I opened them again and the light was dimmer. I looked down at myself, dressed in a neon green robe I didn’t remember finding or choosing. Beneath, I was bare, waxed around my crotch—which was throbbing—tan where I’d been spray painted. I had broken a single green acrylic nail on my left hand, and I squeezed it with my right thumb and pointer finger, relieved when pain sprung up and covered the rest of me, the places that ached, the places still sleeping, pins and needles in my arms and legs like they’d been starved for blood. There was a remote on the cushion next to me and I touched it to unmute the TV screen. “The President tweeted a warning today—” a newscaster said. I pressed mute again and drifted.

When I opened my eyes next, the room was dark, only the TV for light. I cleared my throat and tasted chemical. I swallowed. My whole body reeked, a caustic cleaning agent smell. Drugs, I guessed: the coke I remembered bumping for hours, the pink 2CB. And Jake, the drink he gave me, the elevator he rode with me, the vial he opened, the red light he led me toward. “I got you,” he said. “Remember how I take care of you?” I remembered the slam of a door, the glint of its handle, the foreign feel of paralysis as unkind hands flipped me. Had they belonged to one man only, or had there been more? And where had Jake been? I didn’t know. I never would. I closed my eyes.