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Jay Everwood's date arrived.

It was an arrival. It was an event. Every single person in the restaurant who was facing the door turned to stare. Everyone who wasn't facing the door turned to see what everyone else was staring at, and stayed turned to join the throng. Sashaying toward Jay's table was a slim, tall woman with flowing long honey-blonde hair and a loosely-draping red dress that looked like it cost more than Jay's entire wardrobe put together. It left very little to the imagination. Jay could see the woman's bright blue eyes from across the dining room, the mischievous quirk in her ruby lips, the dangerous arch of her brows and the elegant cut of her jaw. Even having seen the woman's profile picture on the dating application, Jay felt certain some sort of mistake had been made.

The woman sat down across from them, hair bouncing merrily, chest heaving. She smiled. It was an arresting smile.

Jay managed: "Wow."

"Right?" The woman extended a slender hand. "I'm Karen. You must be Jay."

"I am Jay." It felt woefully insufficient. "Your escort find the place okay?"

"Oh, I ditched them at a back alley. They're probably crying into their radios as we speak."

"Aren't you, like, sort of important? Your profile said you're some admin bigwig." Her profile had in fact said Dr. Karen Elstrom, Clearance Level 4. Trying to imagine there was both a doctorate and the security credentials of a Site or Departmental Director attached to her was a tall order.

"This look like a wig to you?" Karen tossed her hair, then ruffled it playfully.

"Okay, but I mean—"

"If I'm important, and I don't want an escort, and they're less important than me, and they want to escort me, how does that math shake out?"

"I just want to make sure our date isn't going to get interrupted by a bunch of angry, armed men waving guns at me, asking why I kidnapped their asset."

"I have bad news for you, Jay. Every single date I have ever been on has ended terribly."

"How terribly? I've had pretty rotten luck myself…"

"Death!"

"They died?"

"Well, I sure didn't!" The woman certainly radiated life. "But no, not the dates themselves. Not every time. A few times! But mostly other people died. Property damage. International incidents. Interdimensional incidents. That sort of thing. Have you seen a menu yet?"

Karen's effortlessly breathless delivery left Jay playing perpetual catchup. "No, not yet. They're pretty busy. I think this place just opened?"

Karen nodded enthusiastically. "That's right. Haven't even been properly certified yet! Oh, don't worry." Jay could feel themself blanching. "I know the chef. We go way back. He once comped my meal because my date's head exploded, and you know the margins these people work with? Very slim. They can't afford to comp many meals, especially not at these prices. So it's probably fine."

"Uh."

"So, GoI research, right? Chaos Insurgency? Serpent's Hand? That sort of thing?"

"Not so much. Mostly we do Wondertainment, and that's a pretty near full-time job. Calling yourself the 'Wondertainment Research Group' is just begging for a budget cut, you know?"

Karen laughed. It was a frantic sound. "I do know! I've cut so many budgets in my day, they used to call me the Ipperwash Slasher."

In my day? Jay wondered. This woman doesn't even look thirty.

"Welcome to Plenty!" A man who looked like he might fit in as the secondary focus of a photoshoot with Karen for some high-end fashion magazine was standing beside their table in a black and white waiter's ensemble. Jay hadn't heard or seen him amble up. They hadn't heard or seen anything that wasn't Karen Elstrom for the past several minutes. He placed a pair of menus on the table, and continued the solicitous script. "Call me Ishmael. Can I get you something to drink while you decide?"

Karen snorted girlishly, a sound at complete odds with her appearance. "Got any wine that's never seen the watery side of the world?"

Ishmael blinked, obviously unprepared for the reference and probably not knowing what it meant. "We have plenty of fine vintages, ma'am. Was there anything in particular you—"

"Whatever's the most expensive." Karen reached into the golden belt barely cinching her barely-a-dress closed, and produced a totally featureless matte black card. She tapped it on the table three times with her long fingers, then slapped it down with a plastic crack. "I'm buying," she added as though sensing Jay's rising panic.

"Very good, ma'am." The waiter took the card and left them to consider their options.

Jay boggled at the menu. "Anantesheshan goujons? How is that even… how is that even?"

"I'm given to understand it sloughs a portion of its flesh every midwinter, we collect it, and it's sold to various allied paratech research firms at a premium. Apparently whatever they can't use gets into the food markets."

