The car let her out at the Marlowe's side entrance and she took the service stairs, because the lobby at this hour was full of people who would look at her twice and she did not have it in her to be looked at. The stairwell smelled of bleach and old carpet. Her mules clicked up four flights and by the top her calves were burning and the come on her back had dried to a stiff film under the dress, pulling at the skin every time she moved her shoulders.

The penthouse was dark except for the city coming in through two walls of glass — the whole east side of Manhattan laid out like something spilled, all those windows lit for other people's evenings. She dropped the purse on the console and did not turn on a lamp. The marble floor was cold through the soles of her mules and she stood there a while, just standing, letting the cold come up into her feet.

Then she went to the bedroom and turned the light on over the bed, and she emptied the purse onto the duvet.

The bills came out in a fan — fives and twenties and hundreds, folded and creased from the client's pocket, some of them still warm from being sat against his thigh all evening. She smoothed them flat one at a time. Five thousand. She counted it once and got five thousand and counted it again because the first count had felt like a guess. Five thousand. She laid the bills in a stack and squared the edges and set the stack on the nightstand beside the lamp, and then she went to the closet and got the shoebox down off the top shelf.

The shoebox was not for shoes. Inside it, under a folded silk scarf, was the rest of it — the two thousand from Cole still in its envelope, the three thousand she had cleared from the earlier nights, the five thousand from the first client, the five thousand from tonight. She took the stack off the nightstand and laid it in with the others and put the lid back on and put the box back on the shelf and stood looking at the closet rail, at the dresses hanging in their row, and did the arithmetic in her head the way she used to do the quarterly numbers at the office, columns and totals, no feeling in it.

Twenty-two thousand dollars. Three weeks ago she had been an accountant with a wife who was leaving him. Now she had twenty-two thousand dollars in a shoebox and a collar she had not taken off in weeks and a name she had to earn back tomorrow at two o'clock.

She went to the desk and opened the laptop.

The screen came up blue and cold in the dark room. She logged into the site and the dashboard loaded with its little red badges, and the badges were stacked three deep on the messages icon and two on the requests. She had not looked at it in two days. She had not wanted to look at it while she was still Toy — looking would have been a kind of answering, and she had promised herself she would not answer anything until the third thing was given and the name was hers again.

She opened the messages and read them out loud, quietly, to the empty room, because reading them aloud made them real in a way the screen did not.

"Hello Willow. Saw your profile. I'm in the city Thursday through Sunday. Dinner first, my treat, then wherever you want to go. I don't rush."

"Willow — I'll be honest, I've read your profile four times. I'd like to book the full day. I have a suite at the Langham with a terrace. You wouldn't have to leave the room. Tell me what you drink and I'll have it waiting."

"I'm a photographer. Not that kind. I'd like to book you for an evening and I'd like to bring a dress for you to wear. I'll send it ahead. If you hate it, you keep it and I'll pay anyway."

She stopped on that one and read it again. Bring a dress. Send it ahead. She had not thought of that — that a man might want to choose the wrapping before he ever saw what was inside it. She scrolled past a dozen more, some of them two lines, some of them paragraphs, one of them a single photograph of a hotel key card with a room number written on the back in ballpoint. She did not answer any of them yet. She read them the way she used to read a contract before she signed it, looking for the clause that would tell her what the man actually wanted.

Then she opened the requests, and the fourth one down had a photo attached, and she clicked it and the photo filled the screen.

A man in a charcoal suit, standing on what looked like a balcony at dusk, the city soft and out of focus behind him. Forty, maybe a little more. Tall — you could tell from the way the suit hung, the way his shoulders filled the jacket without padding. Dark hair going silver at the temples and cut short. He was not smiling exactly. His mouth was doing something that was almost a smile, the way a man looks when he has already decided about you and is waiting to see if you'll catch up. His hand was in his pocket. His other hand held a glass.

She sat back in the chair and looked at him for a while.

The request said: Willow. I'd like to book you Saturday. Not for the usual. There's a club on West 27th, private, members only — Masters and their property, nothing else. I'd like you on my arm for the evening. You'll be seen and you won't be touched. I'll explain the rest in person. Five thousand, as posted. Send me a photograph of yourself in whatever you'd wear, and I'll send you what I'd rather you wore.

She read it three times. You'll be seen and you won't be touched. She did not know what to do with that. Every man who had paid her in the last three weeks had paid her to be touched — that was the transaction, that was the whole shape of it, money in and hands on. A man who paid five thousand dollars to put her on his arm and not touch her was either lying or playing a longer game than she had seen before, and she had seen some long games.

She typed back: What kind of club.

The reply came in under a minute, which meant he had been sitting with the window open.

A club where the men own what they bring. Collars, leashes, the whole grammar of it. You'd be the only one there who isn't owned. I want to see how you carry that.

She looked at the collar loose at her throat in the black glass of the laptop screen. She had not taken it off in weeks. She had slept in it. She had showered around it. The words on the inside of it had gone smooth against her skin and she had stopped feeling them and she had not read them since the day he buckled it on her.

Send the dress, she typed. I'll send the photo in the morning.

