For my first lineup, Mia did my makeup, layer upon layer. I didn’t love wearing makeup and I complained, said, “Do I have to wear so much?”
“It’s all part of it,” is what she said. She was wearing a cropped T-shirt that read namaslay across the chest. “These men are paying for fantasies. Dream girls don’t have zits. Zits belong in reality.”
“I don’t have any zits.”
“You know what I mean.” She finished my eyeshadow and kissed each lid. “What color do you want your eyes to be?”
“What?”
She pressed her fingertips to her own eyes and removed her irises. Her natural ones were dark, dark brown. “Blue?” she said, and then she pressed her contacts into my eyes. “Blink,” she said, and I did.
“My eyes were already blue,” I told her. “What’s the point?”
“It’s the principle.”
Mia folded my hair into a loose braid. She seemed to like me. I liked her too. Or maybe I, like the guests here, only liked to be liked. I said to Mia, “You might be my second ever friend.”
She smiled. “Second ever? That’s depressing.”
“I haven’t had much time for friends.”
“Well, you’re about to have a whole lot of them.” Then she said, “Are you freaking out right now?”
I was. I told her about the Sugar Club. “As a kid, I ran a kissing business,” I said. “I kissed the boys at school in exchange for cash. I did more than that, too. I pretended to be one kid’s girlfriend for a while, and he paid me a grand. We drew the line at sex though. We let them pay for anything but sex.”
“So technically you’re a half hooker.”
“Until today.”
Mia smiled. “Until today. Want to know my secret?”
I nodded. She pointed at the ceiling, and I looked up to find my reflection up there. Me, except not, a little off, her eyes a little too blue, her lashes a little too long. The reflected girl was one standard deviation away from Kate. “Her,” said Mia. “Pretend you’re her.”
“I am.”
“No,” said Mia. “You’re down here. She’s something different.”
I looked up. She was. I waved at her and she waved back, a meeting of two separate people.
“Pretend you’re her,” said Mia. “And pretend she’s in love.”
“Pretend she’s in love? With who?”
“Every guest. Pretending you’re her will help you get distance; pretending she’s in love will help you be kind. If you’re in love with someone, you’re good to them. You give them the benefit of the doubt. You’re on their team. It’s easy to judge guests at places like this, and some of them will ask for shit that seems weird to you, but if you pretend you’re in love with them, you’ll be your best self.”
“Pretend I’m in love,” I said.
“No,” said Mia, pointing upward. “Pretend she’s in love. There’s a difference.”