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It’s been one of those days — the headlines are sounding particularly apocalyptic, the only appearance of the sun was brief, still half-shrouded in vapors, and nobody she loves is telling her the whole truth of what’s weighing on them. If she stays home tonight, she’s just going to stare at her phone, in the dark, on the floor, with the slowly dwindling hope that it might buzz.
She needs to be somewhere. Somewhere, somewhere, where she can feel the surrounding energy shrink-wrap around her like a second skin, her body lit up with all the haphazardly-directed love in the room. Shaking away the last of the skepticism that clings to her bones, she peels herself off the carpet and trudges toward her closet.
She gives herself the space of twenty seconds and a gut check to pick an outfit, clumsily settling on a pink sequin miniskirt, a white shoestring tank top, and the chunky purple platforms that used to make her three whole heads taller than Dick. Shortly thereafter, she’s headed toward the red line in forty-degree weather, glitter on her eyelids and a Fendi baguette hanging from her wrist.
On the train, her mood buoys at the sight of a noisy group of teenagers, volleying back and forth some call and response song she doesn’t recognize. One of them is dancing in place, anchored by the stanchion, butterfly-patterned skirt swishing around their knees. Two others are sharing fries and watching Tiktoks over a phone with rubber bunny ears stuck to the top.
The scene leaves a small, stubborn smile fixed to her mouth as she walks from the station to the bar, and the feeling expands at the sight of her favorite bouncer working the door.
“Ho-ly shit. Have I died and gone to heaven?”
Kory’s smile widens, a little more warmth creeping under her ribcage. “Hi, CJ.”
CJ has been a bouncer at Plush for the past couple years – she’s six foot two, smells like sandalwood, and has the dreamiest smile with the most devastating dimples. She stands when she sees Kory coming, putting her hand over her jacket pocket like she’s been hit. It kickstarts a fluttery feeling in the pit of Kory’s stomach.
“Hey, baby,” she extends a hand. “Are you even more beautiful than the last time I saw you?”
“Maybe.” Kory takes it with a wink, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Slow night tonight, huh?”
CJ tucks her dreads behind one ear, glancing down the street. “Ah, the whole block’s been slow to come back after everything that went down last month.”
“That’s right,” Kory murmurs. There’d been Lantern business in this neighborhood semi-recently, some failed extraterrestrial assassination attempt that had left the Corps with some pretty hefty clean-up responsibilities. Kory hadn’t been dispatched to the scene, but she had watched the news coverage. “You get caught in the middle of any of that?”
“Nah, I was at my ma’s upstate. But, you know. People who were, still a little skittish.” CJ makes a so-so gesture with her hand, her chunky silver rings catching the light. “Plus, New York Liberty’s playing tonight down at the Barclays Center. Lots of our folks are there, or at a sports bar watching.”
“But you’re here, huh?” Kory braces her hand on a popped hip. “How’d you get stuck with that?”
“You know, it’s all worth it just to see you again. Hey, where’s your friend tonight?”
Donna, she means. The last time Kory had come here, it had been with Donna, tipsy and giggling, and they’d been the last two people on the dance floor. Kory tries to contain the hot sunburst of memory before it starts up a familiar ache. “Stuck at work, too.” She shrugs. “Come have a drink with me before you’re off.”
“Don’t tempt me.” CJ grins, dropping Kory’s hand with a soft squeeze and moving to open the door for her. “Have fun tonight, gorgeous.”
It’s throwback night at Plush. Kory steps into the vibrant, fizzy space to the dulcet tones of an Earth, Wind, & Fire song, pink-purple lights casting a room full of glitzy femmes in a very attractive, very bisexual glow. She resists the urge to make a beeline for the dance floor, solely because the specials board is advertising a boozy mango slushie in loopy, neon green script, and it suddenly sounds divine.
