The bar at the Delano had a way of making everyone look like they were waiting for something. Warren sat at the far end of it, a gin and tonic sweating a ring onto the black marble, and watched the investment crowd do what investment crowds did at nine o'clock on a Thursday — loosen their ties, order a second round, laugh too loud at jokes that weren't funny.

He'd been in Miami three days. The conference had two more to go. His suit was still crisp — charcoal Zegna, silk tie in a shade of blue that Claire had picked out at Bloomingdale's two Christmases ago — but inside the jacket, under the starched shirt, his skin felt wrong. Too tight. He kept shifting on the barstool, crossing and uncrossing his ankles, and every time his calf brushed the leather of the stool next to him he had to stop himself from flinching.

Upstairs, in 1412, the suitcase sat open on the luggage rack. He knew exactly what was inside it. The corset, steel-boned, twenty-four inches, wrapped in a cotton dust bag. The breast plate in its foam cradle. The wig. The shoes. Everything Willow needed, folded and packed with the same care Warren gave to his quarterly reports.

He hadn't opened it yet. He'd been in the room for two hours after the last panel let out, sitting on the edge of the bed with his hands on his knees, listening to the ice machine down the hall cycle and cycle again. Then he'd come down here instead. Ordered a drink. Told himself he was just winding down.

"You're not drinking that."

The voice came from his left, low and unhurried, with the kind of flat confidence that didn't need volume. Warren turned.

The man was leaning against the bar, one elbow on the marble, a glass of something amber in his hand. Broad shoulders. Salt-and-pepper hair cut close. Dark eyes that had already finished looking at Warren and were now just waiting for him to catch up.

"I'm sorry?" Warren said.

"Your drink. You've been holding it for twenty minutes. The ice is gone." The man nodded at the glass. "You're a watcher. Not a drinker."

Warren looked down. The gin had gone warm and flat. He hadn't noticed.

"I'm here for the conference," he said, which was not an answer.

"I know. I saw you in the back of the Sterling Capital panel. You asked a good question about duration risk." The man's mouth moved, not quite a smile. "Most people ask questions to hear themselves talk. You asked one because you wanted the answer."

Warren's hand tightened around the glass. "You were there."

"Dominic Rossi." The man didn't offer his hand. "I run a fund out of Chicago. Small. Boutique."

"Warren Ashford."

"I know." Dominic took a sip of his whiskey, unhurried, his eyes not leaving Warren's face. "You're at Halcyon. Fixed income. You've been there fours years. You're good at it, and you hate it."

Warren set the glass down. The ring it left on the marble was a perfect circle, and he found himself staring at it, at the way the overhead light bent through the wet edge of it. "That's a lot to know about a stranger."

"I make it my business to know things." Dominic shifted his weight, and the movement brought him a half-step closer. "Can I ask you something, Warren?"

"You've been asking me things for five minutes."

"This one's more personal." Dominic's voice dropped, just slightly, the way a man does when he's about to say something he already knows the answer to. "What's your orientation?"

The bar noise seemed to fall away. Warren heard the ice machine in his memory, cycling and cycling. He heard his own pulse in his ears, which he hated, because it was the most obvious thing in the world and he couldn't stop it.

"I'm married," he said.

"That's not what I asked."

Warren looked at his hands. The nails were short and clean, filed square. He'd thought about painting them that morning, sitting on the edge of the bed with the little bottle of Essie in his Dopp kit, and he hadn't. "I don't — I'm not sure what you want me to say."

"I want you to say something true." Dominic set his glass down next to Warren's, and the two rings of condensation sat side by side on the marble like a pair of glasses. "You don't have to. But I've been watching you for three days, and I've noticed you don't look at the women. Not once. Not the bartender, not the woman in the red dress at the end of the bar who's been trying to catch your eye since you sat down."

Warren's throat went dry. "Maybe I'm just focused on the conference."

"Maybe." Dominic's dark eyes moved over his face, slow, thorough, like he was reading a page. "Or maybe you're a man who's been holding his breath for a very long time, and you're starting to wonder what happens if you let it out."

The gin and tonic sat between them, warm and flat and forgotten. Warren could feel the stool under him, the hard leather, the way his feet didn't quite reach the floor rail the way the taller men's did. He was five-six and a hundred and twenty-five pounds, and in a room full of broad-shouldered bankers he had spent his whole life feeling like a footnote. But Dominic wasn't looking at him like a footnote.

"I should go up," Warren said. "I have an early session tomorrow."

"I have a suite on the fourteenth floor." Dominic said it easily, no pressure in it at all, which somehow made it worse. "If you change your mind. Room 1408. I'll be up for a while."

He picked up his whiskey and walked away, and Warren sat there with his hands flat on the marble and his heart doing something he hadn't felt in years.

—

In 1412, Warren stood in front of the mirror and took off his jacket. Then his tie. Then his shirt, folding each one the way he always did, the way his mother had taught him, until he was standing in his undershirt with his pale narrow shoulders and his flat stomach and the soft beginnings of a belly he'd been fighting since he turned twenty-five.

He was twenty-nine years old. He and Claire had been married two years, together four. They had a condo in the West Village with a galley kitchen and a balcony that got the afternoon sun. They had a cat named Baxter who slept on Claire's pillow. They had a marriage that looked, from the outside, like a marriage.

He hadn't touched her in eighteen months. Not since the night she'd rolled toward him in bed, her hand sliding up his chest, and he'd felt his whole body go cold and still, like a rabbit under a hawk. She hadn't tried again. She was twenty-eight, ash-blonde and blue-eyed and patient, and she had stopped asking questions he couldn't answer.

The suitcase sat on the luggage rack. Warren unzipped it.

The corset came out first, black and heavy in its dust bag. He laid it on the bed. Then the breast plate, the silicone cool and dense under his fingers. The wig in its net, blonde and long. The dress — a latex mini, tight as a second skin, the color of a bruise. The shoes, six-inch stilettos with a platform sole and a strap that went around the ankle.

He looked at all of it for a long time. Then he picked up his phone.

Dominic's number wasn't in it. But the conference app had a directory, and the directory had a Dominic Rossi, and Warren's thumb hovered over the call button for so long that the screen dimmed twice before he finally pressed it.

It rang once. Twice.

"Rossi."

"It's Warren." His voice came out smaller than he wanted. "Ashford. From the bar."

"I know who it is." A pause, and Warren could hear the man's breathing, slow and even, the sound of someone who had all the time in the world. "You've changed your mind."

"I don't know what I've done."

"Fourteen-oh-eight. Door's unlocked."

—

The hallway was silent, the carpet thick and patterned in a way that swallowed sound. Warren walked past 1412 without stopping. He was still in his suit pants and his undershirt, his jacket over his arm, his shoes in his hand. He'd meant to put them back on. He'd meant a lot of things.

1408's door was ajar, a wedge of warm light spilling into the hall. Warren pushed it open.

The suite was bigger than his room. A sitting area with a low sofa and a glass coffee table, a bedroom beyond it through an open door. Dominic stood by the window, the Miami skyline glittering behind him, a glass of water in his hand now, no whiskey.

"You brought your things," Dominic said, nodding at the suitcase Warren hadn't realized he was carrying.

"I don't know why."

"Yes, you do." Dominic set the water down and crossed the room, and Warren stood very still as the man stopped in front of him, close enough that he could smell him — soap, and something warmer underneath, skin and clean sweat. "You can put the suitcase on the bed. Then you can tell me what you're doing here."

Warren's hands were shaking. He set the suitcase on the bed, and the weight of it made the mattress dip, and he stood there with his back to Dominic, looking at the open zipper and the black latex folded inside.

"I'm a banker," he said. "I'm a husband. I'm — I've been a man for twenty-nine years, and I don't think I've ever been one."

The words came out flat and quiet, and once they were out, they didn't hurt the way he'd expected. They just sat there in the room, true and ugly and his.

"Go on."

"I don't want to fuck my wife." Warren closed his eyes. "I've never wanted to. Not her, not any woman. I've tried. I've — I've gotten hard for women maybe a dozen times in my whole life, and every time it was because I was imagining something else. Something I couldn't say."

"What couldn't you say?"

Warren turned around. Dominic was watching him with those dark, patient eyes, and there was no judgment in them, no disgust, just a kind of steady attention that made Warren feel like he was being held.