She closed the laptop and the room went dark again except for the city. She sat in the chair a while with her hands in her lap and the dried come still stiff on her back under the dress, and she thought about the man on the balcony with his hand in his pocket, and she thought about the club on West 27th, and she thought about being the only one there who wasn't owned, and something in her chest went tight and low and she pressed her thighs together under the desk and felt the plug shift.

She stood up and went to the bathroom and turned the shower on hot and stood under it for a long time with the water running over the collar and down her back, and she washed the come off her skin with the flat of her hand, and she did not touch herself, because she had learned in the last three weeks that touching herself did nothing but make the ache worse. She dried off and put on the silk robe and went to bed and lay on her back with her hands outside the covers, and the city ticked against the glass, and she did not sleep for a long time.

In the morning she woke hard and wet and alone.

It was the same as every morning now. The ache came up through her before she was even awake enough to name it — a low throb behind the clitty, a wetness between her thighs that had nothing to do with the plug, a heat in her chest like something small and hungry turning over in its sleep. She lay still and let it move through her. Her hand drifted down between her legs before she caught it and put it back on the sheet.

She tried anyway. She always tried anyway.

Two fingers, three, working the slick little nub until her hips lifted off the mattress and her breath went ragged — and nothing. The throb built and built and then broke apart like water hitting a wall, and she was left flat on the sheets with her thighs wet and her chest heaving and that low hungry thing still turning over, unsated, worse than before she'd started. She pulled her hand up and looked at it in the gray morning light. Glossy to the second knuckle. She wiped it on the sheet and got out of bed.

"Useless," she said, to the hand, to the ceiling, to nobody. "You're useless."

The robe belt dragged on the marble as she crossed to the desk and woke the laptop. She had promised a photograph. She had promised it in the morning, and it was morning, and the man on the balcony had been sitting with his window open at eleven at night, which meant he would be sitting with it open now.

She set the phone against the lamp and stepped back and looked at herself in the dark glass of the window first — the whole city behind her own reflection, the collar a thin dark line at her throat, the robe open down the middle, the clitty small and pink and useless against her thigh. Not that. He had asked for whatever she'd wear, and the answer to that was simple, because there was only one answer now.

She went to the closet and took down the black dress from the rail and laid it on the bed and stood over it a moment. Then she went to the bathroom and did her face the way she did it now, without thinking: primer, foundation with the flat brush, the smoky shadow worked into the crease until the blue of her eyes went deep and hooded, the pencil along the lower lash line, the lashes pressed on one at a time and blinked down, the brows drawn in with small feathering strokes, the gloss laid on thick and wet and blotted once and laid on again. She looked at the finished face in the mirror and the face looked back at her the way it always did — like someone she had met and could not quite remember meeting.

"There you are," she said to it, quietly, and did not know which of them she meant.

The wig went on last. She fitted it and pinned it and brushed it out and the blonde fell past her shoulders, and she put the dress on over the breast plate and zipped it up the back by feel and stepped into the mules. Then she propped the phone on the dresser, set the timer, and stood with her weight on one hip and her chin down and her mouth just open, the way she had learned to stand for a camera, and the shutter went off three times and she picked the phone up and looked at what it had caught.

The third one. In the third one she was not performing anything — she had turned half away, one hand on the dresser, and the look on her face was the look she had not meant to give anyone. She sent that one. She typed nothing with it, because there was nothing to type.

He answered while she was still standing there with the phone in her hand.

Good. You don't smile for the camera. Most of them smile. I'll have the box to you by three.

She put the phone down and sat on the edge of the bed and looked at the black dress she was wearing, and it occurred to her, sitting there, that she had dressed herself for a man she had not met, in clothes he had not chosen, and sent him the picture anyway, and that this was the whole transaction now, the whole shape of her days — a man she did not know deciding what she would be, and her doing the work of becoming it before he even asked. She reached back and unzipped the dress and let it fall and hung it up again and took the wig off and set it on the stand.

The box came at ten past three, not three, and the courier was a kid in a Marlowe jacket who did not look at her face and did not look away from it either, and she took the box and tipped him and shut the door and carried it to the bed. It was black, matte, longer than a shoebox and heavier than it looked, and there was no label on it and no card taped to the lid, just a small white envelope wedged under the ribbon.

She set the box on the duvet and opened the envelope first. One line in black ink, the hand small and even, the kind of handwriting that had been taught to a boy and never loosened.

Wear the stockings first. Then the dress. The shoes last. Lock the collar yourself — I want to know you can.

"I want to know you can," she read again, out loud, and her voice came out lower than she had meant it to.

She lifted the lid.

Tissue paper, folded back in layers, and under it the dress, and the dress was not like anything she had ever put on her body. Liquid silver, the color of a mirror in a dark room, the material heavy and cool and slick as the inside of a shell — platinum latex, she knew the word for it and the word did nothing to prepare her. It was almost nothing. Two panels of it, and between the panels, holding the whole thing together, steel. A ring between the breasts, bright and cold. Two rings on each hip. A halter that came up to a collar of the same steel, and at the back of the neck, where the collar closed, a small brass lock already threaded through the hasp and hanging open, waiting for a key she did not have.

She held it up against herself in the mirror and the panels hung down past her hips and the steel rings caught the window light and threw little bright shapes across the ceiling. Eighty percent of her would be skin. The rest would be this. She laid it on the bed and went back to the box.