She’s glad she makes a pit stop, because she meets Amalia while she’s waiting for her drink. Amalia is a 26-year-old ER nurse who has recently moved to the city from San Antonio, Texas, and she came out this evening because she got the date wrong for One Direction trivia night, which she thought would be a good opportunity to make friends. She’s wearing a sparkly baby blue wrap dress that Kory is obsessed with.
When Kory starts to introduce herself, Amalia shakes her head, her intricate beaded earrings swaying with the movement. “Oh, I know who you are,” she says, a pretty blush high on her cheeks. “I follow you on Instagram.”
Kory grins around her straw, reaching inside her bag for her phone. “What’s your handle? Let me follow you back!”
“Okay, don’t judge me, I made it forever ago. It’s amaliadollaz. With a Z.” Amalia looks over her shoulder as she types it in. “Also, I love your phone charms.”
“Thanks! My friend Vic made them for me.”
It takes a couple seconds’ buffering time. “Like, Cyborg?” Amalia asks, starry-eyed. “Cyborg made your phone charms?”
“Mhm! He starts soddering when briefings get too long.” Kory slides her acrylic beneath the flower charm, angling it so it catches the light. “This one is a Hy’tt bloom, which is a type of Tamaranean flower I grow in my little in-apartment greenhouse.” She nudges at the rising sun, next, rendered in copper. “And this is because my name translates to — well, it’s a very long sentence in this language, but part of it means dawn. Daybreak. That’s the time I was born.”
“That’s so sweet.” She handles the charms with a ginger, delicate touch, like Kory doesn’t drop her phone from dizzying heights every two weeks. “My middle name is Fawn. When my aunt was driving my mom to the hospital the night I was born, a fawn and a doe crossed the road in front of them at a red light. She thought it was good luck.”
“Well, you’re lovely.” Amalia blushes, eyes dropping down to her drink. “So, I think it was.”
They sip at the last dregs of their drinks until Bad Girls comes on, and a shared love of Donna Summer drives them both to the light up floor. They dance with each other, and then in a small group of delightfully animated goths with purple eyeshadow and artfully ripped fishnets, one of whom politely asks Kory for a selfie. They take a bunch, and then Kory tugs down her tanktop and meanders over to the DJ booth, flirting relentlessly until they play Diana Ross’ Upside Down, specifically the extended 12’’ version that Roy got her on vinyl last year.
After a couple more drinks and a lot more dancing, when the world has gone all bright and floaty, she and Amalia get to talking again in the bathroom line, propped up against a wall with a mural of the Combahee River Collective.
“So, you know how there was alien shit happening, like, practically next door? Just a few weeks ago?” Amalia asks, and Kory nods. “Remember how they shot that – I don’t even know, beigey goo stuff everywhere?”
“Yes,” Kory confirms. “They closed down approximately twelve blocks, including this one, correct? Seemed like the clean-up took a few days, even with the rings.”
“Yes! The, uh, hero people, or whatever, ran the standard tests and found it was nontoxic, so there was no quarantine. But, since then, I’ve had, like, five patients who live around here come into the ER complaining about the same type of pain.” For a brief moment, Kory watches Amalia shift into concerned nurse mode, hands moving down her own body to highlight the site of the recurring problem. “Localized to the pelvic area, recently manifested, unrelated to menstrual cycles. My boss keeps saying it’s just cysts, but the type of pain they’re describing isn’t consistent with that. All we’ve been doing is sending them home with extra-strength Midol and an OBGYN referral, but.”
She cuts herself off, shaking her head. Kory feels an intense pang of frustration, recognizing the source of that impulse, how many times someone must have shut her down about this. “I don’t know, I’m new here, I’m new to this stuff, so maybe it sounds crazy, but I feel like there’s something more going on.”
“You’re not crazy,” Kory says, maybe a little too vociferously, based on the way Amalia’s eyes widen. She’s already fishing her phone out of her purse, setting an alarm to text Wally tomorrow. “The League always takes samples from a scene like that. Let me get my hands on one and call a friend to run some extra, extra tests. Maybe there’s something they missed.”