Jay made a face. "Okay. Why would you want to eat that?"

Karen made a strange gesture, pressing her forefinger to her nose and running it up to the bridge absent-mindedly. "It's apparently the purest way to experience the taste of fish. It makes you forget everything but the moment, allowing your senses to take in the texture of the flesh without any extraneous information."

"Yeah, I think I'll pass. I don't like fish that much."

"I think I'm going to try the Fillet That Just Goes On Forever." Karen closed her menu with a snap. "They say every bite compounds on the last, until you feel like you've eaten a dozen meals before it's even half over."

Jay frowned. "Again, why would you want that?"

Karen stretched unselfconsciously, shaking her head back and forth, producing the inevitable hurricane of hair. A solid half of the restaurant was still watching them. Watching her, rather. "It has an aftertaste of longevity. Makes you feel like every moment can last an eternity. Makes you feel immortal, at least until the next time you use the washroom." She winked provocatively, with a pirate smile.

Jay felt simultaneously energized and exhausted with the woman's… everything. It was already shaping up to be an interesting outing, at the very least. They put their menu down. "That sounds interesting. I'll try that too, though I might only take one bite."

Karen laughed. Jay had expected a gentle trilling sound, but what came out instead was more of a joyous bark. "Watching your weight? We're just skin and bones, you and I."

Jay glanced down at the exposed bones of Karen's chest: collar, sternum and ribs. "You wear your bones well," they found themself saying out loud.

"Why thank you!" Karen blushed in pleasure, and adjusted the cut of her dress to be even more prone to disaster. "I like your outfit. It's very punk."

Jay glanced farther down, and picked at their jacket selfconsciously. "I hadn't considered that. I'm not much of a fashion plate. Do you think it's inappropriate for fine dining?"

Karen leaned forward so suddenly that Jay recoiled in surprise, self-defense instincts kicking in. The woman tilted her chin down and stared up into Jay's eyes like she was performing a Sexy Librarian without the glasses. Her dress no longer did its civic duty at this angle, but Jay's attention was fixed on those boiling baby blues. "I am in the mood for inappropriate today, Dr. Everwood. Fuck them if they can't take a joke."

She leaned back again, self-satisfied, then offered an only half-apologetic smirk. "Was that too much? I was going for borderline."

"It crossed a line," Jay laughed nervously. "But I don't mind line dancing."

"Oh, we'll be going dancing later," Karen chuckled as she rearranged her crimson drapery again. "I hope you'll be able to keep up."

Jay held out no hope for this.

Their second port of call was a cabaret club called Life and Limbs. The name immediately put Jay on guard, but Karen was blithely unconcerned. She walked down the streets of Backdoor SoHo like she owned the place — given her apparent credit situation and the obvious quality of the Negaseattle Purple they'd been drinking, the woman somehow polishing off the entire bottle, she might well have — and Jay occasionally fell back a step to watch her strut the stage. They'd never seen confidence like that in their life. This was an administrator?

The opening act was a comedy troupe called The Artistocrats, which did nothing to relieve Jay's growing sense of dread. They performed a series of skits depicting life in the Court of the Hanged King of Alagadda which rapidly turned Jay's cheeks red, supplemented as they were by a cavalcade of extras engaged in athletic copulation in the background. They didn't even hear half of the punchlines over the enthusiastic accompaniment, but apparently Karen did. She laughed uproariously. She brayed. She guffawed. Jay stopped watching the show and started watching their date instead, watching her round face break open wide, her mouthful of perfect white teeth bared fearlessly at the world, her eyes bright. Other people in their row were looking at her too, watching her laugh. Jay felt like laughing too, even though the jokes were far from their taste and they found the stage dressing mortifying. Elstrom's buoyancy was infectious.

Jay did rather enjoy the unexpected second opening act, when Andy Kaufmann walked out on stage, mercilessly aped the gasping and gaping audience, then left without saying a word.

The main event was something else entirely. "Persons and protopersons," an offstage voice commanded, "please give a warm Backdoor SoHo welcome to our starring act, the Surly Slippers!" To a rousing round of applause, a troupe of music hall girls dressed only slightly more modestly than Elstrom flitted onto the stage… and off the stage… and into the air above the stage, where they linked arms and began to kick in sync. This of course sent them spiralling backward through the air, and Jay was astonished at the dexterity with which they careened across the hall, narrowly avoiding collisions with the curtains and scaffolding and even the audience via perfect physical control. The music underpinning this flight of fancy was something airy and whimsical, appropriately enough, and Jay felt their heart beating faster in their chest. It felt hot in the theatre. They wanted to feel the wind in their hair.