Under the dress, wrapped in a separate sheet of tissue: stockings, sheer and black and seamed, with a wide lace band at the top. A pair of panties so small they were mostly a suggestion, black, with the same steel ring at the waist. And at the bottom of the box, in their own cloth bag, the shoes — not mules, not boots. A pair of black patent stilettos with a thin ankle strap and a heel she measured with her thumb against the sole and got six inches, maybe a little more.

She sat on the edge of the bed with the shoes in her lap and did the arithmetic she could not stop doing. Five thousand dollars for a night in a room full of strangers where no one would touch her. A dress she could not wear anywhere else in the world. A collar with a lock on it, and a man who wanted to know she could close it herself. She had been paid to be fucked by men whose faces she had never seen and she had done it without flinching. This was different. This was a man paying to put her on display and leave her wanting, and the wanting was the product, and she understood that now, and the understanding went down through her and settled low and warm between her thighs.

She laid the shoes on the duvet beside the dress and stood up and went to the bathroom and turned the water on and stood under it a long time with her hand flat on the tile and her forehead against her wrist. When she came out she did not reach for the phone and she did not check the site and she did not count the money in the shoebox. She sat down at the desk in the robe with her hair wet and wrote the man one line back.

I can lock it. What time Saturday.

The answer came in under a minute, the same as before, the man always sitting with the window open.

Eight. I'll send the car. Don't eat after four — you'll want to be empty for the evening. Wear nothing under the dress but the stockings and the panties. Leave the rest of yourself at the hotel. You won't need it where we're going.

She read it twice and set the phone face down on the desk and looked out at the city through the two walls of glass, the whole east side going gold as the light came down, and she did not answer it, because there was nothing left to answer. She stood and went to the closet and got the shoebox down and put the new money in with the old and put it back on the shelf, and then she went to the bed and laid the silver dress out flat on the duvet and smoothed the panels with the flat of her hand, and the latex was cool and gave under her palm like skin that belonged to someone else.

She left it there. She slept on the other side of the bed with the dress laid out beside her in the dark, and the steel rings caught what little light came in off the city and held it, four small bright points in the room, and she lay looking at them until she could not keep her eyes open any longer.

She woke before the light did. The room was gray and the city was gray and the dress was still laid out beside her on the duvet, and the first thing she was aware of was the ache — low, wet, insistent, the same turning-over hunger that lived in her now, that had been living in her since the first morning she woke up caged and leaking and did not know yet what she was.

She reached over and touched the dress. Cool. Slick. The steel ring at the halter caught the first pale light coming off the glass and held it, and she ran her thumb around the inside of it and thought about the man's handwriting — I want to know you can — and the thought went down through her and settled between her thighs and made her press them together under the sheet.

She got up and went to the closet and took the box down from the bottom shelf where she kept it, the plain black one, and carried it back to the bed and opened it. The dildo was the one she had bought her third week in the penthouse, the one she had bought because she could not stop thinking about the men and could not afford to call one every night, seven inches and thick and veined, a suction cup at the base, and she had never once come on it, not once, not in three weeks, but she used it anyway, because the ache was worse when she did not.

She lay back on the duvet with the dress beside her and the dildo in her hand and slicked it from the bottle on the nightstand and reached down and pressed the head of it against herself. Wet already. She was always wet now. She slid it in slow, the first inch and then the second, and her body took it the way it took everything now — easily, hungrily, opening around it like it had been made for it — and she pushed it in to the hilt and lay there a moment with it deep inside her and her hand flat on her belly and her eyes on the ceiling.

Then she moved it. Slow at first, the long drag out and the long push back in, and she closed her eyes and let the picture come the way it always came now, unbidden, without her permission.

The club. West 27th. A room she had never seen, low light, dark walls, men in suits standing in groups with their hands in their pockets and their chins up, and every one of them with something on a leash. A woman kneeling at a man's knee in a collar and nothing else. A sissy on a cushion at his feet in a latex dress, head down, hands behind her back. And her — her, walking in on the arm of the man from the balcony, in the silver dress, the steel rings cold against her bare ribs, the lock at the back of her neck closed and hers to close, and every man in the room turning to look at the only one there who was not owned.

She pushed the dildo in hard and her hips came up off the bed to meet it and a sound came out of her that she did not plan, thin and high, and she bit down on it and kept going. Faster. The wet sound of it filling the room. Her free hand found her clitty and worked it with two fingers, slick and small and useless, and the throb built — built the way it always built, up and up and up toward something — and then it broke apart against the wall the way it always broke apart, and she was left flat on the duvet with the dildo still inside her and her thighs shaking and her chest heaving and nothing, nothing, the hunger still turning over in her chest, worse than before she started.

"Fuck," she said, to the ceiling. "Fuck."

She pulled the dildo out and looked at it, glossy and useless in her hand, and set it on the nightstand and lay there a while with her arm over her eyes. Then she got up and went to the shower.

She took the dildo with her.

