The plug had settled into a weight that was no longer strange. It had been in him so long that his body had made a place for it, the way a riverbed makes a place for a stone, and now when he breathed the whole of it moved with him, a slow pressure that opened him and closed him and opened him again. He lay on his back with his knees fallen open and one hand cupped wet against his clit, and he did not move, and he listened to the house.

The house was empty the way it had been empty for weeks now. Claire was in White Plains, or she was at her sister's, or she was somewhere he had stopped letting himself imagine, and the divorce papers sat on the nightstand beside the lamp with her signature at the bottom in the blue pen she had always used for everything, the pen he had bought her two Christmases ago because she had said she liked the weight of it. The lamp was off. The room was dark except for the phone, face down, and the thin gray of the window where the streetlight came through the blinds.

The collar was cold. It was always cold when he lay still, the silver warming only where his throat pressed against it, and he could feel the words cut into the inside of it against the soft part of his neck, Willow, owned by David, the letters raised just enough that when he swallowed he swallowed against them. He had worn it for a month. He had stopped noticing it in the office, under the collar of the blouse, but here in the dark with nothing else touching him it was the coldest thing in the room and he liked it that way.

His hand was beginning to dry. The cum had gone tacky in the crease of his palm and along the side of his thumb, and he could feel it flaking at the edge where it met his wrist, and he did not wipe it off. Warren would have wiped it off. Warren would have been in the bathroom by now with the tap running and the door shut and his face turned away from the mirror. He lay there and let it dry and felt the pull of it on his skin every time he flexed his fingers.

The phone was face down on the nightstand. It had been face down since he came home, since before the first time, since before the second time, and he had not turned it over because he knew what was on it. David's message. One word. He had read it in the car, at the light on Weaver Street, and he had not answered it, and now it sat on the nightstand with its face to the wood like something he could pretend was not there.

He turned his head and looked at it. The little rectangle of it in the dark, no light coming off the edge, dead to the room. His clit gave a slow throb against the heel of his hand and he felt the wetness start again, the way it always started again, the way it had not stopped starting again since David had taken the cage off and thrown it out the window and told him what he was. He pulled his hand away from his clit and looked at the shine on his fingers in the gray light and put his hand back down on the sheet beside him.

He reached for the phone.

The screen came up and there it was, the message thread with David, and at the bottom of it the one word, sent at four-forty-one, two hours and change ago, and above it the last thing Warren had sent, which was a photograph of the dress in the garment bag hanging in the closet, the black dress, the one for Saturday, and above that David's reply, which was a single period, which was the way David said yes.

Send.

One word. No punctuation he could argue with. No question mark, no please, no if you want to. Just the word, sitting under the photograph of the dress, and Warren lay in the dark and read it four times and felt his clit jump against the sheet, a small hard pulse, and he pressed his thighs together around the plug and felt it move and let his breath out slow through his nose.

The video was in his camera roll. It had been there since the men's room, since the stall with the door he had locked and the phone propped on the toilet paper dispenser, since he had stood in front of it in the lavender blouse and the charcoal slacks and the heels David had laid out for him that morning, and he had not watched it back. He had sent it to David because David had told him to, and then he had put the phone in his pocket and walked out of the building with his coat over his arm and driven home with his hands at ten and two, and he had not watched it.

He opened it now.

The first frame was the wall of the stall, gray tile with a grout line running down it, and then the phone shifted and there he was, the whole of him from the chest up, and Warren looked at himself on the small bright screen and did not recognize the man he had been this morning. The blouse was lavender silk and it was open at the throat, the top two buttons undone the way he had left them after lunch, and the collar of it stood up on one side and lay flat on the other and the silver chain of the collar underneath caught the fluorescent light in a thin bright line across his collarbone. His hair was still short, still Warren's hair, dark and parted on the side, but his face was not Warren's face.

The lips were the first thing. Thick and wet and glossy, the color of the gloss David had chosen, a soft nude pink that made them look fuller than they were, and they were parted a little in the video, the way they stayed parted now, the way his mouth had learned to rest. The eyeliner was black and drawn out past the corner of each eye, and the mascara had been done with the one-inch lashes, the extra-thick ones, and the shadow was smoky and dark at the crease, and under all of it his eyes were wet. Not crying. Wet the way they stayed wet now, the way they shone, and in the video he watched himself blink and the lashes came down and up and the shine came back.

His hand was on his thigh in the video. The slacks were charcoal and tight, tighter than anything Warren had ever worn to the office, and his hand lay flat along the top of his thigh with the fingers spread, and he watched his own hand and remembered the weight of it there, the way the silk of the blouse had brushed the back of his knuckles every time he moved. The phone had caught him from a little below, the way it sat on the dispenser, and it made his shoulders look narrow and his throat look long and the line of his jaw look soft, and he looked at himself and thought, that is not a man in a blouse. That is a woman who has not finished becoming one.

He had not known he looked like that. He had known he felt like that. He had felt the silk on his arms all day and the plug shifting when he walked and the collar cold under the blouse and the wet spot growing in the front of his panties and he had known, in his body, what he was. But he had not seen it. He had not seen the wet eyes and the parted lips and the way his hand lay on his own thigh like it belonged to someone being looked at, and now he saw it, and his clit throbbed hard enough that he pressed the phone to his chest and closed his eyes.

He opened his eyes and pressed play again and watched himself say Matt's name.

