And on and on we went, flying one minute through new cutaway paths in wildflower pastures, getting mired in deep ruts, getting out.

“Remember the time on the roof with the microscope and telescope?” I asked as we neared the end of the session.

“Oh yes,” she said, smiling.

Things had gotten so bad with my Aiden-obsession that she made me come to her office at night, to the roof, where we occasionally went to fight each other with long sticks (really to fight my depression). She’d set up a microscope on a table and pointed a telescope toward the heavens.

“Go,” she said, and walked to the edge of the roof.

When I looked up at the Manhattan sky, I was tiny and awed. “Venus is out tonight.”

She must have enchanted the telescope.

“Now go to the microscope,” she said.

I looked down into the lit-up lens and saw stained purple circles, with darker spots like little raisins.

“It’s a flake of skin,” she said. “It’s corny, and I certainly didn’t come up with this, but one way of looking is love and the other, envy.”

Riding back on a light pink subway car, I thanked the Rhiz for setting us up. At the time, I thought that by pressing the never-before-used Rhiz button on my phone and summoning an Operatrix to help me, I had failed in some elaborate scheme of self-reliance. When the chubby Latinx Operatrix in a long printed caftan had given me their tablet of recommendations with Sophie’s starred name, I’d expected to encounter a weepy and patronizing cis woman who signed a lot of online petitions in her free time. And yet the Rhiz had succeeded like its namesake; I was a tree in distress, and the network had sent out a signal to bring in reparative nutrients.

Aiden was home, on the couch with Blithe.

“The cis women in marketing thought I was this cute, unthreatening stud and asked me really invasive questions about my dick size. And, voila, here’s our compensation,” he reported. Three SpaceShoes capsules—one silver, one red, and one teal—sat by his feet. He unboxed the Jupiter for us, all temperature-stable mesh with a pronged gap at the top. The defunding of NASA had released all this cool gear into the fashion world. We let Blithe choose first. He picked the silver.

After we’d eaten ramen that we’d ordered in, Aiden and I sat out in the backyard, sipping ashwagandha tea. I hadn’t slept with R in over a week, and she grew clearer in my mind. The secrecy around our relationship was a vine-covered wall that I wanted to scale. I figured Aiden could handle it.

“What’s the strangest hookup situation you’ve ever been in?” I asked, knowing that he wouldn’t want to answer me.

“Pen, you know I don’t like to talk about this private stuff.”

“Can I tell you mine?”