window and about Priya's face that morning, the tilt of her head, the word lighter, and she lay there with all of it and did not touch her clit, and somewhere in the middle of the thinking she slept.

She woke at two with the plug pressing and her hand already between her legs, and she pulled it back and put it flat on the sheet and lay there breathing with her eyes open at the ceiling. The little black dot was still there in the corner. She looked at it and it looked back at her and she turned her face to the wall and slept again.

The alarm went at six. She got up with the plug in and went to the bathroom and sat on the toilet with it in and showered with it in and stood in front of the mirror afterward with a towel around her and did her face the way he had taught her — brows, liner, nothing else — and her hands were steadier than they had been the day before. She dressed in the gray suit again because it was the only suit she had left, and the bone blouse, and the black panties over the plug, and the garter and the stockings, and the low heel, and she put the silver collar on under the blouse and buttoned it to the throat. She looked at the woman in the mirror for a long moment and the woman looked back and neither of them said anything.

At the door she checked her phone. Nothing new. She had expected nothing new. She put it in her bag and drove to the office and the day was the same day it had been the day before, and that was the thing she had not understood until she was in the middle of it — that the world did not know. The world went on doing its fluorescent hum and its burnt coffee and its numbers, and she sat in the middle of it with a plug in her ass and a collar under her blouse and a wet spot spreading slowly in her panties, and nobody looked at her and thought sissy, and that was the strangest part of all, that she could be this and still be invisible, that the whole day could pass and not one person would know what she was doing with her body while she filed their invoices.

At three-forty her phone lit up on the desk. She turned it face-down without looking at it and kept typing, and her heart went fast and her clit went wet and she made herself finish the line she was on before she picked it up.

It was from David. A photograph, no text. She opened it under the desk with her thumb over the screen and it was the picture she had sent him at noon from the ladies' room — her own lap, the stockings, the dark panties — except it was not the same picture. He had printed it. It sat on a table she did not recognize, next to a glass of whiskey and a folded newspaper, and in the corner of the frame, out of focus, there was the edge of another photograph, and she could just make out that it was her too, a different her, a her from before, from the bar, from the fourteen missing hours, and she could not see enough of it to know what she was doing in it and she could not stop looking.

She put the phone face-down again and sat with her hands flat on the desk and her clit pulsing and the plug a hard weight inside her and the numbers on the screen in front of her going soft and meaningless, and she did not ask him what the other photograph was. She already knew he would not tell her until he wanted to. She filed the rest of the day with the question sitting in her chest like a second plug, and at five she shut the ledger and stood up and felt the plug shift and walked out past Dana and past Ray with her face doing nothing at all.

In the car she sat with her hands on the wheel and the engine off and the parking garage dark around her and she typed it with one thumb, short, because there was nothing else to type.

What was the other picture.

The reply took four minutes. She counted them on the clock in the dash.

Come Saturday and find out. Drive safe. Keep it in.

She started the car and pulled out of the garage into the cold evening and drove home with the plug moving inside her and the question riding along in the passenger seat, and the whole way she did not turn on the radio, and the whole way she did not once think about Claire.