You took the seat your friend told you to take and watched him walk back to the bar. Devon had said he'd be one minute. That had been the third song ago. The booth was white leather and your jeans squeaked against it when you shifted your weight. The bass came up through the cushion and into your spine. You sipped the drink Devon had paid for. It tasted like grenadine and something flammable. You wiped your palm on your thigh to get the condensation off.
The wristband from the door felt tighter than it should have. You looked down. The hair on the back of your hand had thinned out and then was gone. The skin under it had paled. You pressed your knuckles against the glass tabletop and the knuckles were smaller now. The light from the strip behind the booth was pink and the pink was crawling up your wrist into your hair, where there had not been pink before.
Your jeans had stopped squeaking. You looked down past the table. There was no denim. There was vinyl and a strip of bare skin between the top of it and a fishnet that hadn't been there a minute ago. Your thigh on the leather was larger than it had been. The boot at the end of it had a heel. Your spine straightened to find a different center of gravity. Your collarbone showed above whatever the harness across your chest was.
The hair fell forward and you tucked it behind your ear and a small earring brushed your knuckle. You felt the choker. Tight. Cool. Your tongue ran along the inside of your teeth and the teeth were smaller. You smelled cinnamon gum from somewhere across the booth. That was what people in the VIP section chewed, you remembered now, and you remembered other things that had not been in your head an hour ago.
Devon came back through the rope. He had a drink in each hand. He stopped two steps from the booth. You watched the recognition not arrive. He looked at you the way men look at women they have not met. He set one of the drinks down on the table in front of you. He sat down. He leaned in close because of the music. He asked your name.
"Mila," you said, and the name came out of your mouth like you had been using it for years.
He nodded as if he had guessed it. The bass moved his hair against your temple. His mouth was very close to your ear when he asked if you wanted to get out of there.
You said yes before you decided to.
You followed him out past the rope and through the crowd. The bouncer didn't look at you twice — only at him, and then at the back of you, briefly. The street outside was wet from a rain you hadn't known about. The cab pulled up before he raised his arm for it.
His apartment was on the fourth floor of a building that had once been a warehouse. The elevator was loud. He didn't try to kiss you in it. He looked at his reflection in the brushed steel and then at yours.
He let you into the loft. The lights were off. The window was a wall and the city was on the other side of it. He set his keys in the bowl by the door. He turned around.
You unhooked the harness at the back of your neck without looking at him. The top came loose in your hand. You let it fall. He crossed the floor in three steps and his mouth was on yours before you could think about it. His hand went under the skirt and you felt the back of your knees fold.
He laid you out on the rug. The fishnets came off in pieces because he was not patient. The skirt was a small thing to be rid of. He undressed standing over you with the city behind him. You watched him watch you.
He went down between your knees first. You bit the inside of your wrist. Then he was over you and inside you and the rug was rough against your shoulder blades. He moved slowly because the loft had time. You looked up past him at the ceiling. There were exposed pipes.
You came with one hand against his ribs. Afterward you lay on the rug and listened to him breathing and watched the red light on a crane half a mile away blink once, twice, once.