Editor’s Note: This story features depictions of sex work as well as a brief description of sexual assault.
These days, the only thing that gets me off is hate. The older I get, the more I think that’s probably pretty normal, sort of a default state of being, especially if you’re a woman in the city. You’ve got to have something to keep you going. Better than coffee, better than coke, better than sex. Definitely better than sex. Better than that one really great song you’ve got on repeat on the ride home, wearing the big proper headphones you bought not for the quality of the sound but so that men would maybe get the hint that you don’t want to be goddamn talked to.
It’s 4 a.m., my whole body hurts, and this guy decides out of all the empty seats, he’s going to sit next to me and stick his head on my shoulder like he’s trying to sleep or something. And it’s not like I’m afraid of confrontation because I can shove folks off me like it’s my job—I mean, it is my job, some of the time. But it’s like part of me is so pissed I want to go all Jessica Jones on him, lift him up with one hand and throw him clean across the train car, and the other half of me just honestly…doesn’t care. So I let him keep his head on me, all the way from 14th Street to Nostrand Avenue, the train running local and everything.
I mean, what’s the point? Beating him up, even if I could, it wouldn’t make me or anybody else any safer. And so it’s like there’s this ball of messed up feelings just spinning and spinning inside me all the time, all that rage and nowhere to put it. Yeah. All that rage and nowhere to put it—that’s what I’m talking about when I say it’s like the default setting.
These days, when I turn the key in the lock, it’s like spinning a roulette wheel and waiting to see where the ball lands. The lights are off—a good sign. My eyes flick immediately to the couch, where Laney has been passed out more nights than not, but this time it’s empty. Aidan’s tablet and art supplies are stacked neatly on the end of the coffee table. I don’t even realize I’ve been holding my breath until I let out a giant sigh of relief.
In the kitchen, by the light of my phone, I count my cash: $757. Damn, no wonder I had to fight to get put on Saturday nights, and that’s after tipping the DJ and the house mom and all that. I split off $457 and put it in the envelope on the counter. The other $300 goes in my wallet to deposit in the morning—well, afternoon. I have a pretty solid 60/40 rule, which Laney doesn’t exactly know about, but it’s just common sense that if you’re making this kind of money, at a job you know you can’t do forever, you’re going to save as much of it as you can. I tell myself it’s just good financial sense, and nothing to do with how much she’s drinking again. Lately, though, the second the money hits my savings account I wind up having to pull it back out again, to pay for Aidan’s summer camp and his new orthotics and his Adderall and the unlimited MetroCard he managed to lose a week after we bought it, things she either seems to forget about or just never asks the price of.
In the bathroom, I brush my teeth and weigh the cost of waiting till morning to shower. Nothing sinks a girl’s earning potential faster than acne—body acne, I’m talking—and I can feel the grit of the stage all over me like a second skin. My knees are raw. I wipe my makeup off and watch as my own self reappears: soft rounded eyebrows, freckles, pale flabby cheeks under all that contour.
By the time I get out of the shower, it’s practically dawn, and next door at the Dunkin’ Donuts they must be baking everything for the morning because you can smell the sweetness, even with all the windows closed. I never even knew that was a thing till lately—always thought they just shipped them in from somewhere. There’s something so bizarrely comforting and domestic about that smell that for a second I think, yes, I can do this, just breathe. Four counts in, hold for seven, eight counts out.
She’s lying on top of the covers, long red hair falling across her face, reading something on her phone in the not-quite dark. “You okay?” I ask. She does a little shrug thing, pulling me into her, and I brace myself for the smell of tequila on her breath—but it’s not bad tonight.
Out of nowhere, she says, “You ever hear of Servius Tullius?”
“Hmm?” I’m not sure what I was expecting, but not that. “Oh, is that one of your Roman emperors?” Back when she worked as a research assistant in the classics department, she was always coming out with facts like this.
“King, actually,” she says. “So before that. Here.” And she shines the phone at me. It’s open to a Wikipedia page. “So you know the Romans were obsessed with, like, omens and signs from the gods, and one of the big ones that meant you were supposed to do great things was if your head or your hair caught fire. There’s this kid Servius Tullius, he’s like a slave in the palace or wherever, but one day—Whoomph!” She mimes the flames with her hands. “And from that day on they knew he was destined to be the king of Rome.”
I take the phone and sort of skim. I can’t help but smile because I know where she’s going with this. “Okay, so…?”
“So maybe Aidan is just destined for greatness.”
“Riiight. It wasn’t his hair, though. It was his hat. And only after that other kid—what’s his name, like Ambrose or something?—had grabbed it off his head and was tossing it back and forth.”
“No, Ambrose is the one we like. We met his dads, remember? The one who stole the hat is August.”
I’m pretty sure it’s the other way around, but it doesn’t matter. “Miss Jenn says he’s got second-degree burns,” I say.
“Shit.”
“Yeah.” I hand the phone back and burrow into the covers, trying to get comfortable with my head on her bony shoulder. “What are we going to do?”