"I'm a sissy," Warren said. "I'm a — I'm a transvestite. I'm a submissive. I want to be feminized. I want to be made into something soft and pretty and used." His voice cracked on the last word, and he hated it, and he kept going anyway. "I've been doing it in hotel rooms for six years. I have a suitcase full of — of things. I have videos online. I've never done it with a real man before. I've only ever done it alone."

Dominic didn't move. "You're twenty-nine years old, married two years, and you've been dressing in secret for six years."

"Yes."

"And you've never let a man see you."

"No."

"Why now?"

Warren looked at the suitcase. "Because you asked."

—

Dominic moved first. He crossed to the suitcase and unzipped it the rest of the way, and Warren watched his broad hands move through the contents, unhurried, cataloguing. The corset. The breast plate. The wig. The shoes. The little makeup bag in the side pocket.

"Sit," Dominic said, and pointed at the chair by the vanity in the corner of the suite.

Warren sat. The chair was low and upholstered in a pale gray velvet, and his bare feet didn't reach the floor. Dominic brought the suitcase over and set it on the desk beside the vanity mirror, and then he stood behind Warren and looked at him in the mirror.

"You've done this before," Dominic said. "The makeup. The hair."

"Yes."

"Show me what you can do. Then I'll fix it."

Warren's hands were still trembling, but they knew this work. He unzipped the makeup bag and laid out the bottles and brushes in a neat row — the primer, the foundation in the shade he'd matched to his neck, the concealer, the powder, the eyebrow pencil, the black eyeliner, the smoky shadow palette, the lip plumper, the gloss. He worked with his head tilted toward the mirror, and Dominic stood behind him and watched, and the silence was so complete that Warren could hear the little click of the brush against the plastic palette.

He did the foundation first, blending it down his jaw and into his neck. Then the powder. Then the brows, sketched in with short feathery strokes. Then the shadow, gray and charcoal, blended into the crease. The eyeliner was the hardest — his hand shook, and he had to stop and start again — but he got it done, a thin black wing on each eye, and then he reached for the false lashes.

"Let me," Dominic said.

Warren's hands stilled. Dominic took the strip of lashes from him, and his fingers were warm and steady against Warren's cheekbone, tilting his face up. The glue was cold. The lash settled into place, and Dominic's thumb pressed gently at the inner corner, holding it until it stuck, and Warren's eyes watered and he didn't blink.

"Other side." Dominic's voice was low, close. "Look at me."

Warren looked at him. Dominic's face was inches away, his dark eyes narrowed in concentration, and Warren could see the fine lines at the corners of them, the gray at his temples, the way his jaw was set. The second lash went on. Dominic's thumb pressed at the corner again, and Warren felt the pressure all the way down his spine.

"Now the lips," Dominic said.

Warren reached for the plumper, but Dominic took it out of his hand. "Not that. This." He picked up the gloss instead, a thick wet pink, and unscrewed the cap. "Open."

Warren opened his mouth. Dominic's thumb was on his chin now, holding it steady, and the wand came up and painted his bottom lip, slow, the gloss cold and thick. Then the top lip, the wand tracing the bow, and Warren could feel his own breath coming shallow through his nose.

"You're shaking," Dominic said.

"I know."

"Good." The wand went back into the tube. Dominic's thumb stayed on Warren's chin a moment longer than it needed to. "Now the wig."

The wig was blonde and long, and Dominic fitted it over Warren's short brown hair with a care that Warren hadn't expected, tucking the stray strands behind his ears, settling the lace front against his forehead. When he was done, Warren looked at the mirror.

Willow looked back.

She was twenty-nine, blonde, blue-eyed, with a mouth like wet candy and lashes that made her look perpetually surprised. The man in the mirror was gone. In his place was a woman who looked like she'd been waiting her whole life to be looked at.

"Now the rest," Dominic said.

Warren stood. His legs felt unsteady. Dominic brought the corset over and held it open, and Warren turned his back to him and felt the steel bones settle against his spine.

"Breathe in."

Warren breathed in. The laces pulled, and the corset closed around him like a hand, and he let the breath out in a rush as the boning cinched him to twenty-four inches. His waist disappeared. His ribs ached. He felt the blood rush to his head.

"Again."

He breathed in. The laces pulled tighter. His hands found the edge of the vanity and held on.

The breast plate came next. Dominic fitted it over his chest, the silicone warm from the suitcase, and the weight of it settled against his ribs and pulled his shoulders forward. The nipples were already hard, pencil-eraser small, and when Dominic's finger brushed one of them Warren made a sound he hadn't meant to make.

"The dress," Dominic said.

It was black latex, and it took both of them to get it on, Warren stepping into it and Dominic pulling it up over his hips and his corseted waist and his new breasts. The latex was cold and tight and it sealed to his skin like it had been poured there. The hem sat high on his thighs. The neckline showed the tops of the silicone breasts, pale and round and obscene.

"Shoes."

Warren sat back down in the velvet chair and Dominic knelt in front of him with the stilettos. He fitted the first one onto Warren's bare foot, the strap around the ankle, and then the second, and when Warren stood up he was six inches taller and the room tilted under him.

Dominic stepped back. He looked at Warren for a long moment, from the blonde hair to the six-inch heels, and Warren stood very still and let himself be looked at.

"Willow," Dominic said.

"Yes." Warren's voice came out breathy and high. "That's — that's her name."

"I know." Dominic reached into his jacket pocket and took out his phone. "I'm going to take a picture."

Warren's stomach dropped. "What?"

"I'm going to take a picture of you." Dominic's thumb moved over the screen. "And a video. Of this. Of you, in that dress, in those shoes, standing in my suite. And you're going to let me."

"I —"

"You don't have to say yes." Dominic's voice was calm. "But if you say no, you can put your suit back on and go back to your room, and we'll pretend this never happened. If you say yes, then you're mine, and I'll have proof of it."

Warren looked at the phone. Then at Dominic's face. Then at the mirror, at Willow, at the blonde hair and the wet lips and the tight black latex and the six-inch heels.

"Yes," he said.

Dominic lifted the phone. The shutter clicked, once, twice, three times, and Warren stood there and let himself be seen. Then Dominic switched to video and walked a slow circle around him, and Warren turned his head to follow, and the heels made him sway on his feet.

"Say your name," Dominic said.

"Willow."

"Say what you are."

Warren's throat closed. He looked at the phone, at the little red dot, at the lens that was recording everything. "I'm a sissy," he said. "I'm a — I'm a submissive femme. I'm not a man. I've never been a man."

"And what do you want?"

"I want —" His voice broke. "I want to be feminized. I want to be made into something pretty. I want a real man to — to use me." The words came out of him like they'd been waiting years for the door to open. "I've never been with a man. I've never — I've never even kissed one. I don't know if I can. But I want to."

Dominic stopped the recording. He set the phone down on the desk, face down, and crossed the room to where Warren stood swaying in the heels.

"That's enough for tonight," he said.

Warren looked up at him. Dominic was a head taller, broad and solid, and his hand came up and cupped Warren's jaw, and Warren's whole body went still.

"I'm going to kiss you," Dominic said. "And then you're going to go back to your room and sleep, and tomorrow you're going to come back here and we'll talk about what happens next."

"Why not tonight?"

"Because you're not ready." Dominic's thumb moved along Warren's jaw. "And because I'm not in a hurry."

He kissed him. His mouth was warm and firm and it tasted like water and clean skin, and Warren made a sound against it, a small helpless sound, and his hands came up and found Dominic's chest and held on. The kiss went on, slow and deep, and Warren's knees gave a little and Dominic's other hand came to his waist and held him up, and the corset dug into his ribs and the heels made him lean into the kiss and the latex was tight and hot against his skin.

Then Dominic pulled back. His thumb brushed Warren's swollen bottom lip, smearing the gloss.

"Go," he said.

—

Warren changed in 1408's bathroom, in front of a mirror that showed him everything, and he took the wig off first and then the lashes and then the dress, and he folded each piece back into the suitcase with the same care he'd taken getting into them. The corset laces took him a long time to undo. His ribs ached where the boning had pressed. There were red marks on his skin.

He put his suit back on. The jacket settled over his narrow shoulders. The tie went around his collar. The shoes went onto his feet, polished, imported, correct.

When he came out of the bathroom, Dominic was standing by the window with his back to him. He didn't turn around.

"Tomorrow," Dominic said. "Same time."

