Page 29 of Wells

"You keep the mask," I tell her. "The mask, the wig, anything that keeps you yours. I am not asking for who you are. I just want to see you, just this once."

She is quiet, working it. When she answers, her voice is careful. "Then give me something back of you, something you aren't easily willing to share."

"Name it."

"You sit back there in the dark every time, and you take. I hand you everything, but I never get one thing of yours. Not your face, not your name, not even the sound of you."

The ask lands square in the place I keep walled off, and the old refusal comes up on reflex. I breathe past it.

"Not my face. That I can't give you, and it has nothing to do with you."

The last time someone learned who I was, it cost me everything I had. The dark is how I stay safe. The dark stays.

She doesn't push.

"Okay," she says. "Not your face." A pause, then lower, "But I know you, Midnight. I know exactly when you finish, because you go silent on me. Every single time. You shut yourself off right when it would be the most real, and you leave me out here by myself, coming for you on camera." Her thumb moves slowly against her hip. "Let me hear you tonight. Let me hear you let go. Fall with me."

It is the one thing I never give to anyone. Not the words, not the face, the loss of control itself, the proof that she reaches me. The modulator will keep my voice a stranger's no matter what comes out of me, so what she is asking for was never my cover. It’s only the thing I have spent a lifetime refusing to hand over.

"Okay," I say.

She sits up against the pillows and reaches for the hem of the camisole, and there is nothing practiced in it, none of the slow tease she sells. She pulls it over her head like a woman undressing alone, drops it off the side of the bed, and lies back, the platinum hair loose around the mask. The silver ring in her navel catches the light, more of herself handed to a black square than she has ever given it.

She leaves her black thongs on.

"There," she says, quieter. "Your turn is coming."

"Touch yourself," I tell her, and the command is gone out of it. "Slow. Not for the camera. For you. I want to know what you sound like when nobody taught you how."

Her hand moves low, and there is no choreography in it this time. Her breath catches on its own. The sound she makes is small, with nothing built for a speaker in it, and it catches somewhere in me and holds.

"Talk to me," she breathes. "I always do this in the dark. Talk to me so I know you're there. Don't hold back. I want to hear you come apart with me."

So I give it to her out loud, not muting any of it.

"I haven't been able to hold still since your reply came through this afternoon." It comes out lower than I let it, the flatness gone out of it. "I cleared my whole night for you."

Her breath stutters. "Keep going."

"You are what I look forward to all week." My hand moves with the sound of her. "I dream about you when we aren't together on here."

"Midnight," she says, and the name comes apart in the middle of her mouth.

"I'm here. I'm not going anywhere." The command is long gone from my voice. "I'm imagining being inside of you, your tight pussy."

Her sounds climb, and I let mine climb with them, further off the flat line every time hers rises. I stop tracking the frame. I stop managing the picture. There is only her breathing and the heat climbing through me and the unbearable nearness of a woman I have never touched coming undone a thousand miles away while I come undone with her.

When she tips over, she does it openly, holding nothing back, my name coming apart in her mouth. And for the first time on this call, I do not reach for silence. I don't swallow it. I don't flatten my palm to the desk and wait it out behind the screen.

I let the rough sound out of me, all of it, the breath and the break and the proof, and the startled noise she makes when she hears it is worth more than the whole arrangement.

"Oh," she breathes, and I can hear the smile in it. "There you are. I love hearing you break for me, Midnight. You sound just like I imagined you would."

"Only for you, Peoria."

For a while, neither of us speaks. Her chest rises and falls. The platinum hair has slipped across the pillow. I sit in the quiet, the cool air brushing over my sweaty skin.

I pick up the cigarette off the keyboard and finally light it, pulling in a lungful of nicotine. I've had real women in real rooms. Not one of them ever gutted me out like a woman whose real name I don't know and whose skin I've never felt.