When Aidan was four, he used to make the flame in Laney’s candles dance. There was never a way to rationalize it. She’d be taking a bath with the door closed, and they’d just shoot back and forth from one candle to the other. When he was five, it was the stove, on and off, on and off in the middle of the night. It got so bad we told the landlord to disconnect the gas and spent that whole year cooking on a little electric hotplate. We were scared to send him to school. Then, all of a sudden, it stopped. For almost five years, nothing. We never said a word about it, and neither did Aidan. I kept telling myself if something had actually happened, he would bring it up sooner or later—wouldn’t he? I pretty much convinced myself I’d imagined the whole thing, and I can only assume Laney did the same; we’ve both been gaslit plenty over the years, so it came fairly natural.
When the art camp he was so excited about said they offered a glassblowing unit—with supervision, of course—we didn’t even think about the risks. I can’t believe I was so stupid.
Laney checks her phone again and groans.
“You going to be okay getting him to the podiatrist?” I ask.
“I slept some earlier,” she says, getting up and reaching for her glasses. “Think I’ll just make some breakfast.”
“If you’re going to be late, just call them this time, okay? Please, we can’t—”
“We can’t afford to miss another, I know. I said I was sorry.”
“I’m not—” I’m too tired to do this again. “I’m not asking for an apology, just please try, okay? When you guys get home, I’ll talk to him.”
* * *
By the time I manage to talk to Aidan, it’s 5 p.m. and I’m packing for work again. He’s rattling back and forth with his tablet, trying to take his shoes off without getting caught. “You have to keep them on!” Laney keeps yelling, to absolutely no effect. It’s funny, the shoes are a daily struggle, but he wouldn’t go anywhere without that ridiculous beanie. It was so small on him at this point that it just sort of perched on the top of his head like a rolled-up condom—he looked like a fucking barista.
Today is not a good Laney day. She must have started early, before I woke up, and every time she thinks Aidan’s not looking, she sneaks another drink. One of these days, he’s going to figure it out.
“Just for a few hours, okay, kiddo?” I say. “For the orthotics. You’ve got to take care of your feet, same as anything else.”
“But it’s not fair,” he says. “You get to wear those six-inch heels, and those can’t be good for your feet.”
Seven-inch, technically, and all I can say is thank god for Pleasers. “Yes, hon, I know. But my feet aren’t growing anymore. And besides, you’ve got Mom’s flat arches.”
“So?”
“So you have to take care of yourself.”
“You said that already.”
I sigh, loudly, the kind of big grown-up sigh that says I’m not engaging in this argument anymore. “Here, why don’t you come help me with my makeup?”
Watching me do my makeup is one of the only things that truly gets Aidan to sit still. He’s totally mesmerized by it, which is funny because to be honest, I would never wear makeup if I didn’t have to. I bought him a set of dupes that he could play with (judgy mom “friends” be damned), but mostly, he just likes to watch me.
Once I’ve got the foundation and brows set, I let him pick out an eyeshadow. “Which do you think, to start?” I ask, holding out the palette.
He points to a deep orange I’ve barely touched. “That.”
“Oh man, you’re always challenging me!” I say, and then immediately regret it. I never want him to see himself as a challenge. “That’ll be fun.” I work in some pinks and purples so it doesn’t totally clash with my hair—a pastel pink ombre situation I spent way too much money on—and eventually wind up with a soft, deep smoky eye I’m reasonably proud of. “What do you think? Like a sunset.”
He shakes his head vigorously.
“No? You don’t like it?”
“I do like it,” he says. “But it’s not a sunset.” He says it like it should be obvious, like of course I see what he sees—and I wish I could. At ten years old, this kid already knows more about line and color than I ever will. He wants to be an artist. He’s even writing a graphic novel, some sort of Rick Riordan–esque fantasy adventure, but of course he won’t let me read it—I wouldn’t understand, apparently.
“Now lipstick,” he says, handing over a matte raspberry called Can’t Be Tamed. Oh boy. This look is gonna be a lot. But I like it—it feels vibrant and fun.
I want, more than anything, just to hold this moment, watching the joy he finds in bringing a picture to life. But I promised I would talk to him. We have a meeting with Miss Jenn in the morning—well, Laney has a meeting with Miss Jenn, technically—and I have no idea what we’re going to say.
“Okay, kiddo. Let’s talk about what happened with Ambrose the other day. In the glassblowing class.”
Before I’ve even finished the sentence, he’s skittered halfway across the room.
“Hey, hey. Stay with me. What’s up?”
“Everybody’s scared of me.”
“You don’t know that, honey. They probably think it was an accident.” The flames literally shot out the end of the demonstrator’s torch and went halfway across the room—“like a laser gun or something,” Miss Jenn said, “like Star Wars, I swear.” Imagine being a twenty-year-old art student and having to make that phone call. “Was it an accident?” If he never even touched the flames, how can they be so sure it was him?
