Page 3 of The Devil Wears Nada

The cha-chings sound like a chorus of gods who've fallen from the sky to bless me.

The chat detonates. Nineteen viewers. Somebody drops forty dollars.

Here's what I figure out somewhere in minute twenty-five, and it's worth more than the cash: my fear never goes anywhere. My heart's slamming into my chest the whole hour. But something moves in next to it and starts unpacking boxes. When I finally get off my knees, legs nearly asleep, nineteen strangers stop breathing at once. I try a slow turn, drag a strap down my shoulder exactly like I saw in some hoochie-momma music video, and the cha-chings come in a rush. I catch the preview window mid-turn. Red mouth. Black slip. For one full second, I have no idea who she is.

Then I do. And I get the whole game in a single move. Slow. Everything slow. They're not paying for skin. They're paying for the maybe.

At 1:14, I run out of nerve, blow the camera a kiss because it's a Diablo move, and slam the laptop shut like it owes me money.

Then I open it back up, because I never checked the only thing that matters, and it takes me five minutes to even find where the tips live.

Three hundred and eleven dollars.

One hour. In a cheap slip and too much lipstick. Insulting a man about his manners. My day job pays me that in two days of answering phones for three men who've never once said my name. And where I have to wear fucking pantyhose.

A laugh explodes from my mouth but I shove it back down. It's late and I live in a cheap apartment building with thin walls. But it doesn't matter. Tonight was never about the three hundred dollars. It's taking charge of a shit situation my sister got us into that can only be resolved by me. In a slip and red lippy.

The there’s the adrenaline. I’m learning that it doesn't just disappear when the show's over. It just stands around in your body looking for somewhere to go.

I'm still on my knees. I've been on my knees for an hour and I don't want to get up, and it takes me a second to figure out why. Every inch of me is buzzing at some frequency that’s going to keep me up all night. At least it’s not fear. Fear packed up and left around minute forty. This is the thing that moved in next to it and got comfortable.

I made nineteen strangers stop breathing tonight. Me. A mouth, a lamp, and a slip that cost less than lunch.

I lie back on my sophomore-year comforter. The laptop's still open, dark now, and there she is again in the black of the screen, the not-Agnes-woman with the red mouth, bare throat, the strap halfway down. The woman I didn't recognize earlier who looks like she gets exactly what she wants and makes you thank her for it.

I want to be her for five more minutes.

My hand's already moving before I've decided anything, and to be clear, it is not about the foot guy, or the crypto guy, or any of the sweet little Knights who paid tonight to watch me. It's about the no. The nineteen held breaths. The warm, stupid, entirely-mine power of it.

I lay down as if I might sleep, and behind my closed eyes, there's the shape of someone watching. Not a face, I don't have one to give him yet, but the idea of a man I’d let have me. Who earned it. And makes me feel hot.

It embarrasses me, how fast my right hand wanders under my slip until it finds my wet pussy. It only takes a few strokes until I come, my left hand clamped over my own mouth out of pure habit—thin walls, keep it quiet, keep everything quiet. For a few seconds, Agnes isn't in this apartment at all.

After, I breathe at the ceiling. Flushed, appalled, a little proud. I have a feeling that particular combination is about to become my whole personality.

Sweet little Aggie. On her knees at one in the morning, getting off on her own brilliance.

I schedule tomorrow before I can argue myself out of it. Same time. Same… face I don't have.

Diablo's open for business, bitches.

Birdie wanted to meet for coffee at eight a.m.

I want to be clear just how insane a request this is. My sister has not seen eight a.m. since Burning Man two years ago, when she attended an all-night rave and finally went to bed at nine a.m.

So when my phone lit up at 8:42 with the expected omg so sorry can we do lunch instead, my body just WOULD NOT, I was already at my desk on my second cup of shitty office coffee, running close to empty on the four hours of sleep I'd gotten after Diablo cashed out.

What can I say? I was excited about three hundred and eleven dollars. That's a lot of fucking money for me.

By noon, I'm sitting across from her at Sprout, the vegan place she picked, where they charge fourteen dollars for a bowl of vegetables picked so recently they are still warm. Birdie's already seated when I get there, which never happens, and she's glowing about it, like being on time is an accomplishment she wants a pat on the head for.

"Ag!" She's up and hugging me before I've got my bag off my shoulder, and she smells like a health-food store, all sage and patchouli and something citrus. A crystal the size of a plum swings off a leather cord at her throat. "You look tired. Are you protecting your rest? Sleep is when the body does its⁠—"

"I'm sleeping great." I am not sleeping great. Last night, I got myself off on the strength of adrenaline at one in the morning and then lay awake until three doing math in my head. Birdie does not need the itinerary.

My sister is twenty-six and looks like a shampoo commercial that wandered off its set. Sun-streaked hair she's never paid a dime for, halfway down her back. An outfit that is, on inspection, three thrifted scarves conspiring to be a dress. Sandals worn the way you'd wear them if you'd never had a callus or a bunion.

She is, to put it bluntly, the prettier of us, which used to sting until I figured her looks were just a different sort of camouflage from mine. People look at Birdie and see a girl who couldn't organize a nap. People look at me and see a girl who could organize the Library of Congress. We both suffer from typecasting. Hers just gets better lighting.