“I hope I’m not wasting your time,” Amalia drums nervous fingers along her own thigh. “It really could be nothing.”
Kory shakes her head. “If it is, then we ruled out something potentially really bad. Far from a waste.”
“Okay.” She manages a small smile. “Will you let me know? What you find out.”
“Of course!”
They finish up their drinks and exchange contact information. Amalia enters Kory’s name alongside two emojis – revolving pink hearts, and the dizzy star. Kory feels an intense tide of affection. When she mentions that it’s getting late, and she should head to her bus stop, Kory makes three separate attempts to call her a car.
“It’s a straight shot, no transfers, I swear I’ll be fine.” Amalia’s lips tilt in a sweet, reassuring smile.
“Will you share your location for the hour?” Kory insists. “Just so I can check up on you.”
“You got it. God,” Amalia shakes her head, looking at Kory like she’s grown a second head, but with a layer of admiration, like she’s totally pulling it off. “This feels — unreal, like, how are you so nice?”
Kory purses her lips. She wants to say, this isn’t even nice. This is a modicum of basic inter-species decency, and after three decades of life, I still find myself shocked at how rarely living beings deign to extend it to each other. How stubborn they are, in their refusal to admit that apathy — cruelty — is a universal crisis.
Instead, she offers Amalia a warm smile, squeezes her arm, and says, “please text me when you have arrived home safely.”
An hour later and Kory is still dancing, floating between groups of groovy, beautiful women, taking pictures, downing drinks of all sorts of whimsical and fantastical colors. Last call isn’t so far away, and Kory knows she needs to soak up as much of this feeling as she can before she walks home alone and feels it drain from heart like air from a pricked inflatable. As it turns out, leaving it all on the dancefloor is a lot easier when Boney M’s Sunny cover is playing.
As the final notes melt into a pop remix of a Nina Simone song, Kory tips her head back, brushing sweat-soft hair off her shoulders and looking up at the colored lights. When her gaze dips back down to the crowd, slow, layered with the fuzzy imprint of those technicolor rings, she feels, for a second, like she’s somewhere else. Somewhere dreamy and hazy, where none of her problems really exist, and everything always feels good.
And then – keeping with the pattern of her life up to this point – it all careens nightmareishly sideways.
The second they lock eyes, Kory recognizes her. That arresting, familiar grey-green, glinting like wet stones in the low light. Dick told her, once, in a quiet voice with an arm wrapped around her waist, that he wasn’t sure how Cheshire managed to move, phantom-like, through so many heavily surveilled places when she was the kind of stunning, obvious beautiful that would otherwise draw every eye in a room.
Kory finds herself in grim agreement, briefly frozen in place by a combination of disorientation and intense, almost dizzying interest. The lines of her suit are clean, neatly tailored, the fabric a deep, velvety blue. Jewel toned, to match purple pumps and red lips, which are ever-so-slightly turned up at the corners. Her hair rests in thick, loose waves around her shoulders, with a sheen like spilled oil.
Slowly, so that the motion is unmistakable, Cheshire dips the golden point of her nail into a shot glass. The clear liquid turns an iridescent, sickly shade of green. Kory’s stomach drops, and Cheshire’s smile sharpens.
She stands, withdrawing her finger from the glass and flicking away the excess liquid. The droplets sizzle when they hit the bar counter. With one last look over her shoulder, she’s slipping down the bathroom hallway, nails dragging lightly along the graffitied wall.
Without truly thinking about it, Kory is following her, gently pushing her way through the crowd as quickly as her platforms will allow. As she passes by the bar, she grabs the shot, dumping the contents in her purse. There’s some kind of reaction, a hissing, bubbling noise, but her eyes are still locked on Cheshire’s retreating figure.
Along the length of the hallway, there are errant pairings and trios of femmes, futches, and butches either actively making out, or on the verge of making out. Kory can’t help but wonder if she and Cheshire blend right in, especially as Kory intercepts her path, all but backing her into the wall with her hands curled into combat-ready fists at her sides.
