“Whereas if they hadn’t told you anything?”

“I wouldn’t have to think about what patterns they’re repeating or trying to correct with me.” I nuzzled her neck. “But that’s not an issue… here.” I waited to see if I would be bold enough to say more. “We’ve always known each other.”

She was silent for a beat too long. I heard only my own thumping pulse. I regretted that I’d spoken—maybe she fancied her inner self a mystery to me still, or wanted to maintain some psychic distance.

But: “Yeah,” she echoed eventually. “Yeah, I guess we have.”

She didn’t seem quite as relieved by that sentiment as I did.

EIGHT WEEKS TILL THE EXPO, then six, then four. When we were talking, it was mostly about our unlikely jewelry heist. Anita had snagged a whiteboard from the events office and propped it between her kitchen and her hollow living room. Many evenings that early fall were like this one: I sat in my boxers on her leather sofa, shoving lukewarm takeout noodles into my mouth while she contorted herself on a yoga mat in a sports bra and tiny shorts. She talked, smacking Nicorette between clauses.

She tugged her foot up behind her, arch in elbow crease, her purple toenails touching the bottom of her bra. Her glutes flexed mightily. “Are you listening?” she said, her chin jutting toward the whiteboard—on it, a scribbled map of the planned plays, like a football coach’s blocking. “You don’t seem to be getting it.”

“I’m getting it.” I plopped to my knees on her yoga mat and pressed one side of my face to the rise of her thigh. My forehead lined up with the crease where her leg met her ass. I looked out the window to see the weird darkness of Palo Alto at the witching hour—the crisscross of the streets around University Avenue all dead by eleven p.m. How odd yet apposite to be back with Anita, brewing strange schemes in a suburb! With little to do, in nowhere-nothing places, you turn to queer, harebrained plans….

“I heard you,” I said into her flesh. I was feeling slow; I’d popped Adderall all day as I plowed through work and had therefore forgotten to eat until just now. “The raffle. You’ve got it set up and the winner gets the designer whatsit, the gown, by Mani—erm. Manilala Megatron.”

“Not a gown,” she said. She did not tug her leg away from me, but pressed one too-cold palm against my exposed ear. “A lehenga. By Manish Motilal.”

“That.”

“And?”

“Annnnd…” She flicked the top of my ear, hard, the sound of her fingernail on my skin like a woodblock being banged. “Ow.”

“I’m going to put on real clothes. Sit up.”

“Please, god, don’t.”