His proposition arrived as a notification from a kink dating site she’d eagerly signed up for and then promptly forgot. His message came between a reminder for her annual colonoscopy, and an announcement that her insurance premium was increasing, along with several ads by her favorite shoe designer which she, of course, opened first.

The tent is gray and orange—gray like the color of my face after a long bout of vomiting, or of my favorite wire-free bra after years of abuse and few washes. The orange is the sturdy International Orange of the Golden Gate Bridge. This is the same orange my friend Vivian wants to paint her house. The light coming through my living room window makes the gray tent fabric glow yellow, like the rotten-banana bruises in the crooks of my elbows. My husband Cory set up the tent silently, prodding our living room walls with the carbon fiber poles as he wrestled it into shape, finally moving the desk before sitting it flat on the floor. The tent domes so high that it blocks the view of the TV. This is something he gingerly noted, but knew better than to complain about, just as he knew better than to mention that tents aren’t meant to be in living rooms.

Sophie pulls away from the door, breathing hard, trying to decide what to do. She peers again through the peephole. The man is still standing there. The automatic hall light flicks off, yet she can make him out in the fading light from the small window above the stairwell. He appears perfectly normal, maybe a bit nondescript. He breathes motionlessly, gazing forward down the stairs. She wonders what he could possibly want, what he might be thinking.