The water came on hot and she stood under it a minute with her forehead on the tile and her hand flat on the wall, and then she turned the water off and crouched down in the bottom of the stall with her back against the corner and her knees wide and her heels flat on the wet porcelain and she worked the dildo into herself from underneath, the angle different, deeper, and she fucked herself like that with the water dripping off her hair and her breath fogging the glass and her free hand braced on the floor, and the picture came again — the club, the men, the leashes, the silver dress, the lock — and the throb built and built and built and broke apart again, and she sat there in the bottom of the stall with the dildo in her and her thighs trembling and the water going cold and she did not come.

She did not come.

She got up and rinsed the dildo and dried it and dried herself and went out into the bedroom and stood in front of the two walls of glass with the towel around her and looked at the city and thought about it, the way she thought about everything now — flat, arithmetic, no feeling in it. She had been fucked by five men in a week. She had come on every one of them. She had come on Cole with his hand in her hair and his cock in her ass and his voice in her ear telling her to beg for it. She had come on the man who renamed her Toy, twice, bent over a mirrored table with his come drying on her back. She had come on Matt and on Gerald and on David, David, David, and she had not been able to come on her own hand in three weeks, and the arithmetic of that was simple and she did not like the answer, so she did not say it out loud.

She dressed. Stretch jeans, the black ones that hugged her ass and sat low on her hips. A crop top, thin and gray, that came up short of her navel and showed the flat of her stomach and the small gold ring she had put in her navel the second week. The bob wig, brushed out and pinned. The collar — she did not take it off, she had not taken it off, and she would not, and the words on the inside of it had gone smooth against her skin and she did not read them.

She took the small clutch off the dresser and opened it and counted out two thousand dollars from the shoebox — twenties, the bills crisp and new from the bank — and folded them into the clutch and snapped it shut. The rest went back in the box and the box went back on the shelf.

Then she stood in the living room with the towel still on the floor of the bathroom and the dildo drying on the nightstand and the silver dress laid out on the bed in the other room, and she did the thing she had been circling since she woke up. She got down on her heels in the middle of the marble floor, in the jeans and the crop top and the collar, with the city behind her through the glass, and she spread her knees and slid two fingers into herself and then three, and she squatted there with her other hand braced on the cold floor and she fucked herself on her own fingers and looked out at the skyline and let the picture come one more time.

The club. The man's hand on the small of her back, proprietary, the way a man's hand sits on something he has paid for. The silver dress. The lock. The men turning. A man in a suit leaning in to the man beside him and saying something behind his hand and the man beside him looking at her and nodding. Her, the only one there who was not owned, standing in the middle of a room full of owned things with the collar on her own throat and the lock she had closed herself, and the whole room knowing it, and the whole room wanting to know why.

She came close. She came so close — the throb climbing, her thighs burning from the squat, her fingers slick and her breath coming in short pulls — and then it broke apart again, the same wall, the same nothing, and she sank back onto her heels on the marble with her hand wet and her chest heaving and her eyes stinging, and she sat there a moment in the middle of the empty room and did not cry, because she had learned not to cry about this, because crying about it did not make it come.

"Saturday," she said, out loud, to the room. "Saturday."

She got up and washed her hands and dried them and took the clutch and went out.

The elevator was empty and the lobby was busy and she walked through it the way she walked through everything now, chin down, eyes forward, the small clutch under her arm and the jeans hugging her ass and the crop top showing the flat of her stomach, and the doorman held the door and did not look at her face and looked at everything else, and she stepped out into the cold bright afternoon on Ninth Avenue and turned uptown.

She walked without a destination for a while. That was the thing about the money — she did not have to have a destination. She had two thousand dollars in a clutch under her arm and no one waiting for her and nowhere to be until two o'clock tomorrow, and the walking itself was the point, the way her heels hit the pavement and the way the cold came up under the crop top and the way the city looked at her and she looked back.

She stopped at a window on Fifth and looked at a coat — camel, belted, long — and went in and tried it on and bought it without asking the price, and the girl at the register looked at the collar and did not say anything and wrapped it in tissue and put it in a bag. She walked out with the bag and kept going. She bought a pair of gloves, black leather, lined. She bought a lip gloss at a counter in a department store and put it on in the mirror and blotted it and put it on again, and the woman behind the counter told her the color suited her, and she said thank you in the voice she used now, soft and low, and the woman looked at her a half-second longer than she needed to and looked away.

She bought a coffee and drank it standing up at a window looking out at the street, and she thought about the man on the balcony, and she thought about the dress in the box on her bed, and she thought about the lock at the back of her neck and the words I want to know you can, and she felt the wetness come into her jeans and she did not do anything about it, because there was nothing to do about it, because that was the whole shape of her now — a woman walking up Fifth Avenue in the cold with two thousand dollars in a clutch and a collar on her throat and a hunger in her that no hand of hers could feed.

She turned and walked back toward the Marlowe with the bags swinging at her side and the light going long and gold down the avenue, and she did not know yet what she would do with the rest of the afternoon, and she did not have to, and that was the whole of it, that was the entire arithmetic: she did not have to, and no one was waiting, and tomorrow at two o'clock she would go back to the concrete room and give the man the last thing she had kept, and Saturday at eight the car would come, and she would put on the silver dress and lock the collar herself and go out to be seen and not touched, and she walked the whole way back with the wetness cooling against her thighs and the bags knocking against her hip and the collar a small steady weight at her throat, and she did not stop, and she did not slow down.

