“Yes?” she says. “I guess.” Looking over to him, a shrug. “Who wouldn’t.” And he smiles. He’s smiling already, thinly, lips unparted under his long thin nose. The black patch over one eye. He takes her hand, the other woman’s hand, in his. “You see?” he says to her. Light swoops, shadows rush over them, leaping up walls to hang a moment swirling as the massive speaker stacks begin to groan a thrumbling beat. She leans back, spangles in her black hair snagging the light that blares her pink bangs, shadows under hollowed eyes etch disgust, revulsion, and he laughs, the sound of it swallowed by the revving song, let’s go, chirps a vocoded voice, let’s go, he lifts that hand, the other woman’s hand, to his thin drawn lips, let’s go, the gesture isn’t at all a kiss, let’s go, let’s go, oh, I wanna scream at the top of my lungs–

She steps back from the canvas tautly stretched before her. Somewhere outside a siren whoops, squeals, cuts out, a shiver of rain. A window’s open, a door cracked, somewhere. Her black hair unbraided now, spangles gone, pink leached from her bangs. The brush in her hand. Her feet, her thick legs bare, specked with gooseflesh. Her T-shirt grey, and black letters across the front say Outing, Thunder in parentheses. She drops the brush to a makeshift tabouret. The room behind her cavernous, laddered with rafters trussed and hung over unlit bulks, boxes, equipment, whatever it is lost in the glare of the trouble light that dangles over her head, shining on the canvas stretched, slathered black and red the suggestion of an arm, a sleek line there a throat, a chin, a head tipped back, pillowed in madly scribbled hair. She’s picked up a tube of paint, she’s squeezing it, a dollop of green out onto her fingertip, bright, electric, poisonously pure. Leaning forward to press it carefully, there, and twist: an eye. She steps back. Sniffs.

“Fucking Flashdance,” she says.