"Matt," he said, in the video, and Warren heard his own voice come out of the phone speaker small and close, and it was not Warren's voice. It was softer than Warren's voice. It was pitched a little higher and it came out of his mouth slow and round and it curled up at the end like a question he was not asking, and the wet lips moved around the word and the lashes came down and the eyes looked up into the camera and it was the look he gave David, the look he gave David when he wanted something and could not say it, and he was giving it to Matt. To Matt, who had sat across a table from him at a soup place on Forty-Ninth and eaten a turkey sandwich and told him he liked him. To Matt, who had asked for a video, and who was going to get one.

The video was forty-one seconds long. He watched it to the end. He watched himself lean toward the phone and the blouse pull open and the silver chain slide along his collarbone and he watched his own tongue touch his own lip and he watched the last second, where he looked down and away and the lashes made two dark fans against his cheeks, and then the screen went black and the little replay arrow sat in the middle of it and the room was quiet again.

His clit was leaking. He could feel it, the wet spreading under him on the sheet, and he put his hand down between his legs and found it slick and hot and small and he did not press yet, he just held his palm over it and felt the pulse against his hand, and he looked at the replay arrow and the one word above it, Send, and his thumb moved up to the corner of the screen and hovered there over the share icon and did not press it.

Matt had given him his number. Matt had written it on the back of the receipt from the soup place, in blue ballpoint, and pushed it across the table, and Warren had folded it and put it in the pocket of the slacks and it was still there, in the pocket of the slacks on the floor by the bed, a small square of paper with a man's handwriting on it, and he had not thrown it away.

He set the phone down on the pillow beside his head with the video open, the replay arrow glowing, and he lay back and looked at the ceiling. The crack in the corner. The water stain shaped like a bird. The plug moved in him when he shifted his hips and he felt the whole length of it drag against the inside of him and he let his knees fall wider and put his hand back down and began to move his fingers.

He watched himself while he did it. He propped the phone against the pillow and watched his own face on the small screen, the wet eyes, the parted lips, the way his hand lay on his thigh, and he touched his clit the way David touched it, slow and flat with two fingers, the way that made it swell and ache and leak, and he felt the wet come up under his fingers and he heard it, the small wet sound of it, and he did not stop.

"Matt," he said, out loud, in the dark room, and his voice came out the way it came out in the video, soft and round and curling up at the end, and he heard it and his clit jumped under his fingers and he said it again. "Matt." He thought about Matt's hands on the table at the soup place, the way they had rested on either side of his bowl, the way the knuckles had been broad and the wrists had been thick and the nails had been short and clean. He thought about Matt looking at him across the table and saying I like you, and he thought about what it would be like to sit across from Matt in the lavender blouse with the collar under it and the plug in him and let Matt look at him the way David looked at him, the way that made him want to put his face down on the table and stay there.

His fingers sped up. He was not being careful anymore. He was rubbing his clit in small hard circles with two fingers and the wet was running down over his knuckles and into the crease of his palm and he could hear it, a soft rhythmic sound in the quiet room, and he watched his own face on the phone screen and his own wet lips and his own wet eyes and he thought about the video going to Matt. He thought about Matt's phone lighting up on Matt's kitchen counter, wherever Matt lived, whatever Matt's kitchen looked like, and Matt opening it and seeing him, seeing the blouse and the lips and the lashes and the soft voice saying his name, and he thought about Matt watching it more than once, and he thought about Matt watching it with his hand on himself, and the thought went through him like the plug going deeper.

He turned onto his side and the plug shifted and he gasped, a small sound, and he pulled his knees up and reached back with his other hand and pressed two fingers against the base of the plug and pushed it, just a little, just enough to feel it move inside him, and the pressure went up through his belly and into his clit and he moaned into the pillow and kept rubbing.

"Good girl," he said, in David's voice, the way he said it to himself, low and warm and certain, and his whole body answered it, the way it always answered it, his clit swelling under his fingers and his ass clenching around the plug and his breath coming short and high. "Good girl." He said it again and rubbed faster and the phone screen was still lit beside his face and he turned his head and looked at himself, at the wet eyes and the parted lips, and he thought, this is what Matt is going to see, this is what Matt is going to have, and his thumb reached up and hovered over the share icon again and shook there.

He did not press it. He brought his hand back down and put it between his legs and rubbed and looked at his own face and the wave came up the way it came now, slow and total, starting behind his balls and rolling up through his belly and his chest and his throat, and he did not chase it and he did not hold it back. He kept his fingers moving and kept his eyes on the screen and said Matt's name once more, and the wave gathered and gathered and hung at the top of itself, and then it broke.

It rolled up through him and out of him in one long shuddering clench, and his clit pulsed against his fingers, once, twice, three times, four, and the first hot pulse of it came out over his hand, thin and clear and warm, and ran down between his fingers and onto the sheet, and his hips lifted off the mattress and his back arched and his mouth opened against the pillow and he held there, suspended, and the second pulse followed the first and the third followed the second, and then his back found the mattress again and his hips settled and his breath came out of him in long ragged pieces and his hand stayed where it was, cupped over his clit, wet and warm, and he lay there and did not clean it up.

The phone screen had gone dark. He reached up with his dry hand and tapped it and it came back, the replay arrow in the middle of the black, and above it the one word, Send, and below it the little row of icons, and his thumb found the share icon and hovered there over the glass and did not press it, and the plug was heavy in him and the collar was cold at his throat and his own cum was cooling on his fingers and running into the sheet, and he lay on his side in the dark room and looked at the video of himself in the office men's room, the lavender blouse, the wet eyes, the soft voice saying Matt's name, and he did not send it.

