Seb hung out while Edith got ready for the concert. I don’t understand why you’re going to this show.

I can do things alone, Seb. I’m an adult woman. I hear they’re letting us drive now.

No, I mean, have you listened to anything besides Into the Woods in like four months? She hadn’t. That’s probably why you’re so depressed. All that sublimated homosexuality.

It doesn’t make me depressed, I’m working through stuff.

“Working through” implies you’ll find the other side.

Edith’s eyeliner smeared across her brow bone. How many times had she done this? She was so inconsistent.

What are you up to tonight? Not too late to join.

I’m supposed to hang out with Sara. She’d gotten back the day before from visiting family in Pakistan.

Band practice?

Not a band. Seb watched her struggle in her makeup mirror. Here, lemme do that. They drew two cat’s eyes with a practiced hand, steadied by years of misapplied femininity. I dunno, man, I feel like she’s gonna be so tired, and just want to like cuddle and talk, and it’s gonna be so boring. Sometimes I feel like everyone we know could afford to be a little less gay.

The show was crowded with straight couples. The band’s alcoholic-beat-poet aesthetics must draw them out. Edith searched for any sign of queerness—a mullet, a denim jumpsuit.

Have you seen them before? asked a man nearby. Edith said she hadn’t. The man introduced himself as Ken. Like their last album, he explained. My husband and I caught them on that tour. Edith thanked whatever god watched over fags. She’d lose this if she passed better, disappear into the sea of girlfriends. A porcelain tooth, a forged Rothko.

Ken’s husband, Ryan, returned from the bar with two cans of beer. The men were taller than her, with salt-and-pepper hair, and identical black blazers. This is Edith, Ken said, and they all chatted amiably about local music. Ryan had missed a William Basinski show that Edith had been at. Oh I’m so mad I missed it! Ryan said.

It was great. Something very unreal about hearing his music in a room full of strangers.

Rub it in, why don’t you. Ken pressed her arm. Edith searched for a playful response, but the lights dimmed and the band took the stage.

Afterward, the three of them walked out together.

The singer definitely seemed hungover, Ryan said.

Still a lot of energy.

I wish that were me, Edith said. When I’m hungover I only want to eat popcorn and die.

Ken and Ryan laughed, and Ken brushed his fingers against hers.

Edith, I think we’re going to grab a drink at Cheer Ups, you want to join?

Edith could tell they had money. She’d probably get a free drink and make out with at least one of them in the all-gender bathroom. Maybe they had coke.

Sure, that sounds fun.

Ryan had run publicity for a label that put out half the seminal Midwest emo records. I spent like half my junior year of college crying in the shower to those albums, Edith said. The sad trans girls of America owe you so much.

They both laughed again. It was such a victory, making strangers laugh.

And they were cute. Edith didn’t have the standard tgirl daddy issues, but there was something very alluring about older men. It was part of the package of girlhood. Every cis girl she’d known had had at least one fling with a man twice her age. Well, almost every cis girl.

What was Tessa doing tonight? It was a Wednesday after all. Edith could only ever conjure the same image: her ex-lover’s legs thrown over her future husband’s, something simmering on the stove.

The men asked her about her writing. I write about girls who are sad for good reasons.

What do you know about being sad? Ken asked.

What does she know, Ryan said. Pretty young thing like you. They searched her book on Amazon. Oh wow, eleven reviews.

The next book I write isn’t going to have a plot. Only the motion of people through the world. Their emotional physics.

Emotional physics, Ryan said. See, this is why she’s a writer.

Me, I’d never come up with that.

They drank more. They danced uncomfortably under the particolored gaze of Cheer Ups’ sign. An obscure, neon symbology: a planet, a pentagram, a flame, a gem. Ryan told stories about the bands he’d worked with. They’re all creative writing teachers now, he said. I could try to hook you up.

An empty offer, but it made her feel alluring and entertaining. A thing worth having.

God you’re so young.

Not that young.

You’re so young you don’t know how young you are.

They shimmied and swayed and brushed against each other until they grew tired. She walked to their apartment, an arm linked through each of theirs. I feel like Dorothy, off to see the wizard.

Ken and Ryan laughed. Too hard. That’s right. I’m the Tin Man and Ryan’s the Scarecrow.

Their apartment was the sort of soulless new construction tech workers chose. There were no decorations on the wall, no color in the furniture. Edith had hoped for better.

Do you do a lot of this? Ken poured wine into glasses so thin they seemed rendered out of air.

What, cavorting with strange men?

Are you cavorting with us?

What word would you use?

They drank their wine. Edith was tired and sour-stomached, but she wanted to keep alive whatever temporary light there was in her. She wanted to be done talking. Ken rose and put on an American Football record. Ryan’s hand found her knee and pressed it like an unripe peach and moved no farther up her leg. This was the issue with letting other people take control: you had to move at their stupid pace.

What’s the sluttiest thing you’ve ever done? Ken asked. He did not move from the turntable. She looked from Ken to Ryan and back to Ken. Their almost clinical gaze.

Uhm. What the fuck kind of question was that? Were they in high school? But she had to play along with their fantasy or bail. One time I fucked my friend’s brother while my friend was sleeping in the same room. If that counts, she added, with no real coyness.

Oh, that definitely counts. All their teeth were purple-red and gleaming. Do you like us, Edith?

You know I do.

Why don’t you kiss Ryan?

Finally, she was getting somewhere. Ryan’s tongue was none too aggressive. Edith grabbed the back of his head, pulling him into her. His fingers trailed up the faintly clammy skin of her leg. Ken fell to the couch beside her, kicking over her wineglass. No one moved to mop the burgundy puddle. Ken was not so good a kisser as his husband. He was all plunging tongue and wet lips. But whatever. She hadn’t come here in search of goodness or charm or even pleasure.

What kind of underwear are you wearing? Ken tugged at the hem of her dress, groping at her boyshorts. It didn’t matter that Edith felt sexless in them. If she said nothing, the men’s fantasy would go on filling the room.

Soon, Ryan was on his knees sucking her half-erect cock. Ken watched, an eagle-eyed study of her arousal. Show us how much you like us, he kept saying. His pants were around his ankles and he was touching himself through his threadbare boxers. Show us.

Edith made noises of approval, echoes of pleasures past. It wasn’t unpleasant, having this warm and eager mouth on her. The vague perversion of Ken’s witness. But it was boring. It was a chore like flossing. At least flossing left some blood in your mouth, some proof that something had changed.

Look, Edith said, and thought better. No sensual sentence has ever begun “look.” What can I do to make you guys feel good? She reached for Ken and he slapped her hand away.

I want you to fuck my husband’s throat, Edith. Can you do that for me?

There were five more minutes of disconcerting fellatio. When it became clear that no, she could not fuck anyone’s throat, the men sighed, zipped themselves up. Edith had no desire to put her underwear back on; she’d have left it there, crumpled and grotesque, except that Ken picked it off the floor, dusted it off, and threaded her legs back through. Edith wanted to laugh—at this display, at the entire thing. She wanted to find goodness in this moment.

The wine’s probably going to leave a stain, Ryan said, picking one of Edith’s hairs from his lips.

I’m sorry you guys. But the men weren’t paying attention. They were already in the rhythms of domesticity, pulling towels and Lemon Pledge from a bin in the closet. She could, specterlike, stand here unseen all night, learning what their life together was really like. Instead she left the way she’d learned to, unnoticed and without a word. No lies that it had been fun and maybe they’d see each other around. She left while traces of dawn were still a long time off—an hour that people in love, huddled together in their too-warm beds, probably never saw.