Warren picked up the suitcase and let himself out. The hallway was silent. The carpet swallowed his footsteps. In the elevator, he stood alone and watched the numbers count down, and he could still feel the kiss on his mouth, and the marks of the corset under his shirt, and the little red dot of the phone's camera, recording.

He didn't know what Dominic would do with the video. He didn't know if he'd ever see it. He didn't know what he'd say to Claire the next time she called, or what he'd say to himself in the morning when he looked in the mirror and saw Warren again, a banker in a suit, five-six and a hundred and twenty-five pounds, with a suitcase full of secrets and a wife who had stopped asking.

In 1412, the sheets smelled of chlorine and starched cotton. Warren set the suitcase on the luggage rack and lay down on the bed in his suit, and he didn't sleep for a long time.

The flight home was at seven-forty, and Warren was in the lobby at five, sitting on his suitcase because his back ached and he couldn't stand still. He'd woken at four with his heart going, convinced he'd hear a knock, that Dominic would come down the hall with his phone in his hand. Nobody knocked. He checked out with a smile for the girl at the desk and a receipt in his breast pocket.

He did not call Dominic. He had the number in his phone now, the call log showing one outgoing, forty-one seconds. He looked at it on the taxi to the airport. He looked at it at the gate, thumb hovering, and put the phone face down on his knee. The announcement came for first class. He stood up and put it in his pocket and got on the plane.

Somewhere over Georgia he went into the lavatory and took his tie off and looked at himself in the little mirror, and his mouth still felt different. Not swollen — the gloss was gone, scrubbed off at the sink in 1408 before he'd dared come out. But the shape of it. The way he'd opened for a thumb on his chin. He put his tie back on and went back to his seat and asked the flight attendant for a second coffee.

Claire picked him up at JFK, which she did maybe half the time, and he saw her before she saw him — ash-blonde, shoulder-length, in the camel coat she'd bought herself for her birthday, standing at the barrier with her phone in her hand and her glasses pushed up on her head. She looked like a woman who had her life arranged.

She saw him and lifted her chin. "You look tired."

"Long flight. The seat was broken."

"You should have said something. They'd have moved you." She took his roller bag before he could stop her and started walking. "I made a reservation at seven. The Italian place on Bleecker. I didn't feel like cooking."

"Seven's fine."

"You don't have to sound like that."

"Like what?"

"Like you're agreeing to a colonoscopy." She smiled when she said it, and he smiled back, and they walked out into the cold and the taxi line, and it was the same as it had always been.

—

The condo smelled like the candle she burned in the evening, cedar and something sweet. Baxter came out from under the console table and walked a slow circle around Warren's ankles, then lost interest and went back to the radiator. Warren wheeled the suitcase to the bedroom and stood in the doorway for a moment — the duvet, the two pillows, the reading lamp on her side already on — and then he pushed it into the closet, all the way back, behind the winter coats.

"Do you want a glass?" Claire called from the kitchen.

"Please."

She brought him a chardonnay and sat down across from him at the table with her own, and there was a small plate of the crackers he liked, the rosemary ones, arranged in a fan. She'd done that. She'd remembered the crackers and fanned them out on a plate, and something in his chest turned over and lay down and died.

"How was it?" she said. "The conference."

"Fine. Good, actually. Sterling had a session on duration risk that was worth the trip."

"Anyone interesting?"

He picked up his glass. "A man from Chicago. Runs a boutique fund. We talked for a while at the bar."

"What's his name?"

He could feel the word in his mouth, sitting there, ready. Dominic. Just say it. Say the name and make it a normal thing, a man at a bar with a fund out of Chicago, and it would be a normal thing.

"Rossi," he said, and the name tasted like water and clean skin. "Dominic Rossi."

"Is he married?"

"I don't know."

"You talked for a while and you don't know if he's married." She said it lightly, but she was looking at him now, over the rim of her glass, and there was a question in her face that she wasn't going to ask out loud. "Was he nice?"

"He was —" Warren set his glass down. "He was very direct. The kind of man who knows what he wants."

"That must have been refreshing." She stood up. "I'm going to change. Don't let me forget I have book club on Tuesday, I need to finish the novel."

She went into the bedroom, and Warren sat at the table with the fanned crackers and the candle and the cat on the radiator, and he thought about the way Dominic's thumb had pressed at the inner corner of his eye and held it there until the lash stuck.

—

He didn't call. That was the thing he did, the only thing he did: he didn't call.

Monday he went into the office at seven-thirty and stayed until nine. Tuesday there was a call with the Boston desk and a dinner he couldn't get out of, and he came home at eleven and Claire was asleep with the book open on her chest. Wednesday he looked at the number for a long time in the men's room at work, the door locked, sitting on the closed lid of the toilet with his elbows on his knees, and he thought about the camera and the little red dot and the words he'd said into it, and he put the phone away.

Thursday he dressed.

He didn't plan to. That was what he told himself. Claire had a late thing — the garden committee, or the book club, one of the committees that filled her evenings — and he came home to an empty condo and the light on a timer in the living room and he went to the closet and pushed the winter coats aside.

The corset was still in its dust bag. The wig was still in its net, and when he lifted it out, a single blonde hair came loose and floated down onto the carpet, and he stood there and looked at it for a while before he picked it up and put it in the wastebasket.

He laid everything out on the bed. The corset, the plate, the dress, the shoes. He got as far as the corset, laced himself in with the long pull at the back, and stood in the bedroom in his briefs and his stockings with his waist cinched to twenty-four inches and his ribs aching, and he looked at himself in the mirror over the dresser and felt nothing. Nothing at all. His hands were cold. The silicone plate sat on the duvet in its foam cradle, and he didn't want to put it on.

He'd never not wanted to.

He unlaced himself. It took a long time. He put the corset back in the bag and the bag in the suitcase and the suitcase behind the coats, and then he went out to the living room and poured himself a whiskey and sat in the dark with the timer light clicking on.

When Claire came home at ten she found him there. "You're up."

"Couldn't sleep."

She hung up her coat. "Are you all right?"

"Fine."

She stood in the doorway of the living room with her keys still in her hand and looked at him for a moment, and he could feel her deciding not to ask. "I'm going to bed," she said. "Don't stay up too late."

He finished the whiskey and went to bed and lay beside her in the dark with his hands folded on his chest, and he could hear her breathing, slow and even, and he thought: I let a man take a video of me in a hotel room in Miami and I am never going to do anything with it, and the thought was so bleak and so quiet that it put him to sleep.

—

The second week was worse, because by the second week he'd started to miss it.

Not Dominic. He told himself it wasn't Dominic. It was the room, the light, the way the laces had pulled, the way his ribs had ached and his waist had disappeared and his shoulders had gone forward under the weight of the plate. It was the way a man's hands had moved over him, sure and unhurried, and the way he'd stood in six-inch heels and swayed and been looked at. He missed being looked at. He had not known, before Miami, how long it had been since anyone had looked at him at all.

He had a video. Willow had a video, somewhere, in a phone in a suite in a hotel he'd never see again, and he didn't know what it was, and he didn't know who had seen it, and every time he thought about it his stomach dropped and his cock got hard, and the two things happened together so reliably that he stopped thinking about it on the train.

On Wednesday he opened the laptop and typed the address of the site, the one with the forums and the photos, and he sat with his cursor over his own profile and then closed the tab without looking. On Friday he did the same thing. On Saturday he did it and looked.

There were three new messages. None from Dominic. One was from a man in Ohio who wanted to know if Willow was real. One was from a man who called himself Sir and had a lot of opinions about the word sissy. The third was spam.

He sat there with his hand on the mouse and the Saturday afternoon light coming through the window, Claire out at the farmers' market with her canvas bag, and he thought about the video and the little red dot and the words he'd said. I want a real man to use me. He'd said it into a phone. He'd said it standing in a hotel room in a black latex dress with his cock hard under the hem, and now he was sitting at his own dining table in chinos, and the two people could not possibly be the same person.

He closed the laptop. He got up and made a cup of tea and stood at the kitchen window looking down at the street, and when Claire came home with the canvas bag and a paper cone of flowers, he took the flowers from her and put them in a vase and asked her about the market.

—

Sunday night she came to bed in the dark while he was still reading. He heard her put her glasses on the nightstand, the little click, and then the mattress dipped and she was there, on her side, her back to him, and then a moment later she turned over.