The thumb came down.

It was not a decision. That was the thing he would remember — that there had been no moment where he chose it, no gathering of himself, no breath held and released. The pad of his thumb found the glass and the little white arrow went blue and the phone hummed once against the pillow, a small flat buzz he felt in his teeth, and the video was gone. Forty-one seconds of his own wet eyes and parted lips and soft voice saying Matt's name, lifted off the screen and sent out into the night somewhere, into a kitchen or a bedroom or a hand in a car, and the phone said Delivered, and Warren lay on his side in the dark and looked at the word.

Delivered. Past tense. Done.

His clit gave a single hard throb under his palm and he made a sound into the pillow, not a word, just sound, and he pressed his hand down flat and ground the heel of it against himself and the wet came up around his fingers warm and slick and he felt the whole of it — the plug heavy and full in his ass, the collar cold at his throat, the small hard pulse of his clit against his own hand, and the word Delivered sitting on the screen beside his face like something he had signed.

He turned onto his back. The plug shifted and dragged and he gasped at the ceiling and his knees fell open and his hand stayed where it was, cupped over himself, and he looked at the phone propped against the pillow and watched the screen go dark and tapped it awake again and there it still was, the message thread with Matt, the little blue tick under the video, Delivered. He tapped it awake three more times. It said the same thing every time.

He had sent it. He had sent it to Matt, who had eaten a turkey sandwich across a table from him at a soup place on Forty-Ninth and pushed a folded receipt across the table with his number written on it in blue ballpoint, and Matt would have it now, the whole of it, the lavender silk open at the throat and the silver chain catching the light and the lashes coming down and the voice saying his name slow and round. Warren put his dry hand over his mouth and held it there and breathed into his own palm and his clit pulsed against the other hand, once, twice, and he felt the wet run down between his fingers and into the crease of his thigh.

The phone was still in his hand when it buzzed.

Not the flat hum of his own send, but the double-pulse of an incoming message, and the screen lit up over his face and there it was at the bottom of the thread with Matt, under the blue tick, under the video, a new bubble from the other side. Three words. Jesus. You're real.

Warren stared at it and his mouth went dry and his clit jumped against his palm and he did not move his hand. Matt had it. Matt had opened it, wherever Matt was, and Matt had watched it and Matt had typed back, and the typing had taken him some time because the bubble did not appear for a while and then it appeared all at once, and Warren lay on his back with his knees open and his fingers slick and read it four times the way he read everything David sent.

You're real.

He thought about Matt's kitchen. He did not know what Matt's kitchen looked like but he made one anyway — a counter, a glass of water, a phone face-up on the granite, Matt standing in his socks with his thumb on the screen, replaying it, watching the lashes come down and the lips part and the voice say his name slow and round. Matt had eaten a turkey sandwich across from him and had not looked away once. Matt had said I like you like it was a fact he had already checked.

He typed with his dry hand, thumb clumsy, and deleted it, and typed again. Did you watch it.

The reply came fast this time, fast enough that Matt must have been holding the phone. Twice. Are you alone.

Warren put the phone down on his chest and looked at the ceiling. The crack in the corner. The water stain shaped like a bird with one wing. His clit was leaking under his hand and the plug sat heavy in him and the collar was cold where the chain crossed his throat, and he could feel the whole of the question sitting there — are you alone — the way you feel a door that has been left open in another part of the house. He was alone. Claire was in a hotel in White Plains or a hotel somewhere, signing her name to a letter, and the house was his, and the dress was in the closet, and the answer was yes, and the yes was a thing he could hand over.

Yes, he sent. My wife is gone.

He watched the bubble appear and disappear and appear again, Matt typing and stopping and typing, and Warren's hips moved a little on the sheet without his telling them to, the plug dragging, and he let his hand slide down from his clit and cup himself instead, holding the heat in, not moving yet, because he wanted to know what Matt would say before he let himself have the rest of it.

Send me one more, Matt sent. Say my name again.

Warren closed his eyes. It was not a command the way David's commands were commands — it had no weight of ownership in it, no collar in it, it was just a man on the other end of a phone asking for something he wanted, and that was worse, in a way, that was a thing Warren could refuse and did not want to refuse. He opened his eyes and sat up against the headboard and the plug pressed in deeper with the shift and he breathed out through his nose and reached for the lamp.

He did not turn it on all the way. He turned the little wheel until the room came up a quarter, enough that his face would catch light and the rest of the room would stay dark, and he propped the phone on the nightstand against a book and angled it and looked at himself in the small black square before he pressed record. His hair was flat on one side from the pillow. The gloss was gone off his lips, worn off by the pillow and his own hand, and his eyes were still wet the way they stayed wet now, and the lashes had clumped a little at the outer corners, and he looked at himself and thought, that is a woman who has just come and has not washed her face, and the thought went through his clit like a fingertip.

He wet his lips. He pressed record.

"Matt," he said, and his voice came out lower than it had in the men's room, rougher, because his throat was dry and his chest was still full of the last one, and he let it be rough, let it sit there in the little microphone. He tipped his head against the headboard and looked into the lens the way he looked at David when he wanted to be told he was good, and he said it again. "Matt." And then, because the lens was there and the room was dark and no one was going to stop him, he said the rest of it. "I'm in bed. I'm still wet. I sent you that and I touched myself after and I said your name out loud when I came."

