Adrian did his best to ignore Tom’s anxious shuffle around the kitchen when the other man arrived home before his usual hour. Adrian didn’t react. He didn’t ask why his roommate was home early. Privacy was only an illusion within the seven hundred fifty square feet of their poorly insulated Brighton apartment, but it was an illusion Adrian strove to maintain. He could offer Tom that much, at least.

Unlike Adrian, Tom had a regular work schedule and an active romantic life, so Adrian did not comment on Tom’s comings and goings. (The former mostly took place away from the apartment, thank God, because the walls were very thin. Adrian had unintentionally Heard Things in college while sharing a double dorm room with Tom, and he didn’t care to review the progression of Tom’s technique during the intervening years).

Adrian kept his gaze focused on PBS Newshour as Tom put the evening’s leftovers away in the fridge and paced. Tom was usually a chatty guy, which Adrian might enjoy at the end of a quiet day like today. But Tom’s silence tonight was telling. It was a sign of more bad things to come for Adrian.

Adrian had therefore begun to worry even before Tom ran a hand through his shaggy brown hair and announced, “We need to talk.”

These were ominous words. Not least because Adrian had recently uttered the same ones to commence the conversation with his ex-fiancée that left him single, unemployed, and squatting in Tom’s spare room. If Tom’s typically cheerful expression had turned so serious, Adrian assumed his roommate had an unpleasant piece of news to drop and did not want to discuss, say, whose turn it was to take out the trash: Adrian’s turn, always Adrian’s turn, because Tom was a slob who expended all of his cleaning energies at the high-end Greek restaurant where he was a waiter.

Adrian flicked off the television and rolled to a seated position on Tom’s couch, which had been serving as Adrian’s base of operations since his late-night eviction from his home of five years. He schooled his features into an attitude of mild interest as Tom mixed a drink, added half a jar of maraschino cherries to it, and worked himself up to whatever he had to say. Tom rolled up the sleeves of his dress shirt over furry, muscular forearms and leaned back against the peeling linoleum counter.

“So, you know you are welcome to stay here for as long as you like,” Tom began.

Adrian sighed. Of course Tom wanted him gone. Even though Tom’s apartment was cleaner than it had ever been, and Adrian made himself scarce whenever Tom had dates over, no self-respecting adult wanted his former college roommate camped out indefinitely in his second bedroom, and it had been two weeks.

Adrian had thought he would have more time though. After all, ten years ago their situations had been reversed, and Tom had been the one sleeping on the couch and pondering how he’d fucked up his life so thoroughly.

“When do you need me out?” Adrian interrupted him.

His friend’s thickly arched eyebrows jolted.

“I wasn’t going to ask you to move out,” Tom said too quickly.

“Okay,” Adrian said, nonetheless beginning to calculate how many nights he could afford at a motel before he had to prevail upon friends who owed him fewer favors than Tom.

Tom’s shoulders slumped before he consciously straightened them. He mixed a second drink for Adrian and carried it over to the sofa. He set their drinks down amid the tangle of Adrian’s printed notes and revisions and sat next to him.

“The restaurant isn’t doing well,” Tom said softly. “And I need to get a roommate. A paying roommate. I’d prefer that still be you.”

Adrian rubbed his face. “I’m broke,” he reminded Tom. The shorter man shifted in discomfort.

“Can’t you just sell a painting or something?”

Adrian groaned, because if he’d been selling more paintings, he wouldn’t be imposing on Tom. He didn’t understand why sales were down. His last exhibition had made it into Artforum. He’d assumed sales would follow, but he hadn’t paid a great deal of attention to his bank account until he was standing on the curb in front of his former home, suitcases at his feet.

“I’m still under contract with Nora’s gallery through the end of the year,” he muttered. “And inexplicably, my art has not sold at all since I left.” He hadn’t gone by the gallery to check if anything was still on display since their breakup, as all of the gallery staff had come down firmly on Team Nora, but it wasn’t like she’d asked for a forwarding address to send checks to.

Tom sighed and screwed up his lower lip. “Well, do you have any other ideas? Could you just go pick up a few shifts at Starbucks or something until things turn around at the restaurant? Have you even been going into your studio?”