Her hand came to rest on his forearm, above the cuff of his pajamas. "Warren."

He looked at her. In the dark he could see the shape of her face, the pale hair, the line of her shoulder where the strap of her nightgown had slipped.

"It's been a while," she said. Not a question.

His whole body went cold and still. It was the same as it had always been, the same rabbit-stillness, the same flat horror in his stomach, and he lay there under her hand and felt the seconds pass and knew that whatever he said now would be the thing she remembered.

"I'm sorry," he said.

Her hand stayed on his arm. "You're always sorry."

"Claire —"

"No. Don't." She took her hand back and turned over, and the mattress moved with her. "It's fine. Go to sleep."

He lay there for a long time with the book open on his chest. Then he set the book on the nightstand and turned off the lamp and lay in the dark, and he thought about Dominic's mouth, warm and firm, and the way his thumb had pressed at the corner of Warren's eye until the lash stuck.

In the morning he got up before her and made the coffee and set her mug out on the counter with the milk already in it, the way she took it, and she came out in her robe and said thank you and drank it standing at the window with her back to him.

Two weeks to the day he'd come home, a Thursday, the phone rang at his desk at work.

He looked at it. The number had a Chicago area code.

It rang twice. Three times. He sat with his hand flat on the desk and his heart going and the spreadsheet open in front of him.

He picked it up.

"Ashford."

"Warren." Dominic's voice came through the receiver the way it had come across the bar — unhurried, already finished with the small talk. "I'm in New York. Two nights. The Langham, room 1104."

Warren's hand had gone numb around the phone. On the monitor, the spreadsheet sat there with its columns of duration and spread, numbers he'd built with his own hands that morning, and they looked like something from another man's desk. "I — when did you —"

"Tonight. Seven." A pause, and Warren could hear the man's breath, slow, the sound of someone who had already decided how the evening would go. "Meet me for a drink."

"I can't just —"

"Tell Claire you're working late."

Warren looked at the glass wall of his office. Beyond it, the trading floor was doing what it always did at four in the afternoon, a woman in a headset laughing at something on her screen, a junior carrying a stack of term sheets like he was afraid they'd bite. Nobody was looking at him. Nobody ever looked at him. "How do you know her name?"

"You told me in Miami. You tell me a great deal, Warren." The words landed without weight, which was worse than if they'd been sharp. "Seven. Come as Warren. Not the other one. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Do not bring anything. No suitcase. Nothing in your pockets but your wallet and your keys. I have everything you need."

Warren's thumb found the edge of his desk and pressed until the nail went white. "Dominic —"

"You need this, don't you, Warren." It wasn't a question, the way he said it. It was a man reading a label out loud. "Say it."

The door to his office was closed. The blinds were half down. He could have lied. He had been lying for six years, to Claire, to his mother, to the men on the site who thought Willow was a woman in Ohio. "Yes," he said, and his voice came out thin. "I need it."

"Then seven. And Warren — no sex. Not today. Not yet."

Warren's mouth went dry. "Then what —"

"You're going to be the sissy transvestite on display. That's all. I'm going to dress you. In my room, on my terms, and you're going to stand there and let me look at what I made." A beat, and Warren heard ice move in a glass. "That's what you've been doing alone in hotel rooms for six years, isn't it. Getting yourself pretty and wishing there was a man in the chair."

Warren closed his eyes. The trading floor noise came through the glass, muffled, the way sound came through water. "Yes."

"Seven o'clock. Don't be late, and don't be early. I'll be watching the lobby."

The line went dead. Warren sat with the receiver against his ear for a moment before he set it down, and then he looked at the little clock in the corner of his monitor and did the arithmetic — the 4:12 that meant he had two hours and forty-eight minutes, and a call to make, and the rest of a quarter he was supposed to be reviewing.

He called Claire from the stairwell.

"The Gardiners are doing a dinner," she said, before he'd gotten two words out. "I told them we'd come. I know you hate it, but Margaret's been impossible since the promotion and —"

"I can't. I'm sorry. There's a — the Boston desk is sending something over tonight, they want it looked at before the open." He heard himself and hated the smoothness of it, the way the lie came out already ironed. "I'll be late."

"How late?"

"I don't know. Nine. Ten."

The pause on the line had a shape to it. He could picture her in the kitchen with the phone tucked against her shoulder, opening the refrigerator, the little sigh she made when she was deciding not to have the conversation. "All right," she said. "I'll tell them you're sick."

"Claire —"

"It's fine. It's work. It's always work." A cupboard closed. "Don't skip dinner, though. There's leftover chicken in the —"

"I'll eat."

"You won't." And she hung up, not unkindly, the way she hung up on everyone, and Warren stood in the stairwell with the concrete cold against his shoulder and listened to the building breathe through its vents.

He went home and changed. He stood in front of the closet for a long time and then chose the charcoal Zegna and the blue tie, the one she'd picked out, and he shaved again even though he'd shaved that morning. He looked at himself in the bathroom mirror with the razor in his hand and his short brown hair still damp at the temples, and he thought: come as Warren. Not the other one. And he put the razor down and buttoned his collar and did not open the closet behind the winter coats.

The Langham had a lobby like a bank vault done in marble, all pillars and low light and a doorman who said good evening, sir, without looking up from his phone. Warren crossed the marble with his shoes clicking and his hands loose at his sides, and he could feel the room doing what rooms did — the woman at reception, the couple in the corner, the bellman with the cart — and none of them looked at him. He was five-six and a hundred and twenty-five pounds and he had spent his whole life being the man nobody turned to look at twice.

The elevator took him up. The hallway on eleven was quieter than the one in Miami, the carpet a deep blue, the doors set far apart, and he found 1104 and stood in front of it with his heart going and his hand flat on the door for a moment before he knocked.

It opened before his knuckles had landed twice.

Dominic stood in the doorway in shirtsleeves, the black suit jacket gone, his tie loosened, his forearms bare and thick. He looked at Warren the way he had in Miami — top of the head to the shoes and back up — and then he stepped aside. "You're on time."

"You said not to be."

"I said not to be late. There's a difference." Dominic closed the door behind him and turned the deadbolt, and the click of it went through Warren's chest. "Jacket off. Hang it up. Then come here."

The room was a suite, bigger than the one in Miami, with a sitting room and a tall window that looked out on the dark and the lights of the park. A garment bag lay across the bed in the next room through the open door, and beside it a flat leather case, and a pair of shoes on the bench at its foot with the heels catching the lamp. Warren took off his jacket and hung it in the closet and folded his tie over the hanger the way he always did, and when he turned around Dominic was standing by the window with a glass in his hand and his eyes on him.

"You're nervous."

"Yes."

"Good. Sit down." Dominic nodded at the armchair. "And tell me what you told yourself on the way over. Not the polished version. The one you told yourself in the taxi."

Warren sat. The chair was low and deep and his feet came off the floor. "I told myself I was going to come up here and you were going to want to — that we'd —"

"That I'd fuck you."

Warren's face went hot. "Yes."

"And?"

"And I told myself I wasn't going to be able to. That I'd get up here and I'd be a man in a suit and I'd — I'd go home." He looked at his hands. The nails were clean and square. He hadn't painted them. "I told myself I'd be a coward."

"But you came up."

"I came up."

Dominic set his glass down and crossed the room. He stood over the chair, and Warren had to look up, and the angle of it, the way he had to crane his neck, did something to his stomach that was not fear and was not quite anything he had a word for. "I'm going to say this once," Dominic said. "Tonight you do what I tell you. When I tell you. If I tell you to stand, you stand. If I tell you to stop, you stop. If you don't like something, you say the word and we're done and I'll call you a cab and you'll never hear from me again. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

"Say the word."

"I —" Warren's throat worked. "What word?"

"Any word you like. Pick one you won't say by accident."

He thought of Baxter on the radiator, the cat who slept on Claire's pillow and ignored him. "Baxter," he said.

Dominic's mouth moved, not quite a smile. "Baxter. All right." He reached down and took Warren's chin between his thumb and forefinger, and Warren's whole body went still. "Now. Stand up, and take off the rest of it. Everything. Fold it. I want to see what I'm working with."

Warren stood. His fingers found his shirt buttons and undid them one by one, and he folded the shirt the way his mother had taught him, sleeves in, collar straight, and laid it on the arm of the chair. The undershirt went next. Then his belt, his trousers, his socks, his shoes, until he was standing in his briefs in the middle of a hotel suite with his narrow shoulders and his flat stomach and the pale skin of his chest, and Dominic walked a slow circle around him without saying anything at all.