He stopped the recording at fifty-two seconds. He did not watch it back. He sent it before he could think about it, the same way he had sent the first one, thumb on glass, and the bubble went blue and the phone hummed and then it said Delivered again, and Warren looked at the word and felt something turn over low in his belly, slow and warm, like a stone rolling downhill.

Matt's reply came before Warren had set the phone down. Fuck. And then, a second later, a third: I'm hard. What are you wearing.

Warren looked down at himself. The blouse was bunched up under his arms, the lavender silk crushed and damp at the collar where his neck had sweated into it, the buttons open to the waist. Below that, nothing. The slacks were on the floor by the bed where he had stepped out of them, and the panties were somewhere in the tangle of the sheet, and his clit stood up small and flushed and slick from the root of him, and his thighs were open and there was a wet patch under him the size of a hand. He had never in his life described himself to a man. He typed it anyway, thumb moving slow and deliberate, and he did not soften a word of it.

Lavender blouse. No panties. Plug in my ass. Collar on my throat.

He watched the three dots. They stayed a long time. Then: Show me the collar.

Warren reached up and found the chain with two fingers and pulled it out from under the silk and let it lie on top of the blouse, and the lamp caught it, and the little engraved plate turned toward the light and he could read the two words on it without meaning to — Willow — owned — before the plate tipped away again. He framed it in the square: the open blouse, the pale chest, the silver chain lying across it with the plate catching the light. He did not show his face. He sent it.

Matt did not answer with words this time. Matt sent a photograph back.

Warren's thumb hovered over it for a second before he opened it, and when he did his breath went out of him in a long unsteady line. It was Matt's hand. Just the hand — broad knuckles, thick wrist, short clean nails, the same hand that had rested on the table beside the soup bowl — and it was closed around his own cock, thick and dark and hard, and the light in the picture was the light of a room Warren had never been in, and there was a shadow of a window blind lying across Matt's forearm, and Matt had taken this picture in the last minute, for him, because of the fifty-two seconds of Warren's rough voice saying his name in a dark bedroom.

Warren put the phone face-down on his chest and lay still and felt his heart go and his clit pulse against the air and the plug sit heavy in him, and he thought, that is for me. That is because of me. He had never been the cause of a hard cock in his life. He had been the reason for one, once, a long time ago, in the way a wife is a reason, but he had never been the cause of one — never been the thing a man looked at and got hard for, never been the picture on the other end of the phone. He lay there with the phone on his chest and the collar on his throat and the plug in his ass and understood, in his body, the thing David had been telling him for a month.

He picked the phone up and opened the picture again and looked at Matt's hand and Matt's cock and the blind-shadow on Matt's forearm, and he put his own hand back down between his legs and this time he did not hold anything in.

He touched himself the way he touched himself when he was alone and nobody was watching, which was not the slow flat two-finger way David did it, but quick and low, three fingers together, rubbing the whole swollen length of his clit from the root to the tip and back, and the wet came up under his fingers at once, and he heard it, the small rhythmic sound in the quiet room, and he did not slow down. He kept the phone in his other hand, open on Matt's picture, and he looked at Matt's hand and thought about it on him — that broad hand on his thigh, on his throat, on the back of his neck pushing his face down onto the mattress — and his hips began to move on their own, rolling up into his own fingers, and the plug moved with them, and he made a sound that he did not put into the pillow this time, a high thin sound, and let the room have it.

"Matt," he said, out loud, to the dark, to the phone, to the picture of Matt's hand. "Matt. Matt."

The second one came up faster than the first and harder. It started behind his balls and went up through his belly in a hot rush and his thighs closed around his own hand and his back came off the headboard and his mouth opened and he did not say anything at all this time, just held there with his teeth bared at the ceiling and his hand trapped between his legs, and the clench rolled through him in long waves, one, two, three, four, and the clear thin wet came out over his fingers and ran down into his palm and onto the sheet, and he shook through the end of it and then went limp against the headboard with his hand still cupped over himself, breathing hard, the phone still lit in his other hand with Matt's picture open on it.

He looked at the thread. Matt had sent one more thing while Warren had been gone inside himself, and Warren read it with his chest still heaving and his fingers still wet and his clit still giving little pulses against his palm.

Tell me when you're free. I want to see you. Not the office. Somewhere I can touch you.

Warren did not answer it. He set the phone down on the nightstand, face-up, the thread open, the blue tick under the video, the picture of Matt's hand above it, and he lay back on the wet patch on the sheet with the plug heavy in him and the collar cold at his throat and the lamp still on at a quarter, and he listened to his own breath go slow in the dark room, and the phone screen dimmed and then went black on its own, and the room was quiet, and his breath was the only sound in it.

The phone was still dark on the nightstand when he reached for it. He did not think about reaching. His arm went out across the wet sheet and his hand found the glass and the screen came up under his thumb, the thread still open, Matt's last three words sitting there in the white bubble like a stone in a stream — Somewhere I can touch you — and Warren lay on his back and read it again and did not type anything back.

He turned the lamp wheel down until the room went dark and set the phone on his chest and lay there with the plug heavy in him and the collar cold at his throat and Matt's picture still in his hand, behind his eyes, the broad knuckles and the thick wrist and the blind-shadow lying across the forearm. He thought about the hand on his thigh. He thought about the hand on the back of his neck. He thought about the hand closing around the base of his skull and pushing his face down into the mattress, and his clit gave a slow wet throb against the sheet, and he did not touch it. He was done touching it. His fingers were tacky with his own come and the sheet under his hip was cold where it had soaked through, and he lay in the wet and the dark and let the question sit on his chest with the phone.