“No, no, not because of that,” Aidan says. “They were scared of me before.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m angry…like all the time.”
This is news to me. Anxious sometimes, but angry? He’s never had outbursts or anything, not more than normal for his age. “What about, hon?”
“I don’t know, I just am.”
“Oh, Aidan, I didn’t know.” I want to wrap him in the biggest hug, but I’m scared he’ll push me away. “Come sit with me again. Does this have something to do with what happened on Friday?”
He shakes his head. “I can’t talk about it. Not with you.”
I try not to let the rejection sting, but it does. It’s like all of a sudden, these past few years, I have a whole new kid. We used to be so close.
When Laney and I first got together, Aidan was so excited about having two mommies. He doesn’t have any memories of his dad—which is for the best as far as L and I are both concerned—but you could tell he felt like there was something missing. For a while, he kept asking when we were going to get married. I would have done it, too. It’s funny, looking back—I had literally just turned twenty-three, never even seriously dated a girl before (though not for lack of trying), but I was all aboard the wife and stepmom train. I knew she drank a lot, but it didn’t seem like a problem back then, not when my ballet friends were getting hooked on coke and cigarettes just to lose a couple inches off their waists, stumbling into class hungover every Monday morning. Laney was six years older than me, this badass survivor single mom, and despite all she’d been through, she seemed like the perfect ideal of Millennial adulthood; she wore pencil skirts, for God’s sake. I wanted to be a part of what she had.
But this was before the whole Supreme Court thing, and if it wasn't valid in Ohio, Laney said, she didn't want it. So, we didn’t. I suppose even then a part of me knew that it might not last, and the thought of coming home a gay divorcee—well, that still sounded like a punchline back then.
I’ll be thirty next year, and the girls I used to dance with are just starting to have babies—hashtag-blessed, hashtag-fitness, working hard to get my body back, like their bodies went missing somewhere along the way. And meanwhile, if my soft little boy is hardening around the edges, if he doesn’t confide in me like he used to—well, that’s a healthy part of growing up, right?
“I know it’s hard, Aidan. If you’d rather talk to Mom, that’s okay.”
“Sometimes I tell her things, and she doesn’t remember.”
Oh god—that stops me in my tracks.
“There is someone, though,” Aidan says. “But…”
“But?”
“But…they’re not here yet.”
Huh? Shit, what if he told someone?
“They’re definitely coming, though,” he says confidently. “In the books, they always come—you’ll see. I can’t be the only one with powers. They’re just really, really…really, really good at hiding.”
“Wow,” I say—such a stupid, condescending thing, but it breaks my heart because of course he would think that. We raised him on that shit—Harry Potter and Percy Jackson and the whole damn canon where somebody always comes for the kid.
But still, I think, if we had been different—if I had done a better job—maybe Laney and I could have been enough.
“You know,” I say, testing the waters, “sometimes it takes us a minute, when we have a kid that’s not quite like us. But I want to understand, Aidan. If you’ll let me.” I have this sudden flashback to myself in my parents’ new kitchen—nineteen and home from college, with my big dykey haircut that didn’t suit me at all, saying I have to tell you something. God, I haven’t thought about that in years.
“I promise you, Aidan, I’m not afraid of you. I love you. You can show me.”
He looks like he’s going to cry, and for a moment, I wonder if I can still take it back. But then he holds out his hands in front of him, balled into fists. And then he flicks up his index finger, like lighting a match, and a single flame sparks into being.
I’ve never seen him this quiet, this still. He opens his hand and the flame grows, licking at his palm, then he passes it from one hand to the other, like pouring a slinky back and forth. Say something, I tell myself. He’s waiting for you to say something.
“Not like a sunset.”
He nods, and grins.
And then, as quickly as it started, he balls his hands into fists again, and the flames disappear. I seize his hands in mine, and they’re cold. They’re so cold. “I love you,” I say again, pulling him close to me, hoping it’s enough. “You know that, right, Aidan? I’m not afraid of you.”
But the moment, whatever it was, is gone. “Okay,” he says, wriggling out of my hug. “Can I take off my shoes now?”
* * *
By the time I get to Fantasy, it’s like I’m a different person. I’ve got my venti iced coffee and my hot bitch attitude, and I’m ready to make some money. Say what you like about it as a coping skill, but I fucking rock at compartmentalization.
Sundays are my favorite. It’s a different kind of crowd. You’re not going to see the wild spenders—at least I haven’t yet—but I’ve got my couple of regulars, and the tourists are good sometimes. If you show up early enough, you can just work the guys at the bar and get a decent string of dances. It’s almost peaceful.
Tonight, I’m the first one here and ready to go. I change into my most Girl Next Door outfit, a cute little silvery halter bodysuit, to balance out the effect of the crazy makeup. Some girls have it all worked out—I swear, like literal spreadsheets of which outfits make them the most money which nights—and maybe I should, but to be honest I just can’t be bothered. To me, it’s not about that, it’s about figuring out people. Show up, be somebody else, know who’s prepared to pay you for indulging their bullshit. That hate I’m talking about, it’s better fuel than you’d think.