It was going worse for Karen. She was squirming in her seat, reaching up toward the dancers; one of them high-fived her with a grin, and was only barely able to release the woman's grasping fingers. The dancer winked at Jay as the chorus line spiralled away, and then — Jay gasped — broke apart, each dancer now performing their own acrobatic astronaut routine. They swirled, they twirled, they arched and stretched like ballerinas, and the music soared as they soared, and…

It stopped.

The motion stopped. The music stopped. Jay's heart stopped. The dancers were frozen in mid-air. The announcer broke through the reverie to boom: "Do we have a pair of volunteers from the audience?"

There could be only one reaction to this challenge. The room exploded with nervous laughter.

A second reaction Jay had not expected followed swiftly on the heels of this. For the first time tonight, Karen had not joined in the laughter. She instead seized Jay's arm, and volunteered them both with such gusto that they drifted slowly out of their seats.

Jay opened their mouth to say something desperately negatory, and then the music exploded back into being and the dancers came to life, and the woman who had high-fived Karen consummated their handshake and flung them both into the air.

Jay screamed and Karen cackled as they swung across the theatre, the sound of clapping and whooping from below blending into the ringing in their ears. The dancers tossed them from hand to hand, and Jay screamed, and they were pulled into the chorus line, and Jay screamed, and a pair of dancers took both of Jay's hands and Jay stopped screaming because I don't have two hands.

The sleeve was still empty, but one of the dancers was holding the empty space where the hand should have emerged from it. She winked at Jay, and stuck out her tongue.

Karen let go of Jay's other hand and pushed off, floating toward the panelled ceiling, performing her own variation on the cabaret. Her costume wasn't as carefully designed for family friendliness as the troupe's were, but she didn't care. She kicked so high Jay was worried she'd break her pointed nose, she arched her back so hard Jay worried she'd snap her spine, she twisted and flipped and stretched like she had a lifetime of kinks to work out of her limber body.

As one, the dancers began to applaud.

Karen swam towards Jay, hand outstretched. "Come on."

"Nuh-uh," Jay choked.

Karen took Jay's hand, the real hand, and pulled them out of the chorus line. "Kick," she cooed.

"Nuh-uh," Jay repeated.

Karen pressed her nose against Jay's, and spoke so closely that they almost kissed: "Kick."

Jay kicked.

Jay kicked Karen. Karen performed a ten-point backflip in the air, giggling madly, and Jay kicked again, feeling like a fool. Their legs didn't bend half as far as Karen's had, and they were certain they were about to pull something. Their date cartwheeled back over and linked arms with them, and together they performed a passable imitation of a pair of Cossack dancers.

Eventually the dancers returned them to their seats, but Jay never really touched down again for the remainder of the evening.

They were laughing arm in arm as they left the cabaret. Jay had named Karen 'The Legs That Just Go On Forever', and Karen had named Jay 'The Shrieking Violet'. They were, it felt safe to say, already friends. They had flown together.

Karen was now firmly in the mood to dance. "We're going to a club," she announced breathily. Her perfect skin shone in the rising moonlight.

Jay pulled their jacket closer against the rising chill. Their date didn't seem to notice the cold, flush with intense emotion despite her comparative nudity. "I'm not really the clubbing sort."

Karen clubbed them playfully in the shoulder. "It's the only thing we're both properly dressed for. Come on, you showed off some sick moves up there."

"Sick moves?" Jay repeated, trying not to laugh and failing not to smile. "I nearly was sick. Projectile vomiting all over the audience isn't my idea of a good night on the town."

"Oh, come on." Karen spun in a circle as she walked, dress and hair coiling around her, never missing a step. "They wouldn't have minded. It would've been the perfect callback to that Artistocrats routine. And can you imagine it? A crescent of vomitus bending through the air?" Karen gestured grandiosely. "Performance art, baby."

Jay laughed. "You're really out there, you know that?"

Karen nodded contentedly. "I'm a known loose cannon. Ooh, let's try this place. Come on."