He woke before the alarm. That was new. He woke with the light gray at the window and the phone still on his chest and the thread still open and Matt's last message still unanswered, and the first thing he felt was not the plug or the collar or the ache in his clit. It was the question. It had been sitting on his chest all night and it was still there, patient, waiting to be answered, the way David's questions waited, except this one had no weight of ownership in it and that made it worse. He sat up against the headboard and swung his legs off the bed and the plug shifted and he breathed through it and stood, and his thighs were stiff and his ass was sore and there was a dried smear on the inside of his thigh that he looked at for a moment before he walked to the bathroom.

He showered with the plug in. He had learned to do that. He stood under the water with his hands braced on the tile and let it run down his back and between his legs and he did not touch his clit, and when he stepped out and dried himself and looked at the mirror he saw the collar and the chain and the small pale plate with the two words on it, and he reached up and turned the plate with one finger so the words faced his chest, and then he went to the bedroom and got dressed for the office.

He dressed as Warren. The gray suit was gone — burned — and what hung in the closet now was the rack David had built for him: the blouses, the slacks, the heels. He chose the cream silk blouse with the covered buttons and the charcoal slacks that sat high on his waist and the low black heels that made his hips find their own swing, and he put on the black lace panties over the plug and pulled the stockings up and smoothed the seams and sat on the edge of the bed and put on his face the way he put it on now, which was less than Willow and more than Warren — a little liner, a little gloss, the brows penciled soft. He looked at himself in the small mirror on the dresser and saw a woman in a man's office clothes and the thought did not shock him anymore. It was just what he was.

He picked up the phone. The thread was still there. He read Matt's message one more time and he typed, with the pad of his thumb, slow, and did not delete it.

Can I ask you something first.

The reply came before he had put the phone in his bag. Of course.

He stood in the middle of the bedroom with the phone in his hand and the light coming up gray through the blinds and the plug sitting heavy and full in him and the collar cold under the silk, and he typed the question the way it had come to him in the dark, without dressing it up, without softening a word of it, because he had learned in the last month that softening a word only made it harder to send.

Would you like to meet Willow in real life. Or on cam.

He sent it. He watched the bubble appear and disappear and appear again, and his clit gave one small pulse against the lace, and he stood there in the gray room with his bag on his shoulder and waited, and the answer did not come for a while, and that was its own kind of answer, and he did not sit down.

Then it came. Three bubbles, one after the other, fast.

Real life.

I want to be in the room.

Cam is for people who are scared.

Warren read the three lines and his breath went out of him in a long unsteady line and he put his free hand flat on the dresser and stood there with his head down and his clit throbbing against the lace and the plug pressing in with the bend of his body, and he thought, he is not scared of me, and the thought went through him like a fingertip, and then he thought, I am, and the second thought did not stop the first one from being true.

He typed back. I'm not scared.

Matt: Good. When.

Warren looked at the word. When. It sat there on the screen with no collar around it, no ownership, no plan, just a man asking a question he expected to be answered, and Warren stood in his bedroom in the cream blouse and the charcoal slacks and the low black heels and felt the whole day ahead of him open up like a corridor with a door at the end of it that had no lock on it, and he typed the truest thing he had, which was also the most dangerous thing he had.

Tonight. After work. Not the office.

Matt: Where.

Warren thought about the house. He thought about the dress in the closet and the divorce papers on the nightstand and the cameras David had put in every room he had ever stood in, and he thought about David's file and David's phone and the red light in the corner of the hotel room that had watched him come without permission, and he thought about the fact that he had not answered David's last message either, and the two unanswered messages sat in his phone side by side like two doors, and he could only walk through one of them tonight.

He typed: I'll tell you when I'm out. And then, because it was true and because he wanted Matt to know it: I want to see you too.

Matt: Then come.

Warren put the phone in his bag and went to work.

The day was long. The day was the longest day he had had since the day David had burned his suits. He sat at his desk with the plug in him and the collar under his blouse and the phone in his bag, and every forty minutes or so he took the phone out and looked at the thread and put it back, and every time he did his clit gave a small wet throb against the lace and he pressed his thighs together under the desk and looked at his screen and typed nothing. Priya stopped by his desk at eleven with a coffee she had not been asked to bring and stood there a moment and said, You look different today, and Warren said, Do I, and Priya said, You look like you're waiting for something, and Warren looked at the coffee in his hand and said, I am, and Priya did not ask what, and Warren was grateful, and Priya went back to her desk and Warren sat with the coffee and the plug and the question.

At lunch he did not go out. He sat in the break room with a sandwich he did not eat and took out the phone and opened the thread and read Matt's three lines again — Real life. I want to be in the room. Cam is for people who are scared — and he thought about Matt's hand on the table at the soup place, the broad knuckles and the short clean nails, and he thought about that hand on his thigh in a room with a door that locked, and he put the sandwich down and pressed his palm flat on the table and breathed until the throb passed.

