In bed, I keep on a nightgown that billows around me. I curl up, my head on his chest. He presses his lips to my forehead and runs his hand over my hair. I fall asleep there, his arms around my shoulders, like maybe our chests are opening slowly, like maybe our hearts are touching through our chests.

When I wake in the morning, he is gone, the sheets cold.

VISION

The women on the block keep showing up with new men. The girl next door started it. She got a brown-haired man. Three doors down, that girl got a man with red hair.

The men are polite and have sparkling eyes, inoffensive new accessories.

Finally, I pull one of the women aside.

“Where’d all these men come from?” I ask.

Her eyes ricochet back and forth, then stop.

“Man Store,” she says, all clipped, like she wants to keep the words in her mouth.

“A store?”

“17th and Arch,” she says.

“That’s all I’m saying.” That night, I go to bed muttering it into my sheets:

Man Store

Man Store

Man Store

Like it is a song or a hex. I picture the store, full of men, all of their hearts beating in time.

I save up. After weeks of small meals, I have enough. I move my body out of bed and into the shower, blast off the sleep grime. I dress and put on my face.

The sign says Man Store in black script. A bell sounds when I push the door open.

Inside, thick red drapes cover the walls, jewelry box style, as if someone could lift the roof off and I would begin to spin slowly to a song, that strange tinkling lullaby we all know.

A woman appears before me, wearing a black dress. She has brown hair, hazel eyes, sharp cheeks.

“Can I help you?”

“I’m here for a man, I guess,” I stammer.

“Ah,” she says. “Have you purchased from us in the past?”

“No. First time.”

“Excellent! We do love new clients. What brings you here?”

A torrent of images fills my brain: My cold body sleeping alone, similar to death, my aimless hours. I want to sob when I think about the loneliness of my life, my days like unvisited graves. My eyes fill.

“It’s OK,” she says. “Let’s get started.”

I follow her through a slit in the red curtain. We enter a large white room with two chairs in the center.

“Have a seat.”

Then the white door opens and it begins.

A procession of men walks in perfect formation through the door, twenty of them, all wearing black shorts, nothing else. They move into perfect lines and rows, their bare chests moving slightly with breath.

“Let’s look,” she says. “Don’t be shy.”

The men stare forward, their eyes not even flickering or quivering, strange soldiers.

We move through the forest of them. I smell their skins, soaps, underarms, the difference of their chemistries.