"This place" turned out to be a club called the Globetrotter. There was a neon sign above the door featuring a grinning fox astride the Earth. There was a line that stretched for a city block. There were bouncers who looked like they could bounce Jay like a football.

Karen walked past the line, dragging Jay with her, and flounced past the bouncers like they were nothing. "No, no, no," Jay groaned. They were about to get pounded flat by muscleman, on today of all days. This couldn't be happening.

It didn't happen. They made it through the door without incident, if you didn't count the resentful glares of the hoi polloi still stuck in the lineup. Karen had bluffed her way in on the strength of her cheekbones, blue eyes and thighs alone.

"How?" Jay asked, straightening up and letting go of their date's hand. "How did you do that?"

"They've got discretionary powers for when a smoking hot blonde shows up at the door." Karen tossed her hair for the hundredth time, and bumped out her hip to strike a pose.

"That's not… is that a real thing? That seems more like a TV thing."

"Well, you tell me." Karen gestured at the dance floor. "Are we here, or not?"

They were certainly there. Jay had never seen such a polyglot assemblage of sentience before. There were Mekhanites with artificial limbs, Maxwellists with bespoke implants glowing under their skin in a rainbow of colours, masked Alagaddans, immaculately dressed men with dark fedoras and gleaming canes who could only have come from La Rue Macabre, and one big bear of a man who looked like and possibly was a half-shaved bigfoot. There were thaumaturges in ritual wear, time-displaced medieval persons, persons with animal heads, persons with animal bodies, persons like no other person Everwood had ever heard of. There were… no fae, so far as they could tell. That was something.

"No fae?" they said out loud, half-joking. It seemed absurd to point out what wasn't here, when what was was so damn much.

"Not in Backdoor SoHo." Karen walked back to the entrance, draped herself over the bouncer leaning on the doorway, and rapped her knuckles over it. Jay heard a metallic clang. "Just like real SoHo, a lot of the façades are made of iron. You'd only catch the fae dead in here."

"Huh." Jay returned to crowd-watching as Karen shook out her hair. Everyone was milling about in the middle of the room, which was oddly bland and featureless for an exclusive nightclub. They opened their mouth to comment on this, and then an explosion of sound accosted their ears and the world as they knew it fell away to oblivion.

The beat was deafeaning, raucous and rowdy, and Karen began headbanging spectacularly. Jay watched her hair fly for a moment, then turned their attention back to what had happened to the dancefloor. It had become the stars. Dancing with the stars, Jay thought, and looked up at the walls, and there were no walls, either. Everyone was moving now, everyone except for them. They began a sort of awkward shuffle, stealing glances at their feet to try and figure out what precisely they were standing on…

…they were standing on mossy cobbles bathed in Atlantic sunshine. The music had shifted to something slow and mournful, but it still had a beat, and the dancers didn't miss it. Karen was swaying through the picturesque ruins of a Hy-Brasilian courtyard, an enigmatic look on her face. The sunshine was real. Were they really on Hy-Brasil? How did these people focus on themselves when there was so much to see around them? Jay thought they caught a glimpse of someone regal coming down the stone steps to greet them, and had enough time to wonder if it was King Delbáeth himself when the music became benthic, deep and pulsating, and they suddenly began to drown.

They were underwater. The entire club was underwater. They were still surrounded by ruins, but these ruins were new — well, not new, but different. Jay had seen fragments of the style attested all around them while studying the architecture of the expatriate Atlanteans who had formed a colony in Arizona. Jay floated up through it, and the other dancers shifted effortlessly into a sort of synchronized swimming routine. Karen's hair was a massive, billowing cloud of gold around her head. She looked to be in ecstasy. She bent back, back, back, until Jay wondered if she was trying to touch her toes the wrong way 'round.

The music turned whimsical, and the rest of the dancers disappeared. Jay panicked for a moment before they realized where they were; their eyes had failed to correctly report the vibrancy of their surroundings at first, colour-correcting to something less gaudy, but the yellows and purples eventually won out. A rollercoaster screamed over Jay's head, and a caravan of bumper cars raced past them, clown horns honking as they changed lanes. There were fireworks in the purple sky, and a colossal fantasy tower rising up out of a landscape so delightful it would have made most of their colleagues violently ill, and a fairytale cityscape of fairytale people performing the fairytale versions of manual labour and service work. There were cartloads of toys and trains full of brightly painted industrial materials whizzing by, and they were standing in the middle of a street party dancing to the music of the Little Misters which they only now recognized as the tune which had brought them here — "Never Go Grey, Go Great" from Imagining New Colours — and as they felt a sense of joyous calm, as they felt somehow at home in the raucous unreality of Wonder World™, the fireworks kept going until they had written HAPPY BIRTHDAY JAY in scintillating golden starbursts.