"Turn around."

Warren turned. The window showed him his own reflection, small and pale against the dark, and behind him Dominic's reflection, broad and still.

"When did you last eat?"

"Lunch. A sandwich at my desk."

"You're going to want to have eaten more than that." Dominic went to the bed and unzipped the garment bag. "Come here."

Inside the bag was the corset. Black, steel-boned, the same twenty-four inches, but the lacing was different — a busk at the front, the long pull at the back, and a matching set of stockings and a garter belt folded beneath it. Beside the bag, the flat leather case opened to rows of makeup, and the shoes on the bench were black patent stilettos with a platform sole and an ankle strap and a heel that had to be six inches, and Warren looked at all of it and felt his cock move against his briefs and hated himself for it and didn't look away.

"Hands on the footboard," Dominic said. "And don't move them."

Warren put his hands on the footboard. The wood was cool under his palms. Dominic came up behind him and Warren felt the corset settle against his back, the busk cold at his front, and then the laces began to pull.

"Breathe in."

He breathed in. The corset closed. His ribs ached and his waist went and the breath went out of him in a rush.

"Again."

He breathed in. The laces pulled tighter. His hands went white on the footboard.

"Again."

"I can't —"

"You can. Breathe in."

He breathed in. The last of it went, and he was cinched to twenty-four inches, and the room had a slight tilt to it, and Dominic's hands were warm at his waist, turning him around.

The breast plate came out of the bag. Silicone, warm from the room, and Dominic fitted it over Warren's chest and settled the straps at his shoulders, and the weight of it pulled him forward, and the nipples stood up small and hard against the silicone. Dominic's thumb brushed one and Warren made a sound and his hips moved before he could stop them.

"Stand still."

The stockings came next. Dominic knelt and rolled them up Warren's legs one at a time, sheer black, and clipped them to the garter belt with small precise clicks, and Warren stood with his hands at his sides and looked at the top of Dominic's head, the gray at the temples, and could not believe that this was happening in a hotel room on Central Park South and not in his own imagination.

"Sit."

Warren sat on the edge of the bed. Dominic brought the shoes and fitted them on, one and then the other, the ankle strap buckled, and when he pulled Warren to his feet the room dropped away and Warren swayed and Dominic's hand at his elbow held him up.

"Now the face," Dominic said.

He did the makeup himself, standing over Warren where he sat in the chair, and his hands were steadier than Warren's had ever been. The primer, the foundation, blended down the jaw. The powder. The brows, sketched in short feathery strokes. The shadow, gray and charcoal, into the crease. The eyeliner, a thin black wing, and Warren's eyes watered and he didn't blink. The lashes went on with Dominic's thumb pressing at the inner corner, holding until it stuck, and then the other side, and then the lips — the plumper first, cold and tingling, and then the gloss, thick and wet and pink, Dominic's thumb on his chin the whole time.

The wig came last. Blonde, long, fitted over Warren's short brown hair and settled against his forehead, and Dominic tucked the stray strands behind his ears and stepped back.

"Stand up," he said. "And look at yourself."

Warren stood. The heels put him at five-eleven and the room had gone strange and tall around him. He turned to the mirror over the dresser, and Willow looked back — blonde and blue-eyed with a mouth like wet candy and lashes that made her look perpetually surprised, cinched to twenty-four inches, her tits pushed up and out, her legs in sheer black, her feet in six inches of patent leather.

"There she is," Dominic said.

Warren's throat closed. He stood there and let himself be looked at, and Dominic walked a slow circle around him, and the silence went on so long that Warren could hear the traffic eleven floors down and the ice machine in the hall and his own breath coming shallow through his nose.

"Turn," Dominic said. "Slow."

Warren turned. The heels made him sway and he put a hand out and found the dresser and held on.

"Again."

He turned again. The stockings whispered. The corset dug into his ribs with every breath and the plate pulled at his shoulders and the wig was warm against his neck, and Dominic stood by the window with his arms crossed and watched him the way a man watched a thing he had made.

"You've been doing this alone for six years," Dominic said. "In hotel rooms. In front of a laptop. And nobody ever saw you."

"No."

"And now?"

Warren looked at him. The window behind Dominic was black and the city was a scatter of lights and the man's face was half in shadow, and Warren's cock was hard under the latex-free black of his stockings and the garter belt, and his hands were shaking, and he had never in his life felt so exposed or so looked at. "Now someone sees me," he said.

"Someone sees Willow." Dominic crossed the room and stopped in front of him, close, and his hand came up and his thumb brushed Warren's swollen bottom lip, smearing the gloss. "And Willow's going to stand there and be looked at for as long as I want. Aren't you."

"Yes."

"Say it properly."

Warren's voice came out breathy and high, and it was Willow's voice, and it was his. "Yes. I'll stand here and be looked at for as long as you want."

Dominic's thumb stayed on his lip a moment longer. Then he stepped back and picked up his glass and sat down in the armchair, and he looked up at Warren standing there in six-inch heels with his hands at his sides. "Good," he said. "Now turn around again. Slower this time. And don't stop until I tell you."

Warren turned. The heels made him sway, and the stockings whispered against each other, and the corset held his waist so tight that every breath was a small, deliberate thing. He turned slowly, the way Dominic had taught him in Miami, one hand trailing the air for balance, and he heard the traffic eleven floors down and the ice machine in the hall and his own blood moving in his ears.

"Slower."

He slowed. The wig swung against his shoulders. The latex dress creaked with the movement of his hips, and he felt the hem ride up the backs of his thighs, and he did not stop to pull it down. He turned until he faced the window, and the city was a black mirror full of lights, and he could see himself in it — blonde and cinched and absurd — and behind him, Dominic's reflection, sitting in the armchair with his glass, watching.

"Stop."

Warren stopped. He stood facing the window with his back to the room, his hands at his sides, his breath coming shallow, and he heard Dominic set the glass down on the table and stand up and cross the carpet toward him.

"You're beautiful like this," Dominic said, close behind him now, close enough that Warren could feel the warmth of him. "You know that. You've always known it. That's why you've been doing this alone for six years, getting yourself pretty in hotel rooms with nobody to see."

Warren's throat worked. "Yes."

"But there's one part of you that isn't beautiful yet." Dominic's hand came to his hip, just resting there, the weight of it through the latex. "One part that's still trying to be a man. Even now. Even with the dress and the wig and the heels. It's still there, isn't it, Warren. Pressing against the inside of that dress."

Warren's face went hot. The wig felt heavy on his head. The room was very quiet.

"Turn around," Dominic said. "And look at me."

Warren turned. The heels made him sway and Dominic's hand at his hip steadied him, and he stood there in the black latex with his hands at his sides and his eyes on Dominic's face, and he could feel his cock, small and hard, trapped against his belly where the corset pressed it flat.

"I'm going to show you something," Dominic said. He let go of Warren's hip and reached into his jacket pocket, and his hand came out with something small and gleaming in the low light of the suite.

Warren looked at it. It was a chastity device, stainless steel, thimble-sized — a ring, an inch in diameter, and a flat cap that would cover a man's cock entirely, with a small lock where the two met. It was a thing made to hide a man, to make him smooth and sealed and gone.

Warren's mouth went dry. His heart was going, a hard fast beat he could feel in his throat and his wrists and the very tips of his fingers.

"You've thought about this," Dominic said, turning the device over in his hand. "Haven't you. Lying in your bed in the West Village next to your wife, thinking about what it would be like to not have to be a man at all."

"I —" Warren's voice came out thin. "I've never — I've never seen one. In person."

"But you've looked at them online."

Warren's eyes dropped to the device in Dominic's hand. The steel caught the light. "Yes."

"And you've imagined it. The weight of it. The way it would feel to be locked, to be sealed, to know that you couldn't get hard even if you wanted to." Dominic's voice was low and even, the same voice he'd used at the bar in Miami. "To know that the man part of you was gone, and all that was left was the woman you've been trying to be your whole life."

Warren's hands were shaking. He could feel his cock, small and hard, pressing against the corset, and he could feel the shame of it like a heat in his chest, and he could not look away from the steel thing in Dominic's hand.

"Do you want this, Warren?"