The DJ is playing early Rihanna, Good Girl Gone Bad–era. I go straight for the pole by the bar, completely ignoring the couple of guys nursing their drinks. I do a few simple tricks and shake my ass a little, super slow, and then I make eye contact. Just like that, I know I’ve already got them.
I smile and turn my back to the watchers, loving the picture I make, my long pastel pink hair falling perfectly in the soft crease of my back. Above me, the neon pink sign reads, THIS – IS – FANTASY. I bend over and look at them through my legs, then slowly come back up, running my hand along my thigh.
I’ve got my eye on a customer in the corner—white guy, nerd tee shirt, ugly blazer, a watch he probably thinks is expensive. He’s drinking a Blue Moon, looks uncomfortable—sometimes those are the good ones, if they’ve got money. I stare at him until he looks my way, then keep staring, waiting to see if he’ll take the hint. He opens his wallet and pulls out three one-dollar bills. Good boy.
I lean into him to collect the money, cupping my tits with my hands so they’re right in his face—a move so beloved by strippers that it almost feels like a parody of itself. “Hi, baby. I’m Juno.”
“Juno,” he says. “Like the movie. Cute.”
“Like the goddess.”
It’s an exchange I’ve had a hundred times. The joke is she—as in the goddess, I mean—she hates men (although really, Laney said, you could argue that in itself was a misogynistic interpretation, advanced in part by Virgil in his attempts to suck up to the Roman emperor). She’s the one who chains the guy to a rock and makes a vulture eat his liver on the daily. It was L’s idea, naturally, but it made me feel powerful and not-to-be-fucked-with.
He wants cute, though? I can do cute. When the song ends, I go to sit at his table, my leg resting on his.
“So tell me then, Juno. What’s a goddess like you doing in a place like this?” Ugh. Literally couldn’t he think of anything else to ask?
I giggle. “You’ve never done this before, have you?”
He leans in closer, smelling me. “Shhh. I really want to know.”
I fiddle with my long necklace, a gesture that seems unrehearsed but draws his eyes back to my tits. “I dunno. Maybe this is just my dirty fantasy.”
It’s not. I am extremely not attracted to men. Laney is, and sometimes in the early days, I would ask her for advice—how to touch, where to look, what to say. A lot of lesbians probably think that’s a weird relationship dynamic, but those are the ones who get weird about bi women anyway. And I think, in a sense, it helps not to feel anything. Like I said, I rock at compartmentalization.
“As insanely hot as that is,” he says, “I don’t believe you. What’s the real reason?”
Gross. “How about you buy me a drink and I’ll tell you?”
The dancer champagne is non-alcoholic, but the customers, they don’t know that. It’s $20, and you get half that to keep. Pretty good deal, especially on a slow Sunday. You can get real drinks too, but I’d rather just have the money. I slide onto his lap, and he puts an arm around my waist, his hand resting just at the top of my thigh. The touch is so apprehensive it’s almost clinical. He really has never done this before.
I take a drink. “I was gonna be a dancer—a real one, I mean. Moved across the country and everything. It didn’t work out. I was every ballet movie cliché you ever heard of—except the bulimia, I guess.”
He laughs, like bulimia is so funny. “You went a little wild, didn’t you?”
They tell you not to say anything that’s true because it’s like giving away a piece of yourself, but the real story is just so much better than anything else I could come up with. It hits on that little bit of tragedy that everyone wants to hear. If you’re too normal, too whole, it ruins the fantasy—it’s like they feel guilty or something.
Besides, telling one true thing makes it easier to lie about the rest.
“Where are you from?”
I giggle again. “That part I don’t tell.” They like that too.
We run through all the generic questions, and he buys me another drink. His wallet is just sitting open on the table. This guy wants to spend, but he needs the push. “You know what?” I say. This is the voice I call Bored Sexy. “I had this exact conversation like ten times last night. Let’s do something else—you look like you need a lap dance.”
He stands up. “I’ll do you one better. You got a champagne room in here?”
Whoa. That was easy.
The champagne room is basically like a lap dance room but more private—and way more expensive. The customer pays $500 for a half hour, and you get $250. You don’t have to do it, because guys are a lot more grabby in there, and sometimes they think they’ve paid for more than just privacy, but if you quit in the middle, Fantasy gives them half the money back—your half.
Ugly Blazer Guy pays for the room, and I’m still doing my Cute routine—“Now we can have so much more fun!”—but the second we get in there it’s like he’s totally nervous again. He doesn’t say a word. The thing about the champagne room is they’re not actually getting anything they wouldn’t already get on the floor, so if they don’t want to talk, it’s really awkward. You have to make them feel like the coolest, hottest girl in the world has just all of a sudden decided they’re cool and hot too. I sit him on the couch, spread his legs, and do a couple songs, taking the top of my outfit off and massaging my tits, but it feels like he’s not into it.