Many of the people looked their way, and clapped.

And then Jay was listening to a song they recognized, early Pink Floyd, and all the other dancers were back, and of course they were on the moon. Not the dark side, but the bottom of a shining crater. Aristarchus, probably. The dancers kicked up dust, and Karen playfully mimed a golf club swing then reached out for Jay's hand.

Jay took it, and they danced a splash of colour across the featureless grey 'til the music rose into an almost unbearably brilliant crescendo, and they stood on the surface of the sun. A dark woman covered in shining symbols and surrounded by a corona of black hair which put Karen's to cosmic shame turned her head to smile down at them, and swayed for a measure to the beat.

There was a discordant note, and for an instant they were standing at the precipice of a great black pit. There was no light, but a dark so deep they could see shapes swirling within it, a hunchbacked spectre which was nothing at all and the death of everything everywhere, seated on a throne of—

—the music restarted with a record scratch, and the DJ mumbled an apology, and they were dancing in a deserted desert city filled with ruined, sparkling spires. Jay discovered their heart had stopped when it started beating again, and felt happier to be alive than they had in long ages.

Slowly, shyly, altogether badly, they began to dance in earnest. Karen reached out and pressed her long fingers into their back, and together the two of them swayed through the streets of lost Amoni-Ram.

Surrounded by the ruined magnificence of fathomless ages past, Jay felt young as a blossom in summer.

"I won't be going home with you tonight."

Karen made this pronouncement as they strolled through the vendor stalls which lined the streets of Backdoor SoHo. The array of goods on offer was phenomenal: exploding mechanical tchotchkes from Vulture Gulch, UnLondon WONDERFOOD in a variety of unappetizing flavours, mittens from Mittenwald, Lamplight tofu. Voices cried out in every possible language.

"That's cool," Jay smiled. "I think it said on my profile that I'm ace."

"It did," Karen nodded. She was clearing them a path by swaying her hips so wide that anyone getting in her way would be knocked to the sidewalk. "And that's cool too. You've been a fun time tonight. But I am not ace, and I am going home with somebody. Just thought I ought to drop that while we're still out having fun."

Jay frowned. "You're planning to end our date by picking someone up?"

"That's about the size of it." The woman glanced down at them with what she probably meant to be a pitying look. She looked worried instead. "You have a problem with that?"

Jay shrugged. "Kind of a bummer, I guess. I was enjoying this ridiculous excursion quite a lot. More than I expected to."

Karen clicked her tongue. "Yeah, it's been a ball flaunting what we've got, but this isn't all for display." She slapped her thighs. "Form, but also function. You get me?"

They walked in silence for a time, and Jay watched the various pedestrians to keep their mind off this ambivalent new twist. A man with a fish head. A girl with no head. An enormously fat man carrying an enormously fat wheel of bright yellow cheese; he was wearing a bright purple shirt which read CHEESE TOUR in yellow, and Jay wondered in passing whether man or wheel was on tour.

They sighed. "It's my birthday."

Karen grabbed their shoulders and spun around them, blue eyes wide, agog. "Oh my god, really? Why didn't you tell me!" She hopped up and down, bringing Jay to the tips of their toes along with. "We ought to get you something. To commemorate it!"

Jay wrinkled their nose. "I dunno about that. Rules are pretty strict about owning anomalous items."

Karen waved the worry away. "I wrote some of those rules. Trust me, there's plenty of stuff here you can take home with you." She scanned the stalls with a practiced eye. "Okay, how about that?" She pointed.

Jay looked. Karen was pointing at what purported to be an 'aura-piercing' booth. They shook their head emphatically. "Every possible kind of no."

Karen laughed. "Good call, probably. Okay, how about… hmm." They pranced down the street, tugging Jay behind them like one of those insufferable Instagram pictures couples always thought were cute to take. "Loaded demon dice? No… skeleton army bonds? No good… oh! Orcadian jewellery! That's perfect!"

