When she got fired from her library job, she realized that she could start camming and did that for a few months. She hated the lewd messages and initially disappointing amount of money she received, but it led her to Aaron, who sent a polite, solicitous DM one day to her camming profile and a “tip” of two hundred dollars.

Against her better judgment, she replied, and after a short exchange he volunteered that he lived on the north side of Ann Arbor.

I wish I could meet you, he said. I think you’re the most beautiful girl in the world.

I’m a student at Michigan, Lara responded. I could meet you. I’m probably half your age or younger. It would cost you, though.

Naturally, he said.

He seemed to actually understand the parameters of the situation, and the initial meeting had confirmed that he was probably mostly fine. And, you know, that he had cash to burn.

The day before their first appointment, Tess said, “I’d like to talk you out of this.”

“Do you have six hundred dollars for me?” Lara said.

“Did you even try to get a real job?”

“This is a real job,” Lara said.

She affected nonchalance to Tess, the only one who knew about this, but she found herself shaking on the way to the appointment. Her need for six hundred dollars had been momentarily eclipsed by the strangeness of this situation. She was a prostitute, just like that. Somehow she had assumed it would have more intermediary stages. All it required was an encrypted text messaging app and some good luck. When she got off the bus, she took a couple pulls from a flask of whisky that she had stashed in her bag.

His house on the north side was identical in design to the surrounding ones — brick, one floor, four windows in front. When he answered the door, he was wearing a collared shirt under a quarter-zip.

“Hi Katie,” he said. “Come on in.”

Lara felt like she was about to explode but she made herself take a step forward, then another, then he shut the door behind them. Lara winced.

“I just made some tea,” he said. “Come sit with me.”

The gray daylight didn’t permeate that deeply into the house. Off to one side, there was a living room with upholstered armchairs, couches, a glass-topped coffee table, and an overflowing bookshelf that filled an entire wall, all half in darkness. In the kitchen, there were lace curtains on the windows and a quilted runner down the center of the dining table, a glass-doored cabinet with dusty old plates and photographs. It looked like the house of an old woman. She sat in a chair facing into the kitchen while he poured water into cups.

“So, Katie, how’s your semester going?” he said.

“Uh, not too bad,” Lara said. “I started my thesis.”

“You’re studying English, correct?”

“Yeah. I’m doing my thesis on Henry James.”