“We should get a bottle of something!” I prompt, when the silence gets to be too much. I wonder if he regrets the money he’s already spent on me.
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, clasping his hands together, and for a ridiculous half-moment I wonder if he’s praying. Then he says my name: “Melissa.”
It takes a beat to process. My real name. “I’m sorry?”
“You’re Delaney’s, um, you live with Delaney.”
“Girlfriend,” I say. “That’s what that’s called, when you’re in a relationship with someone. I’m sorry, I don’t…know you.” And I’m 90 percent sure that’s true, but the thing with me and faces is sometimes I honestly just don’t remember. It’s always scared me, the thought that something like this would happen.
“I found you on Discord, you were in a bunch of, like, sex worker groups—are those private? I really hope those are private because I wouldn’t have made the profile if I didn’t really need to talk to you. And you know Delaney keeps blocking me—”
All of a sudden I know who he is, and I’m halfway to the curtain when he grabs my arm and pulls me back into his lap. “Don’t touch me.”
What he did to her—and Aidan—we don’t talk about it. She never even showed me pictures of him. All I know is by the time she got out of there, she had pretty much no money and no friends, her car was half dead, and she swore she was never going back to Cincinnati. Aidan was two. She still has nightmares. Unsurprisingly, it’s also why she drinks.
“I never hit her,” he says. “I need you to know it wasn’t like that.”
“Okay?” There’s so much I want to say—been saving up to say for years—but that’s all that comes out.
“So we’re cool, right? If she’s gay now, I get that, it’s nothing to do with me, but—”
“Okay.”
“I want to talk to her about custody.”
And that’s when the switch flips. “Absolutely fucking not.” That’s my kid he’s talking about. All of a sudden I’m on my feet, towering over him in my seven-inch heels—all that rage and I finally have somewhere to put it. “Not only are you not going to talk to Laney, but you’re going to get back in your car or you’re going to get an Uber to the airport or—however the hell you got here, you’re going to do that back out of here, or I’ll—” Or I’ll what? Call the police to a strip club where I’m not even technically an employee? Like they would give a shit.
“Does Delaney know?” he says.
“Of course she knows, and she’s totally fine with it, because guess what? She’s not a jealous piece of shit.”
He laughs, a big laugh that takes in the whole room—the dim pink lighting, the cheap velvet curtain, the TV playing softcore porn with the volume off—and me with my tits still hanging out, like it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever seen.
It’s strange—I’ve never been ashamed till now.
“Not that,” he says. “Does Delaney know her kid has magic powers, or is she too drunk to notice?”
“Fuck you. Whatever you think you know about her—”
“I know you know,” he says. “You’re a smart girl, Melissa. You notice things.” I shake my head. “That poor kid thinks he’s a freak and nobody’s ever coming for him. Of course, he could be a celebrity. He could have all the attention he wants…or he could just be a kid with a dad who thinks he’s special, like every little boy deserves. So I’m asking again, does Delaney know?”
I nod. “She knows.”
“Tell her I want to talk to her. That’s all I’m asking, for now.”
“I have nothing to say to you.”
I try one more time to leave, but he stops me at the curtain again, his hands on my ass this time. “Well, that’s okay,” he says with a big smile. “We’ve got what, ten minutes left? You could…” He slides a cold finger under the crotch of my outfit, under my thong.
I don’t move. I know what he could do, if he wanted to. It wouldn’t be the first time. In the moment, I tell myself it’s nothing.
And compared to everything else, it is nothing. Compared to Laney’s actual, lived trauma—compared to the bills, and the trouble with Miss Jenn, and Aidan just sitting there with his hands on fucking fire, waiting for me to be proud or mad or anything at all—it should be nothing. It should be nothing like the catcalls are nothing, like the long nights and the bad tips and the man on the train with his head on my shoulder all the way to Nostrand Avenue.
And just like that, he pulls his hand away. “See? I wasn’t gonna do anything.”
Like on the train, I feel myself wanting to move, wanting to hurt him, but instead, to my deep and utter shame, I start to cry.
“Look, I’m sorry, never mind. No offense, sweetie, but next to the competition”—he grabs at my little roll of belly fat—“keep your day job, okay?”
Of course Laney is passed out on the couch when I get home. It just figures.
But I don’t sleep. I spend the night locking down my social media, messaging moderators and scouring my Reddit and Discord and Twitter for any sign of a profile that could be him, researching restraining orders in the state of New York. I take Aidan’s tablet and triple-check all the kid privacy settings. There’s so little I can do. I’m not even allowed at this stupid meeting with his summer camp because he’s not legally my kid.
There’s no way she’s going to make it on her own though. Seven forty-five rolls around and she’s still on the couch with a killer hangover. “I think I’m going to be sick,” she says.
“Yeah, well, me fucking too.”
Instantly I hate myself. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t—I shouldn’t have said that.” But her eyes are already closed again. “Hey. I’m gonna go next door and get you some Gatorade. Can you please try and get dressed? We can’t cancel this.”