Warren's throat closed. He looked at the device, at the ring and the cap and the small lock, and he thought of his own body — the narrow shoulders, the flat stomach, the small soft cock that had never once in his life felt like it belonged to him — and he said, "Yes."

"Say it properly."

"I want it." His voice cracked. "I want — I want you to lock me. I want to be sealed. I want to not have to be a man anymore."

"Good." Dominic reached down and took Warren's hand, and the contact was warm and firm, and he led him to the bed and sat him down on the edge of it. "Lift the dress."

Warren's hands went to the hem of the latex dress, and he pulled it up over his hips, baring his stockings and the garter belt and the small hard cock that stood up from his pale belly, incongruous and pink and wrong against all that black lace. He felt his face go hot and he didn't look down. He looked at Dominic instead, at the man's dark eyes and the gray at his temples and the calm, unhurried way he was looking at Warren's exposed body.

"Lie back," Dominic said.

Warren lay back on the bed. The corset dug into his ribs and the wig spread out around his head on the duvet and the heels were still on his feet, and he lay there with his dress rucked up around his waist and his small cock standing up from his belly and his heart going, and Dominic knelt at the foot of the bed and looked at him.

"You're small," Dominic said. Not unkindly. "Smaller than most men. Softer. That's good. That's what we want, isn't it."

Warren's voice came out breathy and high. "Yes."

Dominic's hand closed around Warren's cock, and Warren's whole body jumped. The touch was warm and firm and utterly matter-of-fact, and Dominic held him there, small and hard in his palm, and said, "This is the last time you'll feel this. The last time you'll be hard. After tonight, this belongs to me, and it stays soft."

Warren's breath caught. He could feel his cock throbbing in Dominic's hand, small and desperate, and he could feel the words going through him like a wire, and he said, "Yes. I want —"

"I know what you want." Dominic's thumb moved over the head of Warren's cock, once, and Warren's hips came off the bed and a sound came out of him that he hadn't meant to make. "But you don't get to come. You haven't earned that. And after tonight, you won't be able to."

He let go. Warren lay there breathing hard, his chest heaving against the corset, his small cock wet at the tip, and Dominic picked up the steel device from where he'd set it on the nightstand.

"This is going to be cold," Dominic said. "Don't move."

The ring went on first. Dominic worked Warren's balls through it, one at a time — they were small, pea-sized, tight against his body — and then the cock through after them. The steel was cold and heavy and it pulled everything flush against Warren's abdomen, and Warren felt the pressure of it, the way it held him flat and sealed.

Then the cap. Dominic fitted it over Warren's cock, and the steel closed around it, and there was a small click as the lock engaged, and Warren felt the weight of it settle against his belly — a smooth, sealed, flat plate where his cock had been.

"There," Dominic said. He sat back and looked at Warren, and his eyes were dark and pleased. "There she is."

Warren looked down. The dress was still rucked up around his waist, and where his small cock had stood up from his belly, there was now only the flat steel cap, sealed and locked. His balls were gone, pulled tight against his body. He was smooth and sealed and complete, and the sight of it sent a shock through him that was shame and relief and hunger all tangled together.

"Sit up," Dominic said.

Warren sat up. The weight of the device settled against him, and he felt it with every movement — the way it held him, the way it pressed, the way it made him aware of his own body as something sealed and finished.

Dominic stood over him. "You're never going to get hard again, Warren. Not for your wife. Not for anyone. You're going to stay soft and smooth and sealed, and the only way you'll ever feel pleasure is through that. Through being what you are." He reached down and took Warren's chin between his thumb and forefinger. "You understand?"

Warren's throat worked. "Yes."

"Say it."

"I'm never going to get hard again." His voice came out Willow's, breathy and high. "I'm sealed. I'm — I'm not a man anymore."

"That's right." Dominic's thumb moved over Warren's lip, smearing the gloss. "And I'm keeping the key. The only one. You're never going to be released, Warren. Not by me, not by anyone. This is yours now, for as long as I want you."

The words went through Warren like a current. He could feel the steel against his belly, the weight of it, the finality of it, and he could feel his own cock, small and soft and sealed, trying to stir against the cap and failing. He looked up at Dominic and said, "Yes. I want that. I want to be yours."

Dominic's mouth moved, not quite a smile. "I know." He let go of Warren's chin and stepped back. "Stand up. Pull your dress down. And come here."

Warren stood. The heels made him sway and he put a hand out and found the dresser and held on. He pulled the latex dress down over his hips, and it settled over the steel device, hiding it completely. He was smooth and sealed and dressed, and nobody looking at him would ever know what was underneath.

Dominic had his phone out. "Come to the window."

Warren crossed the room on the heels, and Dominic guided him to stand before the tall window that looked out over the dark and the lights of the park. The city was spread out below them, thousands of windows, thousands of lives, and Warren stood in front of the glass in his black latex dress and his blonde wig and his six-inch heels, and he could see his own reflection in the dark — a woman, beautiful and absurd and completely sealed.

"Don't move," Dominic said.

Warren stood in front of the window, the city spread out below him, and he could feel Dominic's phone in the air between them, the eye of it, the recording. Dominic moved behind him, and Warren heard the soft sound of his footsteps on the carpet, and then Dominic's hand was on his shoulder, turning him slightly, positioning him like a man arranging a mannequin.

"The city can't see you," Dominic said, his voice low against Warren's ear. "But they could. If they looked up. If they happened to glance at this window, they'd see a woman in a black latex dress, six-inch heels, blonde hair, standing in a hotel room on the thirty-first floor. And they'd never know what's underneath. They'd never know you're sealed."

Dominic's hand left Warren's shoulder, and the absence of it was a small coldness. The phone was still in his other hand, held low, recording. Warren could feel the eye of it on the backs of his thighs, on the curve of his hip where the latex hugged him, and he stood very still because he had been told to.

"Tell me how you feel," Dominic said. Not a question. An instruction, delivered against the shell of Warren's ear. "Right now, standing in front of this window. The city below you. The dress. The heels. The steel." A pause. "Say it."

Warren's mouth opened. The words felt like they belonged to someone else, or to the woman in the glass who was looking back at him with her blue eyes and her blonde hair and her small sealed body. "Shame," he said, and his voice came out Willow's, breathy and high. "Humiliation. I feel — I feel like everyone can see me. Like they know. Even though they can't." His hands were trembling at his sides. "And I want them to. I want someone to look up and see me like this and know exactly what I am."

Dominic was quiet for a moment. Then his hand came back to Warren's hip, a warm heavy claim through the latex, and he turned Warren slightly so that the recording would catch his face in profile against the dark glass. "And the hunger," Dominic said. "Where is it?"

"It's —" Warren's throat worked. The corset held him so tight. "It's everywhere. It's in my stomach and my chest and my — it's in the steel. It's the only place I can feel it now. The wanting. It's all I have left."

"Good." Dominic's thumb pressed once into the latex at Warren's hip, a small mark of approval. "That's the truth of it. That's the whole truth of you, Warren. Standing here in a dress in front of a window on the thirty-first floor, wanting to be seen, wanting to be known, wanting to be used — and sealed so you can't do a thing about it except feel that wanting."

Warren's eyes were wet. He didn't know when they had gotten wet. The city shimmered beyond the glass, and his reflection shimmered with it, blonde and cinched and trembling, and he said, "Yes."

"Now," Dominic said, and his hand left Warren's hip and the warmth of him stepped back, "turn around. Face me. And tell me what you are."

Warren turned. The heels made him sway and he caught himself on the windowsill, his fingers gripping the cold marble, and he stood there in the black latex with the city at his back and Dominic's phone recording him and the steel sealed against his belly, and he said, "I'm Willow." His voice cracked on the name, then steadied. "I'm a doll. I'm yours."

Dominic's mouth moved, not quite a smile. "That's right." He pocketed the phone, and the eye of it was gone, and the room felt suddenly larger and quieter. "And a doll doesn't hide in a hotel room. A doll gets shown off. A doll goes where her owner takes her and stands where she's put and lets the world look at her." He walked to the armchair and picked up his glass, and the whiskey moved in it, amber and slow. "We're going down to the lobby bar."

Warren's heart went hard against the corset. "The — the lobby?"