He did not answer David. The message sat at the top of the thread with David and it had sat there since last night and it said, Did you send it, and Warren had sent it, and Warren had not told him, and every hour he did not tell him the message sat there a little heavier. He knew what it would cost. He knew David would know. David knew everything — he had cameras in the office and the men's room and the walk to the subway and the locker room at the gym Warren had stopped going to in March, and the fact that Warren had sent Matt a video from the office men's room and then a second one from his own bed and had not told David meant David already knew, or would know, or was waiting to see whether Warren would say it first, and the waiting was the point. The waiting was always the point with David.

He left the office at five. He did not go home. He drove to the parking garage on Forty-Ninth and sat in the car with the engine off and the phone in his hand and the plug in him and the collar under his blouse and the dress in the closet at home waiting for Saturday, and he opened the thread with Matt and typed: I'm out. Where.

Matt: The soup place. Six-thirty. I'll get a table in the back.

Warren: I'm not dressed as Warren.

A pause. Then: I know. Come as you are.

Warren sat in the car and looked at the words and understood what Matt was asking and what Matt was not asking. Matt was not asking him to be Willow. Matt was not asking him to put on the wig and the lashes and the silicone and the six-inch heels and become the woman in the photographs. Matt was asking him to come as the thing he actually was right now, in the cream blouse and the charcoal slacks and the low black heels with the lace under it and the collar on his throat and the plug in his ass, the thing that was neither Warren nor Willow but the body that had sent Matt a fifty-two-second video from a dark bedroom saying his name. And that was worse than being asked to be Willow. That was being asked to be seen.

He got out of the car.

He walked the block and a half to the soup place with the green awning and his bag on his shoulder and his heels clicking on the sidewalk, and people looked at him the way people looked at him now, and he let them, and he stopped outside the door and looked in through the glass and saw Matt at a table in the back, in a booth, his back to the wall, a glass of water in front of him and his phone face-down on the table and his eyes already on the door, already on Warren, and Warren stood on the sidewalk with his hand on the door and his clit throbbing against the lace and the plug heavy in him and the collar cold at his throat and did not go in.

He took out his phone. He typed, standing there on the sidewalk with the door in front of him: David doesn't know I'm here.

He sent it. He watched the bubble come up and go and come up again, and he stood on the sidewalk with the green awning over his head and the smell of soup coming out through the glass and Matt watching him through it from the back booth, and Matt's answer came.

Then this is ours.

Warren read it. He put the phone in his bag. He looked at Matt through the glass and Matt looked back and did not wave and did not smile and just waited, the way a man waits who has already decided, and Warren put his hand on the door and pushed it open and the little bell over it rang, and he walked into the soup place on Forty-Ninth in the cream blouse and the charcoal slacks and the low black heels, with the collar hidden under the silk and the plug in his ass and the divorce papers at home on the nightstand and David's unanswered message still sitting in his phone, and Matt stood up from the booth as he came, and the whole room smelled like broth and bread, and Warren walked toward him.

Matt stood up from the booth as he came. He was bigger standing than he had been sitting — the shoulders filled the back of the booth, and the hand he put out was the hand from the picture, broad knuckles, short clean nails, the blind-shadow lying across the forearm where the cuff was rolled. He did not reach for Warren's hand. He pulled the chair out on the far side of the table, the one facing the wall, and held it, and waited.

Warren sat down in it.

Matt went back around to his own side and sat with his back to the room, so that Warren had the room at his back and Matt had the wall, and Warren understood, sitting down, that he had been given the seat a woman gets given, the seat with her back to the door, and that Matt had taken the other one on purpose.

"You came."

"I came."

Matt looked at him for a moment without saying anything. He looked at the cream blouse and the covered buttons and the charcoal slacks and the low black heels, and he looked at the face — the little liner, the gloss, the soft brows — and he did not look at it the way the office looked at it, sideways and quick, the way you look at a thing you have decided not to name. He looked at it the way a man looks at a woman across a table he has paid for.

"You're not Warren and you're not Willow," Matt said. "You're the one from the video."

"Yes."

"That's the one I asked for."

A waitress came and Matt ordered without looking at the menu, two bowls of the lentil and a pot of tea, and the waitress wrote it down and looked at Warren a beat longer than she needed to and went away, and Warren sat with his hands in his lap and his clit throbbing against the lace and the plug sitting heavy and full in him with the chair pressing up under it, and he did not move, because moving made it worse and worse was the whole reason he had come.

"Tell me why you said not here," Matt said.

"Because here is where we ate."

"That's not it."

Warren looked at the table. The water glass in front of him had a chip on the rim, a small one, at the four o'clock, and he turned the glass so the chip faced away from him and set it down again.

"Because if I do it here," he said, "it's lunch. It's two men having lunch and one of them is a little strange in the face. If I do it somewhere else, it's not lunch."

Matt nodded slowly. He did not smile and he did not say good, the way David said good, the way David put a hand on the back of his neck and said good girl and made the word a collar. Matt just nodded, and let it sit, and Warren found that the not-saying was harder than the saying would have been.

"Where's somewhere else," Matt said.

"Christopher Street."

"Why there."

Warren had the answer already. He had had it in the car, driving down from the garage, and he had had it in the shower that morning with the water on his back, and he had not let himself look at it directly until now.

"Because it's where I go when I'm her," he said. "It's where nobody looks at me twice. It's where I can walk in a dress and heels and be nothing at all, just another one of the girls on the block, and that's the only place in this city where I'm not a thing to be looked at. And I want you to see me there. Because there I'm not hiding and I'm not being shown off either. There I'm just — out."