Jay looked down at the goods on offer. Shining silver bands, set with dark sea-green gemstones. They were beautiful. They were expensive enough that there were no prices listed. Jay found their head shaking. "Nah, let's just get some cotton candy or something."

"Don't be ridiculous. Let's just… ha! Haha!" Karen was laughing maniacally as they picked up a silver chain necklace with a pendant attached, and hung it in front of Jay's eyes. Jay had to smile; a silver eel surrounded the central gem, spun 'round and 'round it so many times that they couldn't tell where it started or ended, only knowing it was an eel because of the radiating fins.

"That's cute," they admitted. "But I feel weird about you spending your money on me."

"I spend it on clothing and literally nothing else." Elstrom produced her card again. "This is a memento of our time together. The night when you actually went out and Had Some Fun. Think of it this way: you can be the first person in history to get paid to not have sex!"

In the time it took Jay to decide whether or not to be offended by this complex package of sentiments, the necklace was purchased and draped over their neck.

"Happy Birthday, Foreverwood," Karen grinned.

It wasn't so bad, Jay reflected, that their outing was going to end with a parting of ways. Karen had enough energy for two dates in a row, and the way she wanted to spend the second one wouldn't work at all for Jay. Why not let the woman have her fun? They weren't likely to see each other again. There was already an unspoken understanding in the air that this night was an anomaly, that Jay wasn't going to become a hedonistic bohemian and Karen didn't want to stop being one. Best to part on good terms, both of them having gotten at least some of what they'd wanted.

Did you get anything you wanted, actually? Jay thumbed the necklace, and erased the unconsciously-forming pout from their lips.

Their final stop of the night was a yuppie bar called Live from Heaven. In comparison to everything else they'd seen and done that night, the gimmick was relatively tame: the jukebox would play a live arrangement of any song you requested, so long as at least half of the principal recording artists involved were dead. Jay chose not to ponder the ethics of that too closely; were the spirits themselves singing and playing their instruments, and if so, did they want to be? The version of "Suspicious Minds" Elvis was belting out as they entered was probably the coolest and least-frantic Jay had ever heard, so he at least seemed happy with the arrangement.

"Give me a frosé cocktail," Karen called to the bartender as they settled onto their stools. "My friend will have a Cosmopolitan."

"I will have a beer," Jay corrected her. "Whatever's on draft."

Karen laughed. "We're an odd couple, eh? A Canadian bombshell and an American greaser."

Jay snorted. "Greaser? Seriously?" They puffed out the lapels of their jacket theatrically. "I think this is more of a mod look."

The bartender returned with their drinks in short order. Jay's was an amber glass. Karen's was something the colour of a flamingo, with strawberries perched on top of the ice and honest to goodness rose petals on the dish. "It's the latest trend," Karen explained when she saw the look on Jay's face.

"Yeah, in 2017 maybe," the bartender snorted as he left to serve another customer.

Karen's face underwent a momentary transformation, reconfiguring itself to express a suite of emotions Jay hadn't thought Karen capable of feeling, and then the charming jocularity returned. This time, as a mask. "Hey!" she shouted, leaning over the bar; Jay knew what kind of a view the man would get when he walked back. "You guys have pub trivia or anything?"

"Nah." The bartender glanced down her dress, then met her flirtatious gaze. "Nobody does that shit anymore. Ain't you got a phone to play with?"

He walked away again.

Karen huffed, and kicked off her stool. "Hard to find good help today." Once again she made that strange gesture with her forefinger and nose, then ambled over to the jukebox. "Got any requests, Jay?"

Jay looked over their shoulder. Karen's stance had subtly shifted. She was walking taller, but less loosely. Her shoulders were knotted in obvious frustration. Her chin was raised. She was tense. "Something upbeat?"

"Upbeat I can do." Karen paged through the options for a while, her pretty face tight, jaw clamped shut, then perked up at something she saw and jabbed the buttons like she wanted to speak to their manager. A bright, jangly guitar burst out of the wall speakers. George Harrison's voice announced that contrary to appearances, it was all right. Karen gavotted into the middle of the bar to dance, eyes closed in rapture.

"Who let their fucking grandma touch the jukebox?" a gruff male voice called out.

Karen's eyes opened.

Her hands fell to her sides.

Her head bowed, and she allowed her hair to obscure her face.

She walked primly toward the door, and as soon as she had it open, she began to run.