I take Aidan with me to the Dunkin’ Donuts and let him order whatever he wants. I get Gatorade and a donut for Laney and a giant iced coffee for me—simple comforts, I tell myself, trying not to think about the money, and the calories, the way he grabbed at my stomach.
“You missing something, my friend?” the manager says.
That’s what they call you around here when they know you but they don’t know your name—in coffee shops, in bodegas, in the grocery store. It’s kind, gender neutral; it might be my favorite thing about Brooklyn.
“My friend,” he says again, looking down at Aidan. “Where’s the hat?”
“Oh, it was just getting a little small, wasn’t it, honey?”
Aidan takes a long slurp of his bright green Cosmic Pineapple Coolatta. “I set it on fire.”
By the time we make it to the train, it’s already 8:45, and Laney’s thrown up twice, once at home and once in a trash can on the street. “I’m sorry,” she keeps saying. “I’m so sorry.” It’s so crowded we’re all basically on top of each other.
“Just give me your phone so I can tell them we’re running late, okay?” The meeting was supposed to be at 9 a.m. It’s not the first time I’ve sent an email from Laney’s account; I’m used to covering for her at this point, but that doesn’t make it hurt any less. When Laney first quit her research assistant job, it was supposed to be just a temporary thing, until we figured out how to get a babysitter who wouldn’t ask too many questions about things mysteriously going up in flames—which, of course, was never going to happen—and the longer she was at home, the less functional Laney got. She did a couple of work-from-home gigs, copywriting and that sort of thing, but she kept missing deadlines, and anyway, they paid like crap. My ballet career was pretty clearly going nowhere—I was too big, my ankles too busted—and we didn’t have insurance, so I started stripping so she could go to rehab. It worked for a while, the first couple of times. We even talked again about getting married someday.
It’s not her fault, you know? But sometimes, I just want to shake her. And then I think of what he did to her, and I hate myself.
I manage to write a quick email about “train trouble” and send it off in one of the little blips of signal. Laney was supposed to coach Aidan last night, but God knows if that actually happened. “Do you remember what you’re going to say to Miss Jenn?”
“I have no idea how it happened,” he says in a singsong voice. “But that’s lying, Melly.”
“It’s not lying, sweetheart. It’s just…telling a part of the story. Like Mom and I do, sometimes, when we’re still getting to know someone.”
We rock up to the studio at 9:27, and Miss Jenn meets us at the door. She’s cut her hair—a super-short pixie cut that in this neighborhood could as easily mean hipster as gay; she wears it better than I ever did. Somehow, it makes her look even younger.
“Am I going to be expelled, Miss Jenn?”
“Um, can I talk to your parents for a minute?” She puts a hand on Laney’s shoulder as if to pull her aside, and that’s when I see him, standing with Ellen, the middle-aged owner: same ugly blazer as the night before, but all that geeky awkwardness—was it ever more than a façade?—replaced with swagger.
“Heard there was a parent-teacher meeting,” he says.
Laney freezes.
He raises his hands toward me in an exaggerated shrug: “Hey, Melissa. Guess I changed my mind, huh?”
“I’ve told him the meeting is only for legal guardians,” Miss Jenn says. “Maybe you can help him understand?”
“Actually,” Ellen says, “Jenn, why don’t you give this gentleman a tour of the studio?” And to my surprise, he follows her, eyeing her ass the way the men at Fantasy do. Well, not just them—after a while, you see it everywhere. “Aidan honey, hang your backpack up and go sit with the extended day kids.”
“Really?” Aidan says, and she nods. “Woohoo, I’m not expelled!”
And then it’s just the three of us. “Right, then,” says Ellen, all business. “You have a couple of options. If he refuses to leave, we can call the police, or you two can take Aidan home and we can try for the meeting again tomorrow. My preference would be for the police, naturally, but—”
“No,” Laney says. She’s right, of course, although I appreciate the intent, I guess—it’s like the lady has seen one viral video where the abuser gets arrested at a routine trip to the vet or the dentist or something, and she thinks, Yeah, I could do that.
Laney grabs my hand. “Mel and I will go talk to him.”
“L, wait.” I never told her; there wasn’t time.
“I can handle it, okay?” she snaps. “Just let me handle this one thing.”
The studio used to be a railroad apartment, so I follow her back through several rooms worth of kid-friendly artsy mess. A few of Aidan’s pieces are on the walls, but I can’t stop to look now.
I should have known we would find him with the glassblowing stuff—leaning casually against the wall, blazer flung over one shoulder. And there, sitting on the big work table, swinging his legs, is Aidan, pulling the tissue paper from an Old Navy bag.
Laney and I watch from the doorway as he pulls out a bright orange beanie, identical to the one he used to wear. His face lights up. “How did you know?”
“Try it on, little guy.”
“I’m not that little, actually. I’ll be eleven in September. Mom, Melly, look at this, it fits and everything!”