"You heard me." Dominic took a drink. "No sex tonight. I told you that. You haven't earned that, and you won't for a long time. But you're going to walk out of this room on my arm, in that dress and those heels, and you're going to let every man in that bar look at you and wonder what you are. And you're going to smile and say nothing and be the prettiest thing in the room." He set the glass down. "That's what you want, isn't it. To be seen. To be known. To be taken somewhere and shown off like the doll you are."

Warren's mouth was dry. His hands were shaking. Every nerve in his body was alive with the terror of it and the hunger of it, the two braided so tight he couldn't tell them apart. "What if someone — what if someone talks to me? What if they ask —"

"Then you look at me," Dominic said, "and you wait. And I'll handle it. Because that's what a doll does. A doll doesn't speak unless her owner says she can." He crossed to Warren and took his chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting his face up. "You understand?"

Warren looked up at him, at the dark eyes and the gray at his temples and the calm unhurried certainty of him, and he said, "Yes."

"Good." Dominic let go. "Now. The mirror. Fix your lipstick. You've been crying and it's smeared."

Warren crossed to the vanity on the heels, the stockings whispering, the corset holding him so tight that every step was a small deliberate act of surrender. He sat on the little velvet stool and looked at himself in the mirror — the blonde wig, the blue eyes still bright with wet, the red gloss smeared at the corner of his mouth where Dominic's thumb had dragged it.

He picked up the lipstick. The tube was warm from the lamp. He twisted it up and leaned into the mirror and painted his lips with a steady hand, the way he had practiced alone in hotel rooms for six years, and when he was done he pressed his lips together and looked at the woman in the glass and felt something settle in his chest, quiet and complete.

He was terrified. He was also, for the first time in his life, exactly where he was supposed to be.

Dominic appeared behind him in the mirror, adjusting his cuffs. He looked at Warren's reflection — the blonde hair, the glossy lips, the cinched waist, the small sealed body in its black latex — and his eyes were dark and pleased. "There she is," he said. "Now stand up and come here."

Warren stood. The heels made him sway and he steadied himself on the vanity, then crossed the room to Dominic, the latex creaking with every step, the steel a small constant weight against his belly. He stopped in front of him and looked up.

Dominic reached out and smoothed a strand of the wig behind Warren's ear, a gesture almost tender. "You're going to be the most beautiful thing in that bar," he said. "And every man who looks at you is going to want you, and none of them are going to have you. Because you're mine. You understand that, don't you."

"Yes," Warren said. His voice was Willow's, soft and sure.

"Say it."

"I'm yours."

Dominic's hand came to the small of Warren's back, warm through the latex, and guided him toward the door. "Then let's go show you off."

The door opened onto the carpeted hall, and the light was different out there — brighter, flatter, the light of the real world. Warren's heart was going and his hands were shaking and the heels clicked on the floor as Dominic walked him to the elevator, one hand at the small of his back, a claim and a steadying all at once.

The elevator doors slid open. A middle-aged couple stood inside, the woman in a floral dress, the man in a polo shirt. They looked up as Dominic and Warren stepped in, and the woman's eyes went to Warren — the blonde hair, the glossy lips, the black latex — and held there for a moment before she looked away, her face carefully blank.

Warren felt the look like a physical thing. The shame and the hunger braided tight in his chest. He looked at the floor, and Dominic's hand pressed once at the small of his back, a small instruction: you're fine. you're mine. let them look.

The elevator descended. The numbers counted down. Thirty. Twenty-nine. Twenty-eight.

Warren could smell the man's cologne in the small space, could feel the woman's eyes sliding over him again and away, and he stood very still with his hands at his sides and his chin up, the way Dominic had taught him, the way a doll stood when it was being shown off.

The doors opened onto the lobby.

Dominic's hand stayed at the small of his back, and the lobby opened up around them — high ceilings, black marble veined with something gold, a chandelier that hung low enough to make Warren feel like the light was looking at him directly. His heels clicked across the floor and he counted them without meaning to. Four, five, six. The latex pulled at his thighs with every step and the steel sat against his belly like a held breath.

"Slow down," Dominic said, quiet, close to his ear. "You're walking like a man late for a train."

Warren slowed. The change did something to his hips — made them swing, made the dress ride, made the whole length of him from shoulder to ankle into a single slow line. A bellman with a cart stopped pushing and watched him pass. Warren felt it land on the side of his face like sun.

The bar was off the lobby to the left, raised a step behind a brass rail, and it was fuller than Warren expected for a Thursday at seven. Men in suits at the low tables. Two women with wine glasses and shopping bags at their feet. A bartender in a vest shaking something silver over his head. The light in there was amber and low, and it made everyone look expensive.

Dominic took the step first and turned and offered his hand. Warren took it. The heels made a small negotiation of the step and Dominic's grip closed and lifted him through it, and then he was standing on the carpet of the bar with his hand still in a man's warm hand and every eye in the room turning toward the door.

It wasn't every eye. Warren knew that. It was four men at the tables and the bartender and the woman nearest the rail, and the rest would come later, in glances, in second looks over the tops of their drinks. But four was enough. Four was a room.

"There," Dominic said, and let go of his hand and guided him by the elbow to the bar. Not the end of it. The middle. Right in the trough of the light, where the bartender would have to come and where the men at the tables would have to look past their own reflections in the mirror behind the bottles.

"Stand here," Dominic said. "Hands at your sides. Chin up. Don't lean on the bar."

Warren stood. His hands hung at his sides and the corset held him so straight that standing was its own kind of work, and the steel pressed flat and warm now against his belly, and he looked at the bottles and did not look at the men looking at him.

Dominic leaned one elbow on the bar and ordered in a voice that carried no further than it needed to. "Bourbon. Neat. And a glass of water."

"Two glasses?" the bartender said. Young. A silver hoop in one ear.

"One. The water's for her."

The bartender's eyes went to Warren and stayed a beat too long. Warren watched him take in the blonde wig and the glossy mouth and the black latex and the way the corset had made a shape of him that no man's body made, and then the bartender looked back at Dominic and nodded once and went for the bottle.

Warren's face was hot. He could feel the heat in his ears under the wig and along the back of his neck, and he kept his chin up and his eyes on the mirror, and in the mirror he could see the men at the table behind him. Two of them had stopped talking. One of them — gray at the temples like Dominic, a wedding band, a loosened tie — was looking at Warren's legs in the sheer black stockings and the six inches of patent leather and not pretending otherwise.

"You're blushing," Dominic said, not looking at him. "I can see it from here. It's gone all the way down your throat."

"I know."

"Don't stop it. It's the prettiest thing about you right now."

The bourbon came. Dominic took it and turned and stood shoulder to shoulder with Warren, both of them facing the room, and the bartender set the water down in front of Warren without being asked and Warren said, "Thank you," and heard his own voice — Willow's voice, soft and high and a little breathless — come out into the bar and be heard.

The man with the wedding band turned his chair.

Warren saw it in the mirror. The small scrape of wood on carpet, the way the man's knee came around, the way he sat back with his glass against his chest and settled in to look. Not approaching. Just looking, the way a man looked at a car he couldn't afford.

"Someone's found you," Dominic said. He hadn't turned his head. He was watching the room in the mirror the same way Warren was. "Don't look at him. Look at me."

Warren turned his head. Dominic's face was close and half-lit and utterly calm, and Warren looked at him and felt the room at his back like a hand.

"Every man in this bar is doing arithmetic right now," Dominic said. "They're looking at you and they're deciding. Is that a woman. Is that a woman who's had work done, or is that something else. And then they're looking at me and they're deciding the second thing. What's he got that I haven't." He lifted the bourbon and drank. "You're the only one in here who doesn't have to decide anything. You just have to stand."

"I don't feel like I'm standing," Warren said. "I feel like I'm being read."

"Good. That's the whole point of you."

A woman laughed somewhere near the window, high and bright, and it broke the spell of the room for a moment, and Warren let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding. The corset let him have about half of it back. He picked up the water and drank, and the glass was cold and the water was cold and it went down past the tight cinch of his waist and he felt every inch of it go.

"Small sips," Dominic said. "You're not a man at a water cooler."

Warren set the glass down. Took a smaller sip. Set it down again.

The man with the wedding band got up. Warren saw it in the mirror — the chair pushed back, the napkin dropped on the table, the slow casual walk that wasn't casual — and his hand went cold around the water glass.

"Dominic."