The bags went down on the console and she did not put the coat away or the gloves away, and she did not take the tags off anything. She crossed the marble in her heels and sat down at the desk and woke the laptop, and the screen came up blue in the gray room and she logged in.

The photographer's message was still at the top, four lines, the one she had read twice on the street and not answered. She read it a third time with her hand flat on the desk, and then she put her fingers on the keys and typed.

I'm free tonight. Friday. Tomorrow, Saturday, I have a commitment — so it's tonight or nothing.

She sat back and looked at the line and did not send it. The cursor blinked. She reached and typed again.

Five thousand for the night. Photographs. No sex. Maybe a kiss or two, if you want one. You dress me. You do my face, my makeup, the outfits — all of it. You decide. I don't want to decide anything.

She stopped there. Read it once. Added the last line because it was the true one and she had promised herself she would stop sending men the version that wasn't.

Eight o'clock tonight. Where do you want me.

She hit send and closed the laptop and sat with her hands in her lap and the room going dark around her. Then she got up and carried the bags into the bedroom and hung the camel coat in the closet, tags and all, and laid the gloves on the shelf beside the shoebox, and stood a moment looking at the silver dress still laid out on the duvet where she had left it that morning.

The reply was waiting when she came back. She had not heard the chime — she had the sound off, she kept the sound off now — but the little badge was there on the icon and she opened it and read.

Eight o'clock works. I'll send the address at seven. Two things first. One: you'll come with your face bare. Nothing on it. I do the face, I said, and I meant it. Two: bring nothing. No clothes, no shoes, no wig. I have all of it here. You'll wear what I put on you and nothing else.

She read it twice. Bare face. Nothing brought. She looked at her own reflection in the black glass of the screen — the bob, the lashes, the gloss — and something low in her went tight at the idea of walking out of the Marlowe with her own face on, no wig, no paint, just Warren's face under a coat collar, and being seen doing it.

She typed: Understood. Bare. Nothing.

Good, he wrote. One more. The photographs are mine. I'll show you the ones I take, but I keep them. All of them. Some of them you won't like. If that's a problem, tell me now.

She sat with her thumb over the keys. She had been photographed before — David's grid of surveillance shots, the ones he had laid out for her like a hand of cards, her own body caught mid-stride in a revolving door. She knew what a photograph could do to a person who had not agreed to it. This was different. This one was asking.

Not a problem, she wrote. Keep them.

Seven o'clock came and the address came with it — a studio in a converted building off West 25th, fourth floor, the buzzer marked with a number and no name. She put on the black jeans and a plain sweater and the camel coat over it, and she took the collar off for the first time in weeks and laid it on the nightstand and looked at her bare throat in the mirror and did not like it, and then she took her face off — the lashes, the shadow, the gloss, all of it, with the wipes and the cream, until the face in the glass was the pale plain face she had been born with, soft brown eyes and a mouth with nothing on it — and she pulled the hood of the coat up and went out.

The elevator was empty. The lobby was quiet at that hour. The doorman held the door and she passed him with her chin down and her bare face hidden in the hood and her heart going hard, and the cold hit her cheeks and she walked west with her hands in her pockets and the city looking at a woman who was not quite a woman and not quite a man and not quite anything she had a name for.

The building was a brick warehouse with a freight elevator and a man in a canvas apron smoking by the door, and he looked at her once and nodded her in. The elevator took her up slow and she stood in the corner of it with her hands in her pockets and watched the floors go by through the gate. The fourth floor was a single door at the end of a bare corridor and the door was open and the light coming out of it was warm and low.

She stood in the doorway.

The studio was one big room, high ceiling, the old factory windows along one wall blacked out with panels, and in the middle of it a raised platform with a white paper backdrop and a scatter of lights on stands, and along the far wall a rail of clothes and a table with a mirror and a case of makeup laid out like a surgeon's tray. The man was at the table with his back to her, a tall man in a black shirt with the sleeves rolled, dark hair silver at the temples, and he was doing something with a brush in a little dish, and he did not turn around when she came in.

"Close the door," he said. "Then come stand in the light."

She closed the door. She walked to the platform and stood in the pool of warm light with her hands at her sides and her hood still up, and he turned then and looked at her, and it was the man from the balcony photograph, and he was looking at her the way a man looks at a piece of material he has bought and is about to cut.

"Hood down," he said.

She put the hood down. The bare face came into the light and she felt it come, every inch of it, the plainness of it, and she made herself stand still and let him look.

He looked for a long time. Then he set the brush down and came over and walked a slow half-circle around her, and she stood in the light and turned her head to follow him and he said, "Don't. Eyes front," and she put her eyes front and let him walk behind her and look at the back of her neck and the line of her shoulders under the sweater.

"Good," he said, from behind her. "You don't flinch. Most of them flinch."

He came around to the front and stopped close and looked down at her, and he was a head taller than her and broad through the chest, and he reached and took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and turned her face one way and the other in the light, studying the bone, the brow, the line of the jaw, and she stood and let him turn her like a thing on a shelf.

"Sit," he said, and pointed at the chair at the makeup table.