“I’m researching for a new series,” Adrian said, tapping his notes. “Historical scenes from the Anglo-Ottoman War.”

“Uh huh,” Tom said, unconvinced that this was a quick route to rent money. “That’s, like, another step away from actually painting?”

Adrian thought that was a low blow, so he merely stared at his roommate mulishly.

The other man stared back. “Could you ask one of your parents to help you out for a while?”

“Do you remember that I could have been a doctor instead of an artist? They do.”

“Or you could teach? You have an MFA,” Tom proposed.

“Ha. Do you know what they pay adjunct art professors? I’d make more slinging coffee.”

“Then sling some coffee, or we’re gonna get evicted,” Tom said, tossing his hands in the air.

Adrian appreciated the we in that sentence for its suggestion that they were in this situation together, even though the easiest solution would be for Tom to tell Adrian to get out so that he could move in someone that had a stable income.

Coffee. Jesus. The idea that he’d man a cash register would have been inconceivable to him just two weeks ago.

Adrian propped his forehead against his fingers. His swift descent from locally prominent artist to deadbeat couch surfer had happened so unexpectedly as to leave him feeling like he’d tumbled down a mountain and hit every boulder on the way down.

“I’ll . . . apply for something,” Adrian unhappily promised. “Some new grants. Or teaching, you’re right. I still know a few professors here.” It sounded pretty thin.

They both looked at the black television screen. Adrian imagined Tom was as disappointed in him as he was with himself. Until recently, he’d been the reliable one—the one whose life had gone according to his expectations. Tom slurped the rest of his drink and tipped his head back against the couch with his eyes closed, stress forming little lines around his mouth.

Adrian clenched his teeth as guilt hit him. It wasn’t Tom’s job to worry about his failing career and broken engagement. Two weeks was more than enough time to sulk about his breakup and his gallery and his declining sales.

“There’s no reason I can’t try waiting tables, I guess,” Adrian said reluctantly. “Do you know if anyone nearby is hiring?” At least Tom’s neighborhood was far enough from Adrian’s former one that he wasn’t likely to encounter anyone he knew here.

Tom didn’t open his eyes, but his chest rose in amusement. “You’d suck at waiting tables.”

“Why? I think I get the theory of it.”

“Sure, you are going to hustle for tips.” Tom scoffed.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, but the first time someone tried to order their bœuf bourguignon with the sauce on the side, you’d make a face—”

“What face? And how the hell would you do the sauce on the side, it’s a stew—”

“That face! That one you’re making right now. You’d make that judgy face, and boom, no tip for you. Plus, anywhere nice is going to want you to have experience. You’d have to start at, like, some hole in the wall, and you’ll barely clear minimum wage.”

Adrian waved a dismissive hand. “You figured it out. You managed to pay for your divorce waiting tables. I can come up with half the rent, at least.”

Tom was silent for a moment, his mouth twisted to the side. He looked back over at Adrian, seeming to size him up.

“That’s not how I paid for my divorce,” he finally said. “Not waiting tables.”

“I thought you were barely making a hundred bucks a week in the chorus,” Adrian replied. He remembered that year clearly: his apartment in Back Bay, Tom present only long enough to sleep on the couch, shower, and radiate misery between restaurant shifts and rehearsal.

“Yeah. And I definitely wasn’t making enough to pay for a lawyer at the first restaurant I worked at.”

“Okay, so, what did you do?”

Tom blinked a few times, gave Adrian a guarded look, and then, after a long hesitation, grabbed his laptop off the coffee table.

“I’m not saying it was ideal. But it was fine for a while. And I think, you know, it’s not as stigmatized these days—”

“What,” Adrian said flatly, worried he was about to hear that his roommate had been selling Adderall to Harvard undergrads.

“For an artist, you are surprisingly conventional, did you know that? Practically bourgeois.”

“Tom!” Adrian said, now impatient to hear about it.

“I’m just saying, hear me out.” Tom typed something into the search bar, then spun his laptop to show the page to Adrian.