“You know, that’s actually why I came to find you, Aidan. See, there’s something important that I need to tell you.”
I can’t take it any longer. “You’re not fucking Hagrid, Keith.”
Laney looks at me like What the fuck?
“You think you’re going to show up here and just whisk him away to some fantasy world? We will sue you.”
“You’re special, aren’t you, son? You feel like you have a secret you can’t tell anybody.”
Aidan’s eyes go wide. “Who…? Who are you?”
“Fuck.”
“Yo, Aidan, your mom said fuck.” An older boy—August? Ambrose? The one we like, the one he didn’t set on fire—is standing in the doorway with a couple of smaller kids I don’t recognize. “Cool.”
Keith’s face barely registers the new additions, but you can tell he’s thinking, calculating what it would mean to have an audience. He’s grabbed a long, thin tool that I think is a blowpipe and is balancing it casually on his palm like you would do with a pool cue. “Are these your friends? Why don’t you show them what you can do?”
Aidan looks to me, just once, then thrusts his fists out in front of him, his choice already made.
“Here, son.” Keith hands him a piece of glass from the display on the windowsill—a small blue and white tulip with a long curly stem, clearly shaped by a child’s hands.
Just like before, Aidan flicks up an index finger, sparking a small flame, which he touches to the glass.
“Whoaaa,” says August/Ambrose.
Gently, Aidan circles the flames around the flower, then pulls at the petals with his thumb and middle finger, stretching until it becomes grotesque, a long unrecognizable thing with a gaping mouth.
It’s almost comical the way he watches, steepling his fingertips, like Palpatine cheering on Luke, going Gooood, gooood. “This is just the beginning,” he whispers. “There’s so much more I could teach you.”
“Aidan,” says August/Ambrose, “is that your dad?”
He looks to Laney, then to me, the longing clear on his face.
“It’s okay, son. You can ask.”
“Are you?”
I should say something, I think. It’s only fair that he hear the truth from me.
Just then, Laney darts for Aidan, and a wall of fire springs up between them, four feet high and loud—a massive roaring thing. “No!” Laney cries.
One of the kids screams and pulls the fire alarm, but they all just stand there for what feels like forever, staring, till August/Ambrose pushes them out the door, calling “Miss Jenn! Miss Ellen!”
It takes me a minute to process what’s going on, that it’s not Aidan who called them into being. It’s him. Moving steadily, almost lazily, he coaxes the fire into a full circle around Laney, who’s just standing there clutching her chest, hyperventilating, trying to make herself as small as possible. It’s a posture I’ve seen before, only a few times, when we first got together and she was still in the worst of her panic attacks.
I can picture it, L in the kitchen cleaning up broken glass, or halfway to the car with the baby in her arms, and him pinning her there like that, the flames just close enough to glint off the highlights in her hair. “Stop it!” I yell. “Stop it right now!”
“Don’t worry,” he says calmly. “I would never hurt her. Right, Aidan? Your mother knows that.” He lifts his hand gently, like a conductor leading an orchestra, and the flames swirl into a vortex.
Laney shakes her head violently, coughing up smoke. “Please.”
“But here’s the thing, how I see it. You have to make a choice, kid. What kind of life do you want to have?”
The fire alarm is still going, just that one shrill, wailing note, ringing in my ears till it sounds like something else—you know the way your brain plays tricks on you—till it almost sounds like a tune. And it all comes out of me in a rush: “Aidan, honey. I love you so much. I know we’ve never been perfect, but I promise you we’ve tried. All I ever wanted was to be your family. I would do anything to keep you with us—”
“Anything but marry Mom?” His voice breaks, just the tiniest bit; but he doesn’t cry. “Never mind, I know—it’s not the right time.”
That’s what we always used to say. It’s been years since he stopped asking.
Aidan steps toward his father and hesitantly reaches a hand into the flames, which calm slightly at his touch. “I could learn to do…all that?”
He nods. “And more.”
Aidan nods back. “Okay. Then I can learn it without you.” He throws his arms wide, and the flames pour into him. His whole body lights up—all four-foot-eight, flat feet, stupid barista hat of him, my little boy—
I want to run to him, but Laney stops me—“Wait,” she says.
And then, calm as anything, he pulls his arms back into his body, hugging himself, and the fire snuffs out, leaving nothing but the stench of burning clothes.
His father slow-claps once, twice—and then he’s out the door.
Laney sinks to her knees, breathing deep the way I taught her: four counts in, hold for seven, eight counts out. I hold her close and tell her, “It’s okay. You’re okay now.”
“Mom? Melly?” Aidan says. He looks like something out of an apocalypse movie, holes in his shirt, his new hat melted down to a bright orange pulp. “We should go home now. I think I’m probably expelled for real this time.”
The thing is, the way he clapped, the way he walked away—he looked proud. As if, somehow, he had won. Outside, all the kids were standing around, texting, calling their parents, you’re never gonna believe what I saw.
