He’d sent me a link to a basic HTML page with photos of Aiden—some selfies and some taken by the plethora of cameras in every modern city—along with time stamps and map coordinates. The latest, from 6:02 p.m., was at 40°44'28.4"N 74°00'29.3"W, blurry Aiden in an elevator. I fumbled around trying to figure out how to read the coordinates and there it was, his hotel.

Once I possessed the key, I had to go through the door.

I patted Harris goodbye, and he looked up at me over his long Italian greyhound nose, bemused.

I was dressed in my dog-walking joggers and T-shirt, conveying casual elegance. Two lions guarded the front of the Juniper Ash Hotel. I rubbed their heads for luck and stamina.

The lobby was strange because I’d been living in city subsistence mode, without extravagance or leisure. I did have a trust fund from the hoarding of my grandparents, but I never liked to use it with my prospects still unknown. They passed on money, and they also passed on a belief in scarcity. In the city of hideous wealth, I was not rich at all. I simply had a cushion against despair; I could afford to take sick days from dog walking and pay Sophie, who did not accept insurance.

Art-collector moms in athleisure, tech bros wearing silver visors to easily identify one another, women in their flowing prairie-goth gowns, a famous pianist with his fingertips encased in silver regenerating pods: they all moved across the room in varying states of disregard for my gaze.

I ordered sparkling water with shrub and sipped slowly.

After an hour of trying to classify all the types of people who had the time and money to be trailing through a hotel lobby at six on a Wednesday evening, I saw the body I knew so well coming out of the elevator.

My plan was to observe any flaws from a safe distance, but once I saw him, a trans–magnetic field pulled me closer. I went over.

I stepped in front of him before he could cross through the lobby.

“Hey, not to be stalkerish, but can I talk to you?”

There it was, the face I’d loved and hated from afar. He blushed in an Abercrombie-model kind of way. Wow, I was pretty into queer women, but I was crushing on him hard. Damn the fluidity of queer desire.

“I”—his voice came out with a preadolescent crack—“don’t do interviews.”

Was that wariness on his face?

“Well, I’m not a journalist, I walk dogs. How about if we just talk trans to trans?”

“Aight,” he said, a little nervous, which made me grow enormous and potent.

“Great. I’m Penfield, but don’t infer from that that I’m a WASP. My parents were Jewish,” I said as I led him back to my seat.

Somehow I’d started asserting the upper hand. Damn, was I topping him in this convo? For once, it was my city.

“Aiden, obvs,” he said.