A young woman in a short party dress laughed and displayed her white veneers to a middle-aged, tuxedo-clad man with a chiseled jawline and graying sideburns. A relationship on your own terms, the site’s slogan promised in lacy white font. The login prompt was discreetly tucked at the bottom of the page. Adrian reeled back from the screen, hoping he was vastly mistaken about what the site advertised.

“Jesus Christ,” he said automatically.

“You don’t know what it is.”

“It’s an escort site,” Adrian said.

“It’s not that. It’s different.”

“Okay, what is it, then?”

“It’s, like, a sugar baby thing—”

Adrian snorted, the noise ripping unwillingly from his throat. “That is the same thing! Jesus, Tom, you were hooking? You should have said something.”

Tom winced. “Yeah, this reaction? Is why I didn’t.”

“No, no, no, I’m not—Sorry. I’m not upset at you. I’m sorry. I wish I could have—done something else. I thought you were just upset about Rose. If I’d known you had to—”

“I didn’t have to do anything. And you were doing plenty. You were already feeding me, housing me, listening to me whine about my divorce—”

“I would also have done something to keep you from taking a job that leads to your dismembered body turning up in the Mystic River!” Adrian said, catching his voice just before it turned into a shout.

“You’ve got the wrong idea about it. It’s not sex work,” Tom insisted, shoving his shoulder lightly.

Adrian gave him a long, skeptical glower.

“I mean it,” Tom said. “Not this site, anyway. Not even all the men I went out with thought they got to sleep with me.”

“So it’s just a dating site then?”

“Sort of. I mean, it’s dates, yeah, but for money.”

“Which is . . . different from sex for money,” Adrian repeated, still alarmed.

“Because you don’t have to have sex with them! That’s not what they’re paying for.”

“What are they paying for, then?”

Tom relaxed a little. “Well, there are an amazing number of rich people who are divorced, widowed, single, whatever, and they just want someone hot to stand next to them at their fancy rich person things and impress their friends. You don’t have to sleep with anyone. You’re not meeting people in hotel rooms. You’re getting paid for going to parties and stuff.”

“What do you mean you,” Adrian said, stiffening. “Do you mean you like you or you like me? Because I am not doing this, and I don’t think you should either.”

“Hmm. So. You can either serve clam chowder to tourists for an entire week, or you can look pretty for just a couple hours. How do you want to earn five hundred bucks?”

Adrian paused. His mind had already illustrated forty hours at a restaurant, and it didn’t look like Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party, but like someone throwing iced tea in his face because he didn’t bring the drink refills fast enough. Unwillingly, it began to sketch an easier job, one that would still leave him time to paint.

“Five hundred dollars? Are you serious?” he said, wishing the words back as soon as he uttered them.

“As a heart attack. That’s what we’d ask for. You’d only have to go out with someone a couple times, and we’d be clear on rent.”

It still sounded dangerous and unlikely to Adrian, even if toiling in food service was not exactly appealing either. “You were making that much money to go out with people, no expectation that you would . . .” He didn’t finish. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

“Well, I was making a few hundred dollars a week, but I think you could do better than that,” Tom said.

“But why?” Adrian regretted saying that, because that made it sound like he was really considering it, which he wasn’t.

“Because you look good!” Tom said. He eyed Adrian, who was dressed in jersey pajama pants and a bleach-spotted Mountain Goats T-shirt, because he hadn’t gone outside today. “I mean, maybe not at this exact moment. But you are, like, the most attractive person I know in real life. You’re hot—hotter than I was at twenty-three, even. Take advantage of that.”

“You sound like you’re trying to get me into the back of your van so you can take photographs of me,” Adrian deflected, uncomfortable every time his looks were mentioned. Too many of his old reviews had been organized around the theme of pretty man makes pretty art. Which didn’t lend much to his reputation as a serious artist.

“If I owned a van, you could be driving for some rideshare app, and we wouldn’t have to have this conversation,” Tom said airily. “But you know, the more I think about this, the better of a solution I think it is. Why should you get a job job? Let’s just bridge the gap until you can sign with a new gallery or the restaurant can give me more hours.”

Adrian closed his eyes tightly and rubbed his forehead with his palm.

“I could get a job,” he mumbled.