"I see him." Dominic didn't move. His elbow stayed on the bar and his bourbon stayed in his hand and his eyes came around slowly to meet the man's approach in the mirror, and there was something in the set of his shoulders that Warren had not seen before and that made the hair on his arms stand up under the latex.

The man stopped a respectful distance away. Up close he was shorter than he'd looked sitting down, and softer, and the wedding band was gold and wide. "Evening," he said, to Dominic, and then his eyes came to Warren and stayed. "I don't mean to intrude. I'm here for the medical conference. Cardio." He said it like a credential. "I saw you come in and I thought — well. I thought I'd say hello."

Warren's mouth was dry. He looked at Dominic, and Dominic looked back at him, and the look said: wait.

"She doesn't speak," Dominic said.

The man blinked. "Oh. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to — is she —"

"She's mine," Dominic said, and the words were not loud and not unkind and they closed over the conversation like a lid. "She stands where I put her and she doesn't speak unless I say she can. Tonight I haven't said she can."

The man's face did something complicated. His eyes went to Warren's mouth, to the glossy wet of it, and then down the black latex to the stockings, and then back up to Dominic. "I see," he said. "Well." He cleared his throat. "No offense meant."

"None taken."

The man went back to his table. Warren watched him go in the mirror and watched him sit down and say something to the other man and watched the other man look over and then look away and then look back. His heart was going so hard he could feel it in the steel.

"Breathe," Dominic said. "You stopped."

Warren breathed. The corset let him have half of it. "He thought — he thought I was —"

"He thought you were a woman he could talk to. And then he found out you were a woman he couldn't." Dominic turned his glass a quarter turn on the bar. "Which is worse for him. Now he's going to sit at that table all night and think about the thing he wanted and couldn't have, and he's going to look at you every few minutes and hate himself a little more each time. That's what you do to a room, Willow. You make men do arithmetic and come out wrong."

Warren looked at himself in the mirror. The blonde hair fell over one shoulder and the lips were still wet and the black latex held him like a hand, and behind him the room was full of men who had done arithmetic tonight and come out wrong. He did not look away from himself. He stood the way Dominic had told him to stand, hands at his sides, chin up, not leaning, and he let the room look.

"Another?" the bartender said.

"One more," Dominic said. "And then we're going up." He slid his glass forward and turned to Warren, and his hand came to the back of Warren's neck, warm and heavy, and rested there. "You did well. You stood there and you let them look and you didn't flinch and you didn't speak. That's not nothing. Most men can't do it." His thumb moved once along the tendon at the side of Warren's neck. "You're going to sleep in that corset tonight. And the steel stays on. And in the morning you're going to come down to this bar in daylight, in whatever I put you in, and you're going to stand in the window light and let the breakfast crowd look at you."

Warren's throat worked under the man's hand. "In daylight."

"In daylight. Where they can see everything." Dominic's thumb pressed once, and let go, and he picked up his fresh bourbon. "Drink your water. Then we go up."

Warren picked up the water. His hand was steady now. That was the thing he noticed — his hand was steady, and the glass was cold, and the room behind him was still full of men looking, and he drank his water in small sips the way he'd been told and set it down and turned his face up to Dominic's and waited to be told what came next.

The elevator doors closed and the lobby went away, and Warren stood in the small bright box of the car with his reflection coming at him from three sides. His lip gloss had gone a little matte at the center of his mouth. The blonde hair had shifted. He lifted one hand to fix it and Dominic's hand came down on his wrist without hurry.

"Leave it."

"It's crooked."

"It's a little crooked because a room full of men looked at you. That's not a flaw. That's the record of the evening." Dominic let go of his wrist and pressed the button for the eleventh floor and stood back against the rail. "Hands at your sides."

Warren put his hands at his sides. The car climbed and the steel of the corset pressed him against the inside of himself, and he watched the floor numbers change and felt the water he'd drunk sitting cold in his stomach above the cinch. His calves ached from the heels in a way that had gone past pain into something dull and constant, like a hand he'd learned to hold.

"You're thinking about tomorrow," Dominic said.

"Yes."

"Don't. You'll do it wrong in your head and then you'll have to live it anyway." The doors opened on a corridor the color of weak tea. Dominic stepped out first and turned and offered his hand again, and Warren took it and stepped down and the patent leather made its small sound on the carpet and stopped. "Room's at the end. Walk in front of me. Don't look back at me. If I stop, you stop. If I say something, you don't turn around to answer it."

Warren walked. The corridor was long and quiet and the doors on either side were closed and he could hear the ice machine humming somewhere around a corner, and his own heels were the loudest thing in the world. Behind him Dominic's shoes made no sound at all. Warren felt the distance between them the way he'd felt the room in the mirror — a thing at his back, patient, not needing to be looked at.

Halfway down, Dominic said, "Slower."

Warren slowed. His hips found the new rhythm and the latex pulled across his thighs and he felt the seam of the tanga under the dress shift a half inch and he did not reach to fix it. He walked the rest of the corridor at that pace, and the thing he was aware of, more than the ache, more than the cold water, was that he was being watched from behind by a man who had already decided what he was worth and had not yet been wrong about it.

"Stop."

Warren stopped. He heard Dominic come up behind him — close, then closer — and then a key card slid past his shoulder into the lock, and the lock made its small green sound, and Dominic's hand came around him and pushed the door open without touching him anywhere else.

"In."

The room was dark and cool and smelled of the sea through the glass. Warren stepped inside and the door closed behind them and the corridor's light went out of the room, and for a moment there was only the blue of the harbor coming through the window and the low red eye of the television and the shape of his own reflection standing in the middle of the floor with his hands at his sides.

Dominic turned on one lamp. Not the overhead. The one on the desk, low and yellow, and it made the room small and made the bed a wide pale thing and made Warren stand out against the dark window like something lit for a photograph.

"Turn around."

Warren turned. The heels made him do it slowly, in a circle, and the dress rode and the blonde hair swung and he came around to face the man standing with his back to the door and his arms folded and his eyes going down the length of him and back up without any hurry at all.

"That's what I wanted to see," Dominic said. "In the bar I had to imagine it. Here I don't." He crossed the room and set his keys on the desk and his wallet beside them, and then he came back and stopped a foot away. "Take off the heels."

Warren bent. The corset would not let him bend far, so he went down on one knee instead, and the latex pulled tight across his back, and he worked the strap of the first heel loose with fingers that had gone clumsy and slid the shoe off and set it on the carpet beside him. The floor was cold under his stocking. The second strap came loose and the second shoe came off and he set it beside the first and stayed where he was, one knee on the carpet, looking up.

Dominic looked down at him for a long moment. Then he crouched, and his face came level, and his hand came up and his thumb found the corner of Warren's mouth and pressed there, just enough to smear the gloss.

"There she is," he said. "That's the face I saw in the bar mirror. Not the one you were doing for the room. The one under it."

Warren's eyes were hot. He didn't know why. He kept them open and kept looking up and the thumb stayed at the corner of his mouth.

"Say something," Dominic said. "You've been quiet all night. Say something in her voice."

Warren's throat worked. When it came out it was small and high and it was Willow's. "I don't know what to say."

"That's fine. That's honest." The thumb moved once, slow, along his lower lip. "You can say that. You can always say that to me. The one thing you don't do is pretend you know something you don't, because I'll know, and then we'll both have to be embarrassed."

"I was so scared in there."

"I know. I watched it. You held your chin up anyway." Dominic's hand opened and came to the back of Warren's head and held it, not pushing, just holding, and Warren felt the weight of it go down through his neck and his shoulders and into the steel. "That's the whole trick of you, Willow. You're scared and you stand there anyway. Any man can stand when he's not scared. You do it with your heart going like a bird in your chest and your face painted up and your ass in black latex. That's not weakness. That's the hardest thing in this hotel right now."

Warren's eyes spilled. One tear, then the other, and he felt them go down his cheeks and he felt the mascara let go with them, and he made a small sound he hadn't meant to make.

"Don't wipe it," Dominic said. "Let it dry where it is."

He stood up. His hand stayed on Warren's head a moment longer and then lifted, and he walked to the window and stood looking out at the harbor lights with his back to the room, and Warren stayed on one knee on the carpet with the tears drying on his face and the two empty heels beside him, and the corset held him up and the steel was warm now against his belly and he could hear the sea through the glass, and he waited.

"Get up," Dominic said, without turning. "Wash your face. Then come back and stand where you are now and I'll tell you what tomorrow looks like."