She sat. He stood behind her and gathered her hair back off her face with both hands and looked at her reflection in the mirror and then at her, and he said, "This comes off," and she said, "It's pinned," and he said, "Then unpin it," and she reached up and took the pins out one at a time and laid them on the table and the bob came loose in her hands and she lifted it off and set it on the table, and her own hair was there underneath, short and dark and damp at the roots, and the face in the mirror was Warren's face, bare, and she looked at it and he looked at it with her.

"There," he said. "Now I can work."

He worked for a long time. He did not talk while he worked and he did not ask her anything and she sat with her hands in her lap and let him do it — the primer with a sponge, the foundation with a brush in small circles, the powder pressed in with a puff, and then the eyes, the shadow worked into the crease and blended up toward the brow until the blue went deep and hooded, the liner drawn along the lash line in a thin dark stroke, the lashes pressed on one at a time and blinked down, and every time he leaned in close she could smell him, soap and something like cedar, and she kept her eyes on the mirror and watched the face come up out of the bare one, feature by feature, until the woman was there looking back at her and the man was there behind the woman with his hand steady on her jaw.

"Brows," he said, and drew them in with small feathering strokes, and then the lips, the gloss laid on thick and wet and blotted once and laid on again, and then he stood back and looked at her in the mirror and said, "Now the hair."

He went to the rail and came back with a wig on a block — platinum, long, a little past the shoulders, with a heavy fringe — and he fitted it and pinned it and brushed it out and the blonde fell around the bare face and the painted eyes and the wet mouth, and she looked at herself in the mirror and did not recognize the woman and knew the woman exactly.

"Stand up," he said. "Clothes."

He had laid them out on the platform while he worked, she had not seen him do it. A dress, black, long-sleeved, high at the neck, the material thin and matte and cut to hug everything — and beside it a pair of shoes, black patent, pointed, with a thin ankle strap, and a heel she measured with her eye and got four inches, no more, and a pair of sheer black stockings and a small black thong and nothing else.

"Take the sweater off," he said.

She took the sweater off. The jeans. The plain cotton underwear she had worn out of the hotel, and he watched her step out of them and fold them and set them on the chair, and she stood in the warm light in her skin and the breast plate and the smooth hairless body and the small soft clitty between her thighs, and he looked at all of it without hurrying, the way he had looked at her face.

"Stockings first," he said. "Roll them."

She sat on the edge of the platform and rolled the first stocking down to the toe and fitted it over her foot and drew it up her calf and her thigh and smoothed it flat, and then the second, and the lace band sat high on her thighs, and he watched her do it and did not help.

"Panties."

She stepped into the thong and drew it up and it sat low on her hips and the thin band went back between her cheeks and she felt it settle against the plug and her breath caught once and she made it even again.

"Dress."

He held it open for her and she put her arms in and he drew it down over her head and it came down over the breast plate and the flat stomach and the hips and it fit like it had been made on her, high at the neck, long at the sleeve, thin as a second skin, and he zipped it up the back with one hand and his knuckles brushed her spine and she felt the zip close all the way to the nape and stop.

"Shoes."

She stepped into them one at a time and buckled the ankle straps and stood up and the floor came up to meet her and she was four inches taller and the dress pulled tight across her hips and the light was warm on her bare arms and her painted face, and she stood in the middle of the white paper backdrop and he picked up the camera off the table and came around in front of her.

"Look at me," he said.

She looked at him. The shutter went off.

"Chin down. Eyes up."

She did it. The shutter. The light flashed white off the paper behind her and she blinked and held.

"Turn. Left shoulder to me. Hand on your hip."

She turned and put her hand on her hip and the dress pulled across her ass and the shutter went off twice and he said, "Good. That one's good. Don't move," and she did not move, and the flash went off again and again and she stood in the light and let him take her, and the whole time the wetness was gathering between her thighs and the thong was going slick against the plug and she could feel it, she could feel every shot land on her like a hand.

He worked her through the dress for twenty minutes, front and profile and back, sitting on the platform and standing and leaning against the blacked-out window with her arms crossed under her breasts, and then he set the camera down and said, "Now the second one," and went to the rail and came back with something white, latex, short — a dress that was mostly a bodice and a skirt that would not cover much — and he put it on her the same way, zipped it up, and the white was bright in the warm light and the black stockings and the black shoes went with it and he took her through it all again, and this time he had her kneel on the platform and put her hands behind her back and lift her chin, and the shutter went off and off and off.

"Last one," he said. "And then you can have your kiss."

He brought out the third thing and it was not a dress. It was a harness of black leather, straps and a collar and a ring at the chest, and he fitted it over her bare shoulders and buckled it at her back and drew the straps tight under her breasts and at her waist, and the leather was cool and stiff and it held her like a hand, and he stood back and looked at her and said, "There. That's the one I wanted."

He photographed her in the harness for a long time, and by the end her knees were shaking from the heels and her face was hot under the lights and the wetness had soaked through the thong and she could feel it on the inside of her thighs, and he lowered the camera and looked at her and said, "Come here."

She walked to him on the shaking heels and stopped close, and he put the camera down on the table and took her face in both hands and looked at her, the painted eyes, the wet mouth, the blonde falling around it, and he said, "One," and kissed her.