“You’ve never had a job. But you have spent five years sucking up to a really terrible rich lady—”

“Tom,” Adrian warned him, because he didn’t want to hear Tom trashing Nora. Or suggesting that they’d been together because of her money. Which wasn’t true. Or at least, hadn’t been true to start out with.

“Oh, fine, you know I didn’t like her. But you have to admit you get along with those people. Better than you would with the average fast casual restaurant diner, anyway. Picture yourself getting paid to stand around and be handsome. Now picture yourself, still on your feet, still handsome, but you’re in a seafood shack, you’re earning four thirty-five an hour, and your table of twelve is yelling at you because they had to wait ten minutes for their lobster rolls . . .”

It might be the best bad option, put that way.

“What would be involved, exactly?” Adrian said, trying to stress the reluctance in the question.

Tom beamed at him, newly energized by this horrible scheme. “First, we make your profile. You still own a tux, right? Let’s dress you up. Like you’re going to a silent auction to benefit the Society for the Advancement of Shrimp Cocktail and Prevention of Testicular Cancer.”

Adrian did own a tux, even though he had loathed Nora’s charity ball circuit. It always felt like performance art: a dance performed for some of the worst people in the world, who didn’t actually care about supporting the arts, but liked the idea of rubbing elbows with artists. He supposed putting clothes on for money was marginally better than taking them off though.

“You can do it,” Tom urged him. “You’re exactly the arm candy a certain kind of woman is looking for. Didn’t Nora always complain about those art groupie people hitting on you at gallery openings?”

“I hate those people.”

“Don’t be so prissy about this. Come on,” Tom groaned. “It’s bumming me out to see you on the couch all day long. This is depressing, you know? You look like a very depressed person. Let me just set you up a profile. It’ll get you out of the house at least.”

Adrian demurred.

Tom insisted.

Adrian offered to sell some plasma.

Tom told him he could keep every single bodily fluid to himself.

Eventually, Adrian felt exhausted from the longest conversation he’d had in weeks, and he gave in. At Tom’s instructions, Adrian dug his tuxedo out of his luggage, put it on, and stood against the wall. Tom had one of Adrian’s old paintings hung over his sofa—a sentimental one, lush florals and bright colors, the sort of thing he hadn’t done in years—and it was going to serve as proof of his bona fides as artist arm candy. Adrian uneasily shifted from foot to foot as Tom tried to take a decent picture under the cheap CFL track lights.

“Just use an old picture,” Adrian complained. “Grab the one off my gallery page.”

“Uh, we are not going for pensive and temperamental. No. In this fantasy, you are charming. Look at the camera and smile. Come on, look happy. You’re at a cocktail party, you just said something hilariously mean about Jeff Koons, and everyone is laughing.”

Adrian suppressed a scowl and tried to fix his features in an expression he could barely remember making naturally. It seemed to satisfy Tom, who uploaded it to his laptop and then turned to filling out Adrian’s profile, greatly embroidering Adrian’s preferences regarding black-tie galas and long walks on the beach.

“What if someone I know finds my profile?”

“Then you know a bunch of people who pay a hundred bucks a month to check out sugar babies. Nobody ever found out about me. Relax.”

Adrian did not relax. He gritted his teeth and peered over Tom’s shoulder.

“And why Women and not Any?” Adrian asked, pointing to the Seeking drop-down menu. He imagined there were a lot more men looking for paid companionship than women.

Tom gave him another long look. “You need to pick a struggle, buddy,” he said. “If you’re gonna start dating men, maybe try it for free first? I wish I had.”

“If it’s not about sex, though—”

“Well, obviously, it’s a little bit about sex, or at least the idea of sex . . .” Tom’s voice delicately trailed off as he pursed his lips.

Adrian groaned and stuck his hands in the air, backing away from the laptop. “I’m not doing this,” he said. “I am not! I’ll start looking for a job tomorrow.”

“I just uploaded your profile,” Tom said firmly. “At least take a look at who’s on here?”