Matt drank his water. He set it down and turned it a quarter turn, the way Warren had turned his, and Warren noticed, and did not know what to do with noticing.

"Tomorrow," Matt said.

"Tomorrow."

"What time."

"Eight. The corner of Christopher and Seventh. There's a bar on the corner with the door on the angle. I'll be at the door."

"You'll be at the door in what."

Warren felt the question go down through him the way the plug went in — slow, and all the way, and with the whole body around it. He had not said it out loud to anyone. He had never said it out loud to anyone.

"I have a room at the Marlowe," he said. "I keep it. I've kept it for a month. It's where I go when I can't go home and I can't go to him. There's a closet in it that isn't a closet, it's a rack, and it has everything I am in it. Tomorrow I'll go there at six and I'll take everything off — all of it, the blouse, the slacks, the shoes, the lace, the collar, the plug — and I'll shower and I'll shave everything that's grown back and I'll put on the breast plate and the catsuit and the wig, and I'll do my face the way I do it when I want to be looked at, the way I do it when I want a man to know exactly what I am before I say a word, and then I'll come down the stairs and out the door of the Marlowe and walk the two blocks to the corner, and I'll be at the door at eight."

He stopped. His mouth was dry. He picked up the water and drank and the chip was on the far side now and he did not care.

"And you'll see me," he said. "Not the video. Not the photos. Me."

Matt was quiet for a moment. The tea came. The waitress set the pot down and poured two cups and went away, and Matt did not touch his cup. He was looking at Warren's face, and Warren could feel the look on it the way you feel a hand.

"The collar," Matt said. "The one under your blouse."

Warren did not answer.

"I saw the chain at your throat when you sat down. I've been seeing it since the first lunch. I didn't say anything because it wasn't mine to say."

"It's not," Warren said.

"I know it's not. That's why I'm asking." Matt put his forearms on the table. "Tomorrow. The collar. On or off."

Warren sat with it. The collar was cold at his throat, the way it was always cold at his throat, the little plate turned inward so the words faced his chest, and the words were Willow — owned by David, and the words had been on his skin for a month, and he had not taken it off once, not in the shower, not in bed, not in the office under the blouse. David had put it on him and told him not to take it off again and he had not taken it off again, and the not-taking-off was the whole of what he was now.

"On," he said.

"Because you can't take it off."

"Because I don't want to take it off."

Matt looked at him for a long moment. Then he did something Warren did not expect. He reached across the table and put his hand over Warren's hand where it lay on the tablecloth, and left it there, and did not squeeze it, and did not turn it over, and did not do anything with it at all. He just put his hand on top of Warren's hand and let the weight of it sit there, and Warren's clit gave one long slow throb against the lace and his breath went shallow and he did not pull the hand back.

"Then I'll see you tomorrow," Matt said. "At eight. At the door."

He took his hand back. He picked up his spoon and ate his soup and Warren ate his and they talked about nothing — the office, the reorg, the way the coffee in the break room had gotten worse, the way the parking garage on Forty-Ninth raised its rates in the spring — and it was the most ordinary hour of Warren's month, and it was the only hour of his month in which he had not once thought about the red light in the corner of the hotel room.

At the end Matt paid. He put the card down without looking at the bill and Warren reached for his bag and Matt said, "Don't," and Warren put his hand back in his lap.

They stood up. Matt walked him to the door and out onto the sidewalk under the green awning, and the evening had come down over Forty-Ninth and the lights were on in the windows across the street and the air smelled like rain that had not fallen yet.

"Tomorrow," Matt said.

"Tomorrow."

Matt looked at him once more, the way he had looked at him across the table, and then he turned and walked away up the block toward the parking garage, and Warren stood under the awning and watched the back of him go, the broad shoulders and the easy long stride, and did not call after him and did not follow him.

He got in his car and drove home.

The house was dark and cold and empty the way it had been dark and cold and empty for a month. He let himself in and locked the door behind him and stood in the hall and listened to the refrigerator hum and the pipes tick, and then he went up the stairs and into the bedroom and did not turn on the lamp. He undressed in the dark. He took off the cream blouse and the charcoal slacks and the low black heels and the black lace panties, and he stood in the dark room with the plug still in him and the collar still on his throat, and he did not take either of them off, because he had not been told to and because he did not want to and because those were now the same thing.

He got into bed on his side, the side away from the nightstand, so he did not have to look at the divorce papers. He lay on his back with his knees open the way he lay now, and the plug pressed in with the bend of his hips, and he put his hand flat on his own stomach and felt the breath go in and out under it, and he thought about the hand on top of his hand at the table, the weight of it, the nothing it had done with him.

He did not answer David. He did not open the thread. He lay in the dark with the phone face-down on the far side of the nightstand and the dress for Saturday hanging in the closet and the collar cold at his throat, and he slept.

He woke at five. He did not set an alarm. He woke because the body knew what day it was.

He drove to the city in the dark. He left the house before six and the roads were empty and the sky over the Hudson was the color of a bruise coming up, and he parked in the lot behind the Marlowe and went in through the side door with his bag on his shoulder and the key card in his hand, and the man at the desk did not look up.

The room was small and clean and had a window that faced a brick wall and a bed he had never slept in and a closet that was not a closet. He locked the door and put the chain across and stood in the middle of the room for a moment with his bag on his shoulder, and then he put the bag down and opened the closet.