Kory is aware of the marked difference between Cheshire and Jade. There’s a well-creased picture in Roy’s wallet of Lian and her mother, lazing in a sunbeam and wearing matching green sweaters. Lian can’t be older than 2 or 3. Her mother sits with her legs folded, nose scrunched in a silly way that appears to be making Lian laugh. Her hands – blunt fingernails, no claws – are visibly gentle where they rest at Lian’s shoulder and hip.
The first time Kory caught a glimpse of it, she gave Roy a hug that lasted approximately five minutes. That is Jade, the only time Kory has ever seen her.
This person, mercurial and sinister, pretty in the way a pit viper is pretty, is Cheshire. Kory can’t afford to think of her any other way, now.
“This is a dead end,” she says flatly.
Cheshire tilts her head to the side, mild and appraising. “That would only matter to me if you were chasing me,” she points out. “Are you chasing me?”
With an irritated twitch of her eyebrow, Kory bites back the confession that she hasn’t decided yet. “What are you doing here?”
“I had business in town.”
“So, murder,” Kory corrects, blunt and unimpressed. “You have a target? Here?”
“In the area. My job is done, I tied up the loose ends this morning.” Cheshire leans back against the wall, elegant and in apparent repose. It grates Kory’s nerves, and also, unfortunately, highlights the lacy outline of her decolletage. “This was recreational.”
“You could’ve left, when you saw me.”
“You misunderstand. I followed you here.”
“That was stupid,” Kory cuts back, too quick. The inscrutable tilt of Cheshire’s mouth persists. It almost reminds her of Donna, or Dick – exactly the kind of mask she came to this place to get away from. “You cannot take me one to one.”
The faint twitch of Cheshire’s brow seems to indicate she’s not nearly as assured of this conclusion. “I was curious.”
“Curious.”
“I find you exquisite,” She twists her finger in the slouchy silk of her blouse. Kory wills herself not to look. “Remember?”
“What was the job? Do you have another lined up?”
Cheshire laughs, low and throaty, “When has it ever been that easy?” She pushes off the wall, drawing up to her full height, which still requires her to tip her head back to look at Kory. Her nails dance menacingly close to Kory’s torso, and it occurs to Kory, with a sour jolt, that she had just assumed whatever poison Cheshire had on her would be worthless against a Tamaranean constitution. Too hasty by half, especially if she had intentionally followed Kory here.
“Keep an eye out and we’ll cross paths again.” For a moment, Kory swears she could read something sincere in Cheshire’s expression. A genuine desire to pick Kory apart. “I would enjoy that.”
“I cannot let you leave.”
“Let me?”
Kory hesitates. In spite of her confidence in her ability to detain Cheshire – to what end would she even be doing it? Kory didn’t catch her in the act of murder; if she’s to be believed, the murder is done. She is, of course, an internationally wanted assassin, but, considering Kory had taken her daughter to a Katseye concert just last weekend, she has no interest in seeing her behind bars.
A moment of indecision is all Cheshire needs to slip away, her nails gliding along Kory’s exposed midriff as she does – not hard enough to draw blood, just a useless, dangerous tease that sends shivers up Kory’s spine. There should be nowhere for her to go, but, the second Kory whips around, she’s already lost sight of her. She hightails it to the bathroom, checks every stall and the vents, and still, nothing..
She slows to a stop, a sort of restless embarrassment settling under her skin, feeling suddenly like she’s acting the fool in exactly the way Cheshire has led her to.
She leans against the edge of the full length bathroom mirror, in need of a moment to collect herself. The buzz, the glow, the love, is gone, like she’d never left her apartment in the first place. She reaches into her skirt pocket for her phone, which, precisely at that moment, has finally buzzed. Her eyes nearly glaze over at the unread text.
From: Donnaaaaaaa 💕💞💖💘💗💕
Hey honey, thanks for checking in and sorry for the delay! Work stuff. I’m still doing alright. How are you?