As we approached the hotel, we discovered there had been a mass shooting in the dance club across the street. Everything was cordoned off with yellow caution tape and police cruisers. Gia stayed in the room and sent me out foraging for food. I brought back some drippy street tacos, which we ate on our queen-sized beds while discussing plans for the next day.

“I want to have anaesthetic, of course, but I want to stay awake,” she said. “I want to watch everything.”

“Will they let you?”

“Can you imagine how major that would be? Like: I heard Gia stayed awake for her own castration,” she said with a chuckle, imitating some shady queen. “If anyone would let me do it, it would be Sam. I think he gets off on the freakiness.” She described him as stoic and masculine, and ever-professional, but admitted that she noticed a certain glimmer in his eye when he dealt with her. “I think he secretly loves all his ladies,” she mused. “I bet there’s a part of him that gets off on having his fingers in us.”

The windows of the room were taped shut, so before going to bed we decided to get some fresh air on the hotel rooftop. The roof was unlit and desolate, except for a plastic hot tub bubbling with lukewarm water. It looked like a little spaceship glowing in the dark, with LED lights cycling through various colours. We decided to take a quick dip in our underwear, bacteria be damned. We sat there in the water, shivering a little in the wind, listening to the hum of the city. Police radios were still squawking in the street below us. Somewhere, someone was blasting merengue-laced rap. And there was some kind of tire fire burning in a nearby industrial park, throwing up black clouds into the night. The air smelled of rubber, and little flecks of ash rained down on us as if from a distant volcanic eruption.

The next morning we moved into a room at the plastic-surgery clinic, which was in an affluent suburb of the city. The room was white, spare, and immaculate, with a hospital bed at its centre and a firm couch by the window, where I would sleep. In the bathroom there were three mirrors on either side of the sink, which created an infinity of possible selves. Across the alley from our room was a kennel where the dogs never stopped howling. We kept the window shut even though, by midday, it was blisteringly hot.