The rack was there. He had built it himself, a month ago, in the first days, before David, when the Marlowe was the only place in the world where he was allowed to be what he was. The hangers ran the length of it — the mini dresses, the lingerie, the latex, the PVC, the spandex, the lycra, the thigh-highs, the mules, the boots with the six-inch platforms — and he stood in front of it the way you stand at the rack at the end of a long day, tired and a little afraid of how much he had accumulated in a month, and he did not look at the black dress in its garment bag at the far end, the one for Saturday, because Saturday was not today.

He took a shower first. He stood under it and washed his hair and shaved everything that had grown back — the legs, the arms, the chest, the small fine line down the belly, the ass, the backs of the thighs, and then the face, close, against the grain, until the skin was smooth and a little raw and he could feel the air on it. He dried himself and stood in front of the mirror and looked at the man in it, the small pale man with the soft brown eyes and the smooth chest and the little limp clit between his legs, and he looked at the man for a moment and then he turned away from him and went to the rack.

The breast plate first. He had learned to do it alone. He lifted the silicone over his head and settled it down over his chest and the weight of the C cups pulled at his shoulders and the pencil-eraser nipples stood out hard in the cold of the room, and he reached behind and found the clasp and closed it, and the thing sat on him like a second skin and did not move, and when he looked down he saw a woman's chest over his own flat stomach and the sight of it did what the sight of it always did, which was nothing and everything, a small wet throb against his thigh.

Then the catsuit. Black latex, the one with the high neck and the long sleeves and the zipper down the back and the cut that came up between the legs and left nothing to the imagination, and he sat on the edge of the bed and worked it up over his feet and his calves and his thighs, and the latex caught and he had to roll it and smooth it with the flat of his hand, and it made the small wet sound latex makes against skin, and he stood and pulled it up over his hips and over the plug and over the breast plate and worked his arms into the sleeves and reached behind with both hands and found the zipper and pulled it up, and the suit closed around him like a hand.

Then the wig. Red. He had bought it himself, a month ago, before David, in a shop on the block that sold wigs and fishnets and nothing else, and he had never worn it for anyone. He put the cap on and worked the red hair down over it and settled it and shook it out with both hands and the red fell past his shoulders and down his back, and he looked in the mirror and a redhead looked back, a redhead in a black latex catsuit with a woman's chest and a small pale face, and he stood there and let the redhead look at him for a while.

Then the face.

He did it at the small table by the window with the mirror he had brought and the bag of makeup he had brought, and he did it slowly, the way he did it when he wanted to be looked at. He primed and he primed again. He drew the brows in with the pencil, thin and arched, and he shaded the crease of the lid with the smoky shadow and he winged the liner out past the corner of the eye and he pressed the false lashes on — the thick black ones, the one-inch, the ones that made the eyes into something that had to be answered. He contoured the cheekbones and he blushed them. He lined the lips and filled them in with the wet gloss, thick, the kind that caught the light and stayed caught, and he pressed his lips together and blotted and did it again. He pressed the French nails on, one at a time, the color matched to the gloss, and held each one down and counted to ten. He set the whole face with the powder and he looked at it in the mirror and the redhead in the mirror looked back with the black eyes and the wet mouth and the red hair, and the redhead was a whore, and the redhead knew it, and the redhead did not care.

He put on the heels. Six-inch, black, the stilettos, and he stood up in them and the whole room tilted and then settled, and he walked to the window and back and the latex creaked and the heels clicked on the floor and the red hair moved against his back, and he stood in the middle of the room in the black catsuit and the red wig and the whore's face and the six-inch heels with the collar hidden under the high neck and the plug still in him and the breast plate heavy on his chest, and he looked at the clock on the nightstand and it was seven-forty.

He picked up the phone. The thread with David was still at the top, unanswered, Did you send it, and he did not open it. The thread with Matt was under it and he opened that one and typed, with the French nail catching on the glass, Leaving now.

Matt: I'm here.

Warren put the phone in the little black bag and put the bag on his shoulder and went to the door and unlocked it and put his hand on the knob and stopped. He looked back at the room once — the bed he had never slept in, the rack of everything he was, the black dress in its garment bag at the far end waiting for Saturday — and then he opened the door and went out into the hall and down the stairs in the six-inch heels, and the man at the desk looked up this time, and looked, and looked away, and Warren walked out through the lobby of the Marlowe and out the front door onto the street.

The evening had come down over the Village and the lights were on and the sidewalk was wet from a rain that had passed through while he was doing his face, and he walked the two blocks in the six-inch heels with the red hair moving against his back and the latex creaking with every step, and men turned and looked and he let them, and the whole street smelled like wet stone and cigarettes and the inside of a bar.

He came to the corner of Christopher and Seventh. The bar on the corner had its door on the angle, and the door was open, and the light coming out of it was warm and yellow and the sound coming out of it was low and easy, and Matt was standing on the corner in front of the door with his hands in his pockets and his back to the wall, waiting, the way a man waits who has already decided.

Matt saw him. Matt looked at him from the heels up — the six-inch stilettos, the black latex legs, the cut of the suit, the breast plate, the red hair, the whore's face — and took his time with it, all the way up, and then looked at his eyes and did not smile and did not say anything at all, and Warren stopped in front of him on the corner with the wet sidewalk under the stilettos and the collar hidden under the high neck and the plug heavy in him and the phone in the little black bag with David's unanswered message still sitting in it, and Matt pulled one hand out of his pocket and put it on the small of Warren's back, and the weight of it was the same weight it had been on the table, and he turned him toward the door.