“Take it down, Tom,” Adrian instructed him, going to the kitchen to investigate the leftovers Tom had brought home. The tuxedo felt a little tight, and Adrian didn’t know if that was because he’d been in drawstring pants for two weeks or because Tom’s leftovers all seemed to contain a great deal of béchamel. Adrian found a paper container of braised chard, which couldn’t be too bad for him, and dumped it into a bowl to reheat in the microwave.

“Okay, how about this lady? She’s going to the Cape soon, her sister is bringing her ex-husband as a date, and she wants someone to spend the week rubbing suntan lotion into her shoulders and asking her ex pointed questions about his real estate portfolio. She says there’s only one bed at the beach house though. Is that weird?”

“Take it down,” Adrian repeated, watching his dinner circle in the microwave. He’d apply at the retail shops on their block, and maybe he could make some extra money teaching those paint and sip classes for seniors or something.

Tom clicked again. “This lady is in her eighties, but she’s flying to Arizona for the Ring Cycle, and I know you like opera. You can lift fifty pounds, right? She has oxygen tanks.” He paused. “Oh, and she’s into BDSM. Huh.”

“Take it down, Tom!”

The microwave chirped, and Adrian stirred the greens. He took a bite. Bitter. Just roughage. It tasted like penance. Mentally vowing that he would go to the gym the next day, he opened the fridge and got a carton of moussaka out. He put the food into a new bowl and started the microwave again.

Tom continued clicking on his laptop. When dinner was done, Adrian arranged it on the tiny kitchen table and was sitting down to eat when Tom stood up.

“Look,” Tom said triumphantly, turning the screen of his laptop around to show him. “What about her?”

Adrian paused with his fork halfway to his mouth.

Tom had expanded his potential patron’s photograph until it filled the entire screen. The blonde woman’s face was obscured by the shade of a visor, but she was wearing a short white tennis dress and sneakers, her racket held at the ready. The picture had been taken on the court, the sun shining on the woman’s long tan legs. She looked way too young to be hiring a sugar baby.

“That picture’s probably thirty years old,” Adrian said.

“So?” Tom said. “At least you know she used to be hot. Maybe she still is.”

Adrian ignored him for a minute as he chewed his reheated dinner, and Tom browsed the rest of the woman’s profile.

“What does she want?” Adrian finally asked, unable to immediately discard the concept of going out with the tennis player.

Tom smiled in suppressed triumph. “She’s new in Boston, and she wants someone sophisticated to show her around the city.”

Adrian waited for him to continue, but he didn’t. Instead, Tom began typing. Adrian worried that Tom was now going full Cyrano de Bergerac: Tom did regional theater when he wasn’t waiting tables, and he had a large flair for the dramatic.

“What’s the catch?” Adrian asked suspiciously. He thought he was broad-minded, but he had some firm lines he was not going to cross, even if Tennis Girl had grown up into a reasonably attractive Tennis Woman.

“Hmm?” Tom said, typing, deleting, typing again.

“What’s the weird thing she wants that she can’t get for free?” Adrian demanded. With his luck, it was something painful or illegal.

“Nothing weird. It looks like she checked every single interest box. Art, music, theater, and fashion, plus everything else under the sun.” He peered up at Adrian, a grin tilting the corners of his mouth. “Fortunately, you’re a total snob. I’m sure you’ll fit right in at whatever bullshit charity events she wants you to impress people at.”

Adrian bit down an objection, contemplating the potential arrangement as he finished his dinner. Maybe it wouldn’t be worse than his relationship with Nora. She’d paid the bills, handled all of the business of selling his art, and demanded very little in the way of emotional engagement. In return he’d managed the house, let her dictate their social life, and—until two weeks ago—been so absorbed by his art that he failed to notice her cheating on him. It could have continued indefinitely if she hadn’t saved someone else’s nudes to their joint photo account.

Tom stopped typing and shut his laptop.

“I’ll think about it,” Adrian promised him. “Maybe I’ll contact her tomorrow.”

“Okay,” Tom conceded. Too easily.

“What,” Adrian said with deep alarm. He crossed his arms over his chest, feeling his heart rate pick up along with his anxiety. Tom beamed at him, his dark brown eyes cheerful again.

“You have drinks with her tomorrow at seven. She’s open to paying a thousand a week. Her name’s Caroline Sedlacek.”