“Not exactly. Are you still on your Gram cleanse?”

“Yep.”

I filled him in about Aiden in the city and the dual hexing.

“Gawd, Pen. What did the Operatrix want?”

“Well, apparently, the person who first looked at my post of Alice got hexed, and now this other trans guy is totally in the Shadowlands in Joshua Tree. And Aiden and I have to go find him.”

“Whoa. What form did the Operatrix take? Because one of the people I’m dating met the Operatrix in the form of a self-described Afro-Caribbean trans goddess named Anubia. My pal Ochre talked to a computer engineer named Milton. And you had that other person back when you—”

I cut him off so I didn’t have to think about my early Shadowland days. “The Operatrix was in a flowy dressing gown and also reminded me of Kathy Acker. Hard to place.”

“Well, I’m starting to believe there is something like divine symmetry in the world if, after all this time, the universe has finally forced you to deal with Aiden in a real way.”

“Thanks. I’m sure Sophie will agree with you.”

My therapist had banned me from talking about Aiden because I turned into a totally devolved baby whenever I mentioned him.

I let Sid know that I’d meet up with him in L.A. if I wasn’t too busy wrangling Blithe, and then I headed out of Gwen’s apartment. My stomach lurched as I thought about what I’d done to Blithe.

By the time I got home, I was in a total spiral. Labeling it spiraling was not enough to stop the looping images of some young trans dude strangled by sadness and hatred of himself. I held down on the Rhiz-shaped icon on the back of my phone.

The projector raised up.

“Yes, Penfield,” the Operatrix said, now wearing corduroy overall shorts.

“Blithe is going to be okay, right?” I asked shakily.

“Now is not the time for remorse,” the Operatrix said.

I sighed.

“He would have gone to the Shadowlands either way. But you’ve accelerated the process, and that harm is your responsibility.”

I was a child receiving absolution, giddy with the lightness that comes after rooting around in catastrophic thoughts. “I’ll help him.”

The Operatrix nodded and faded out.

That evening, R emerged. She always returned right at the moment I started to forget her a little.

I was standing in the yard at dusk before the cherry blossom tree, watching the thick buds that had formed on the branches, when I had one of those spastic twenty-first-century tics to check and see what phone-info awaited.

Come fuck me 2nite, R had texted.

I could have said I was busy, but I knew that it was healthy for me to spend time with a celebrity, or anyone, really.