It was not a soft kiss. His mouth came down on hers and his hand went to the back of her neck and held her there and she opened for him and his tongue was in her mouth and she made a sound into it and her hands came up and found his shirt and gripped it, and he kissed her until her knees gave a little and then he pulled back and looked at her and said, "That's the two."

She stood there with her mouth wet and her chest going and the harness tight on her and the wetness running down the inside of her thigh, and he picked the camera back up and said, "One more. Right there. That face."

The shutter went off.

He set the camera down and went to the table and opened a drawer and took out an envelope and held it out to her, and she took it and it was thick and she did not open it.

"Five thousand," he said. "You earned it. You can dress and go."

She stood with the envelope in her hand and the harness on her and the blonde around her face and the wet thong against the plug, and she did not move, and he looked at her and read it and said, "Or you can stand there another minute and let me look at you, and then you can go."

She stood there another minute. He looked at her. Then he nodded and turned away to the table and began capping the lens, and she went to the chair and took the dress off and the harness off and folded them and laid them on the platform, and she took the thong off and it was soaked through and she rolled it in the stocking and put her own clothes back on, the jeans, the sweater, the coat, and she put the wig back on the block and wiped her face with the cream and the wipes until the woman was gone and the plain face was back, and she put the envelope in her coat pocket and went to the door.

"Willow," he said, from the table, without turning.

She stopped.

"Saturday. The club. I'll see you there."

She looked at the back of his head. She had not told him about Saturday. She had told him she had a commitment and nothing else, and he had not asked what it was, and he knew anyway, and the knowing sat in the room between them like a third person.

"How do you know about Saturday," she said.

He turned then, half, the lens cap in his hand, and looked at her across the studio with the same almost-smile from the photograph.

"Because the man who's taking you there," he said, "is a friend of mine."

She stood in the doorway with her hand on the frame and the envelope in her pocket and the city cold coming up the stairwell behind her, and she did not say anything, and he turned back to the table and began to pack the camera away, and after a moment she went out and pulled the door shut behind her.

The door clicked shut behind her and the sound of it was final in the bare corridor. She stood there a moment with her hand still on the frame, the cold coming up through the floor of the stairwell, the envelope heavy in her coat pocket. Then she walked to the freight elevator and pressed the button and while she waited she took the envelope out.

She did not open it in the studio. She had not opened it in front of him, because opening it in front of him would have been a kind of performance, and she was done performing for him. But the corridor was empty and the elevator was slow and the light was bad, and she tore the flap with her thumb and tilted the envelope and the bills slid out into her hand.

Hundreds. All hundreds. She counted them against her palm the way she had counted the others, flat and quick, no feeling in it — five thousand, exactly, no more and no less, and she folded them once and put them back in the envelope and the envelope back in her pocket and stood there with her hand on the envelope through the coat and thought about the arithmetic of the day.

Five thousand for the photographs. Five thousand for Saturday. Ten thousand in two days, and the man on the balcony was a friend of the man who had taken her pictures, and the man who had taken her pictures knew about the club before she told him, and the two of them had arranged something between them that she had walked into with her face bare and her hands in her pockets and her eyes open.

The elevator came. She rode it down alone, watching the floors go by through the gate, and when the door opened onto the street the cold hit her bare face and she pulled the hood up and walked west with the envelope in her pocket and the city dark around her, and she thought about the silver dress laid out on her bed and the lock at the back of her neck and the man who would take her there, and the wanting sat low and warm between her thighs and she walked faster.

The Marlowe lobby was quiet. The doorman held the door and she passed him with her chin down and took the service stairs up, because the elevator at that hour would have meant standing in a box with strangers and she did not have the face for it. She climbed the four flights with her calves burning and let herself into the penthouse and shut the door and stood in the dark foyer with her back to the door and the city coming in through two walls of glass.

She took the envelope out of her pocket and carried it to the bedroom and got the shoebox down off the closet shelf and put the money in with the rest and put the box back. Then she went into the bathroom and ran the shower hot and stood under it for a long time, and the water ran over the collar and down her back and she washed the studio off her skin — the lights, the leather, the smell of him, cedar and soap — and she did not touch herself, because she had learned that touching herself did nothing but make the ache worse.

She dried off and went to bed naked and lay on her back with her hands outside the covers and the city ticking against the glass and the collar a small steady weight at her throat, and she thought about tomorrow at two o'clock, the concrete room, the third thing, the name she had to earn back. And she thought about Saturday at eight, the silver dress, the club on West 27th, the only one there who was not owned. And she thought about the man who had kissed her in the studio, one, and then two, and how his hand had gone to the back of her neck and held her there, and she turned onto her stomach and pressed her thighs together and did not sleep for a long time.

She woke before the light did, hard and wet and alone, the ache already up through her before she was awake enough to name it. The room was gray and the city was gray and the dress was still laid out on the duvet where she had left it, and she reached over and touched it — cool, slick, the steel ring at the halter holding the first pale light — and the touch went through her like a current and she pulled her hand back and got out of bed.

She stood under the spray until the water ran cold, then colder, and still the ache would not leave her. It lived in her belly like a second pulse, low and insistent, and when she finally stepped out and wrapped herself in the towel she could feel it waiting, patient, hungry. She did not look at herself in the mirror. She knew what she would see: the flush on her chest, the hard peaks of her nipples under the towel, the way her thighs wanted to press together and would not stop wanting it.