“You’ll understand now,” Ellen said, “why your son can’t continue here. I’m sorry.”
We were gone before the fire trucks arrived.
“We should get out of New York,” Laney said. “Go anywhere, I don’t care.”
After Aidan finally fell asleep, or pretended to anyway, we started packing; neither of us could bring ourselves to go to bed. It’s four in the morning now, and we’re administering self-care the only way we know how: Laney in the bath, me sitting on the toilet seat with another iced coffee. We even lit a candle. Lavender.
I called out sick at Fantasy, said my ankle was acting up again. I’ll have to pay the house fee for the night anyway, if I go back, but at this point, it’s hard to imagine that happening. I want to believe it’s all over, that Aidan made his choice, but Laney’s right. We’re not safe here anymore. It’s honestly a miracle Ellen didn’t turn him in to the police right then and there—she could have had her big hero moment after all.
And he still knows where we are.
“We could go to Florida,” I suggest. “Miami, Tampa maybe. The clubs are supposed to be good money in the summer. Or, I dunno, Portland—”
“God, no. I refuse to be one of those queers.”
That gets a small smile out of me, despite everything. “We should go somewhere where we can afford a real bathroom—like, none of this shit, I want a place where the bathtub and the shower are whole separate entities.”
“This, and more, could be yours,” Laney says, throwing her arms wide and splashing me in the process. “Hey, what’s wrong?”
I know she’s just kidding around, but she sounds, for a moment, like him.
“Nothing,” I say. Is this how it’s going to be for me now, hearing and seeing him everywhere? Is that how it’s been for her all these years?
I take a long drag on my iced coffee, knowing I’ll regret it later when I still can’t sleep. “You were never going to tell me, were you—that he could do it too?”
At first I think she’s not going to answer. She flips the switch to drain the tub, letting the gurgling sound fill the silence.
“I thought you wouldn’t believe me.”
“Seriously, L? After everything I’ve seen?”
“He said no one would ever believe me.”
Fuck that. “They always say that.”
“He said this was different, because—never mind. Mel, you have to understand, I wanted to quit, I tried so many times—”
“I know.”
“I thought if I could get sober, then maybe you would believe me.”
“Goddammit.”
Laney flinches. “I haven’t since this morning,” she says. “If you’re wondering.”
“Not at you,” I say, catching myself. “Goddammit at him. I didn’t mean it like that, I’m sorry.”
“I just know that you…” She fumbles for a word. “I know you…notice, is all.”
“Yeah.” I don’t know what else to say, so I finish the last watery bit of my coffee. “It is what it is, I guess.” A thought strikes me. “Are there more of them? What are we dealing with here, Laney, like is it one dude with a freaky superpower or is there a whole fucking secret society?”
“I don’t know. Honestly, Mel, I didn’t want to know.” The water has all drained away, but she’s still sitting there, bony knees pulled up to her chest.
“You know he was waiting for someone to come for him?” She looks at me questioningly. “Yeah. Like something out of Harry Potter. Anyway, come on,” I say, offering her a towel. “You’re shivering.”
She climbs out and lets me wrap it around her, and for a moment I just stand there, holding her. It’s been a long, long time since we’ve been like this.
“I want to get married,” I say finally. “For real this time, I want to do it.”
Laney scoffs. “No, you don’t.”
“I mean it.”
“You don’t even like me.”
Is that true, I wonder? “I like this you.”
“You should just take him. Go wherever you want, you could go home to your parents.”
“Laney, that’s not even legal.”
“Then marry me if that’s what has to happen, but don’t say it’s because it’s what you always wanted.”
“Fine, maybe it isn’t. So what?” I think about Aidan’s dream of a mystery rescuer, some unknown sorcerer with the keys to a better world. Who will he be when he grows up, and the stories he loved so much no longer have any of the answers?
When it came time to choose yesterday, he chose us. “People change,” I say. “We get to want new things. Maybe I didn’t know what I was getting into at the beginning, but I know now.”
“You were twenty-three, Mel—you were supposed to be a dancer.”
“I am a dancer.”
“I can’t promise…” She stops, and all of a sudden she’s crying. “I can’t promise I’ll be this me all the time.”
“Oh, Laney.” I wrap her in my arms again. “I know that. I know.”
We stay like that for a good few minutes, me holding her, and she just cries. Finally, she pulls away, wipes her tears, nods. “Okay then. Let’s do it.”
It’s dawn again; we’re both beyond sleep, so we curl up under the covers with the blinds open and watch the light change. “Can you smell that?” I say. “It’s next door, they’re baking the donuts. They must bake them fresh—I never even knew till recently.”
“It’s nice,” Laney says.
“Isn’t it?” I let myself fold into her, and she wraps herself around me.
“What was the name of that Roman king, the one whose hair caught fire and it meant something?” I wasn’t really listening, before.
“Servius Tullius?”
“That guy, yeah. The kid with the big destiny. Will you tell me about him again? It sounds like a good story.”
