Val asked Edith to call her slurs during sex.

What kind of slurs?

Any of them. “Tranny,” “faggot,” “trap,” “brick.”

Uhmmm—­

You can just, like, call me a bitch or a whore. Tell me my mouth is only good for one thing.

Before she agreed to stay, sex with Val had been meandering and slow. There was little concern for orgasm, hardness, penetration. (But the first time Edith felt Val’s cock inside her there was a cool burst of light behind her eyes and she could not imagine stopping.) Mostly it was a matter of talking and touching. She might hit Val. (Harder than that. Harder, you fucking pussy.) Valerie might tie Edith to the bed and watch her strain. It was all very tame. A TV idea of kink.

Edith understood that whatever the violence of these words, it was definitely less than getting hit in the face. She understood the appeal of degradation.

Tranny.

Like you mean it, Judy.

You stupid bitch. She straddled Val’s hips and took her small, hard cock in hand. You can barely fuck me half the time.

Wrong tack.

You little slut. You stupid bricked-up faggot. Everyone knows you’re a man in a dress.

Don’t stop.

You—you stupid bitch. There was the man yelling in Central Square. There was genuine anger. There was her own fear of who she could not become. You dumb brick. She could feel Val’s cock softening and she tugged more fiercely at it. Your hips are narrow and your tits look fake. They did not. These were middle-school insults.

She tugged for a few minutes more. She offered to slap Valerie but Val guided her hands away. What if we touch ourselves for a bit? Valerie asked so gently Edith was sure one of them would cry. Would that be okay?

Valerie taught her to swing dance and two-step. They spun across the apartment to Ella Fitzgerald singing Harold Arlen. They went to a club in Birmingham in shimmering dresses and no one needed to know their names. Edith chewed tabs of estradiol, blue-green paste coating her tongue like Fun Dip. On rainy days they took one of Val’s dog-walking clients through the arboretum’s misty hills; they tossed sticks into the pond for the dorky pit bull to snap up.

Then there was the knife. Val pulled it from a secret pocket in her bag. It snicked open. The ridiculous vigilante skull visible between her fingers. Will you cut me? she asked. If it were a real question, the knife would still be closed.

When Val was young, Frank the Chaser had liked putting needles through the thinnest parts of her skin. He’d liked coming on her tits and face. When he fucked her, she lost room in her brain for language; there was only a great sweeping hunger. She said the pain kept her in her body. She said she loved him. He gave her the money to go east. He taught her how to safely be choked. So what if he hit her when they fought sometimes. So what if he smashed her vintage highball glasses into confetti—he was the one who’d bought them. They’d made a game of it after, shattering every dish in his apartment and buying a new set the next day. What did any of it matter? What did it mean that she gave Edith the same love as she’d given him?

Is that what you want, Edith wanted to ask. Do you want me to be awful. Would that make you stay?

There was a clean honesty in the meeting of blade and flesh. Without thinking, Edith made a half-inch nick in the flat white plane of Valerie’s back. She made a second, longer cut. She could carve her whole, wrong name—exorcise it from both their tongues. It was easy, in the end, and they both came. The scars on Val’s thighs and stomach were invisible in the dark. Only later, when the blood had all been cleaned, did Edith worry.

They house-sat for a professor, played with her cat. They cooked elaborate meals and read by dawnlight in the backyard. Edith sleepwalked through her classes, eager to return to these moments of real life.

The scabs on Valerie’s back healed slowly; Edith refused to make more.

You’ll understand when you’ve transitioned longer, Val said. There comes a time when this is what you need.

Don’t condescend to me, Valerie.

Oh yeah? Val straddled Edith, teased the head of her hardening cock. You don’t like it when I treat you like some stupid girl fag?

There it was, for the first and fleeting time—that hook of desire. It wouldn’t return for a long time.

Shut your mouth.

Why don’t you make me.

They didn’t fight. There was only the morning when she woke and Valerie was not beside her, and she knew that two months had passed. It was impossible that it had been so long, so brief.

Her face in the pillow, seeking any scent of Val’s. She knew they’d see each other soon, and she knew this wasn’t enough.