She went back to the bedroom and stood at the foot of the bed and looked at the dress laid out on the duvet, the silver one, the one he had delivered. The steel ring at the halter caught the gray light and she reached out and touched it again, just the ring, just the cool metal, and the wanting jumped in her like a live thing and she snatched her hand back and went to the closet instead.

She dressed slowly, deliberately, because the slowness was the only thing that kept her hands from shaking. Stockings first, sheer black, rolling them up her calves and over her knees and up her thighs until they hugged her hips, the black lace top of them biting into the soft skin of her waist. Then the thong, a scrap of black lace that barely covered anything, and she felt the fabric settle against her and the wetness was already there, already soaking through, and she did not stop to think about it because thinking about it only made it worse.

The dress was next and it was nothing, it was less than nothing, it was a promise of a dress. The halter went over her head and the steel ring settled at the back of her neck and the silver fabric slid down her body like water, like a hand, and she felt it cling to every curve and hollow. The rings at her hips sat against the bone, cool and heavy, and when she turned to the mirror she saw her back was bare to the bottom of her spine, the silver falling away to nothing, the twin dimples at the base of her back exposed to the air and the light.

She looked at herself and for a long moment she did not recognize the woman in the glass. The breasts were full and high, the cleavage plunging past her navel, the nipples covered only by thin strips of shiny silverplatinum latex that did nothing to hide the hard peaks beneath. The dress ended high on her thighs, the silver hem riding up when she moved, and her ass was round and tight and completely bare beneath it, the thong a black line that disappeared between the cheeks and was gone.

She was a hundred and ten pounds soaking wet and every ounce of it was a sissy pet built for a man's hands, and she looked at herself in the mirror and her lips parted and she felt the wetness run down the inside of her thigh and she did not wipe it away.

The wig went on last, the silver-blonde cascade falling past her shoulders, and she shook her head and watched it move and saw the woman in the glass become someone else entirely. She painted her lips slowly, a wet glossy pink, and lined her eyes and darkened the lashes and when she was done she stood back and looked at the whole of it and the ache in her belly had become a roar.

She needed a cock in her mouth. She needed a man to grab her by the hair and push her to her knees and hold her there until she choked. She needed to be fucked until she could not remember her own name, until the only thing in the world was the weight of him and the sound of him and the taste of him. She pressed her thighs together and the pressure only made it worse and she had to breathe, had to breathe through it, had to remember that she was going out the door and into the car and that somewhere out there a man was waiting for her.

No plug tonight. The thought came to her as she reached for the drawer and stopped. He had not asked for it. The dress was the message, the silver dress with the rings and the bare back, and the plug would have been a different message entirely. She left the drawer closed and the emptiness inside her was its own kind of ache, a hollow that wanted to be filled, and she felt it with every step she took toward the door.

She walked through the penthouse in the silver heels, six inches of black patent that made her calves flex and her ass sway with every step, and she watched herself in the long mirror by the door and she was beautiful and she was starving and the two things were the same thing.

The lobby of the Marlowe was quiet at that hour. She came down in the elevator alone and the doors opened onto the marble and the brass and she stepped out and she felt the eyes of the doorman on her, felt them travel the length of her bare back, and she did not meet his gaze. She walked across the lobby toward the revolving door and the mirrors on the pillars caught her from every angle and she watched herself move, the silver dress swinging with her hips, the blonde hair falling and swaying, the red mouth the only color on her face.

The car was waiting at the curb, black and low and sleek, and the driver opened the door for her without a word. She ducked into the back seat and the leather was cool against her bare thighs and the driver closed the door and she was alone in the dark with the city sliding past the tinted windows and the ache still roaring between her legs.

She leaned her head back against the seat and closed her eyes and tried to breathe. The dress was a second skin, the rings at her hips pressing into her with every bump in the road, and she could feel the wetness soaking through the thong and into the leather beneath her and she did not care. She was a sissy pet on her way to be used and the thought of it made her thighs press together and her nipples go hard against the slick shiny silver platinum latex and she opened her eyes and watched the city go by and counted the blocks until she would be where he was waiting.

The car slid through the West Village and she watched the streets change, the bars and the brownstones and the people spilling out of doorways, and she did not see any of it. She saw the concrete room. She saw the mirror table and the candle burned to a stub. She saw the man who had not told her his name and the one thing she still had not given him, the third thing, the one she had not even let herself fully think about because thinking about it meant deciding what it was.

She had blocked David on the escort site. That was the thing. That was the third secret, the one that would cost her more than the divorce papers or the four unanswered messages, because the divorce papers were Claire's and the messages were David's but the blocking was hers. It was the one thing she had done on her own, the one door she had closed without being told to, and when she gave it to him she would have nothing left that was hers. She would be empty of secrets and full of him and the thought made her thighs press together and the wetness spread and she did not stop it.

The car turned onto a narrow street and slowed and the driver pulled to the curb in front of a building she had not seen before, a low brick front with a single steel door and no sign, and she sat in the dark for a moment with her hand on the door handle and the ache low and roaring in her belly and then she opened the door and stepped out into the cold.