“She has her favorite galleries up and down 10th and 11th, and shelovesjazz.”
I couldn’t believe this was happening to me. Everything this woman said was comedy gold, and I wanted to memorize every word for a future book.
Emboldened by the spirit of a summer night and Wes’s bad influence, I turned toward the women. “Has she tried those buttons people use to communicate with their pets?” I shifted my voice to use similar dramatic inflections, and I saw Wes smile out of the corner of my eye.
The brunette raised a hand to her overlined pink lips. “Oh my God, no, stop. I know exactly what you’re talking about. Sheneedsthose.”
“You have to be careful, though,” I said. “If she has superintelligence, what happened to Bunny could happen toher.”
The woman nodded, matching my seriousness. “You’re so right. She could become self-aware and have to go on Lexapro like Mommy.” She talked in a baby voice, scratching behind the dog’s ear.
“What happened to Bunny?” Wes asked slowly.
“There was this social media dog who learned to communicate by pressing buttons that said words in English. As her vocabulary grew, she started to say things like ‘What Bunny? What Mom? What dog?’.She began to grasp concepts of time, space, and existence that were too much to bear, and she became depressed.”
Wes stared at me. “You watched a dog on the Internet have an existential crisis?”
As if we’d bummed them out, the women quietly walked away and mumbled something about needing a drink.
“You speak like such a boomer sometimes,” I said to Wes.
He lowered his head closer to mine, flashing that disarming smile. “I’m a boomer at heart, baby.”
The nearly imperceptible hint of southern twang in his gravelly voice, the intense eye contact, the proximity, and the casual pet name were too much. We both pulled back from each other at the same time.
My body was stiff as we walked through a purple curtain to the next room. I nearly yelped in surprise, greeted by a woman writhing in a pile of dirt, covered in red paint. She was screaming silently as she contorted her body into unnatural shapes. The small crowd watched her in reverent silence.
“It’s givingCarrie,” I whispered to Wes.
A short bald man in a flashy green blouse craned his head toward us, red wine nearly spilling out of his glass. “It’s actuallyan exploration ofgender.” He explained in a loud whisper. “So, more likeThe Substance.”
“My bad,” I said.
Wes covered up his laugh with a cough.
“We haven’t met,” he said slowly, eyeing Wes even as he reached his hand out to me. “I’m Max. How do you two know Onyx?”
I shook his hand, nodding at Wes with a smile. It was his idea to sneak in, so it was his responsibility to world-build our lie palace.
“At a poly and ENM mixer,” Wes said.
I dug my nails into my palm to keep from bursting into laughter. That was an insane thing to guess about a stranger.
Max nodded. “For sure, for sure. I love that even the straights are getting experimental these days.”
“Totally,” I said with a nod.
“Oh, there’s Onyx,” Max said, flagging down a petite woman with black bangs who looked wildly stressed. I assumed she was the person in charge of this whole affair.
“Time to go,” Wes whispered, placing my hand on his arm again.
We slipped from the room, ignoring the confused call from our new friend Max. When we were back out on the street, I was laughing, and Wes was watching me laugh. A strand of my hair got caught in my lipstick, and Wes moved it out of my face before quickly retracting his hand.
“Areyouethically non-monogamous?” I asked out of curiosity, assuming everyone in the kink scene was on some level.
Wes’s lips twitched. “No. I’m getting you a car.”
“Oh. Okay.” I deflated at the abrupt end to the night, but I wasn’t sure why. Something about the evening with him mademe feel raw and far too exposed. “How are you going to call a car without a phone?”