Jay grabbed their coat and ran after her.

Jay found their date sobbing inelegantly under the awning of a closed flower shop. She was shaking all over, and stamping the sidewalk with her high heels, and cursing. She threw back her head suddenly in self-mockery of her frenzied dancing at the club, and howled in anguish and frustration.

Jay walked over to her cautiously, still pulling on their jacket. "You alright?"

Karen wouldn't look at them. "No, I'm not alright. I needed that drink. I need more drinks. I need a smoke."

"Smoking is bad for you," Jay said on autopilot. They weren't sure if it was the wrong thing to say, or if there was such a thing as a wrong or right thing to say in this situation.

"I want things that are bad for me. I want to fuck all this up," and she ran her hands roughly over her body beneath the dress, "because I know it's not going to last, and I already lost it once, and I am not ready to lose it again. I don't… want to die." She walked out from under the awning and stared up at the night sky, tears streaming over her dramatic profile. "For fuck's sake, Jay. One little thing."

"What?"

"One little thing set me off. Some dumbass didn't like my taste in music, and suddenly I feel ten thousand years old."

Jay laughed. They couldn't help it. They put a hand on Karen's bony shoulder. "Come on. How could you possibly feel old? You're younger than me!"

Karen didn't seem to hear them. "Do you know how old Faye Wray was when she starred in King Kong? Twenty-six." Her eyes were faraway as she recited these apparently meaningful facts. "Twenty-six years old, and she was saving an entire film studio from bankruptcy, just by being beautiful and screaming. You know what I was doing when I was twenty-six?" She shook her head bitterly. "I was getting an MBA so I could work at a bank. That ended with screaming too, but nobody's going to remember it when I'm gone. We un-happened it. Most of my life has been un-happened."

"Most of your life? Listen to yourself. You're still young. You talk about being twenty-six like it's ancient history, but if you're a day over thirty you've got the best anti-aging routine in the world. You're in your prime! All the years behind you were just… practice."

"I've got a lot more behind than ahead," the woman whispered.

"What are you talking about?"

Finally Karen turned to face them. "How old did it say I am? My profile?"

Jay shrugged. "I dunno, something ridiculous. Fifty-eight?"

"Fifty-seven." Karen met their gaze. There wasn't a single wrinkle anywhere on her face. "I was born in 1966. April 20. The number one song was "Ballad of the Green Berets" by Barry Sadler. Bonanza was the top-rated show on television. There was an astronomer on the cover of Time magazine, and Star Trek didn't exist yet. Jay, I am fucking old."

"That doesn't make sense." It didn't make sense. "If you're fifty-seven, you must be an O5 or something. Is that what you are? Is this the Empress' Night Out?"

Karen laughed. It wasn't the easy, unaffected laugh of earlier. This laugh had bite, and she snapped her teeth shut hard against it. The clack made Jay's jaw hurt in sympathy. "Empress, eh? That's fitting. Every date I go on ends with me naked and embarrassed. This time I'm just naked emotionally." She wiped the tears from her eyes, from her cheeks. "I'm sorry you had to see this. I was having a really good time." She looked like she wanted to stamp her feet again. "God dammit, a really good time."

"So was I." Jay ducked down to keep eye contact as the woman lowered her chin. "Hey! So was I! You just showed me the most exciting night of my life, and I work for the SCP Foundation. I never would have gone for a single one of these experiences on my own. My dates are almost exclusively the kind you have in quiet cafés."

Karen avoided making eye contact again. She walked away. "I'm at the point of my life where quiet cafés are all I have left. When I bother to go out at all." She smoothed down her dress. "I have over one million dollars in my bank account, Jay. Just building up interest. Almost thirty years of Foundation wages. I don't pay rent anywhere, I hardly ever pay for meals, and I don't have any hobbies. I spend all the money I do spend on clothes, and I don't have the storage space to go nuts with that either." She reached back and tied her hair in an expert knot; it seemed somehow to match her now quite grave expression. "I don't have a life. I've only technically been alive. Legally I don't even exist, unless you count my Goldbaker-Reinz coverage."

"What's this all about?" Jay edged back into the woman's field of vision. "How have you worked anywhere for thirty years? You wouldn't pass for forty in any light, and the Foundation doesn't hire kids." They stopped for a moment to consider. "Well, alright, just the one."

"A giant space squid turned me young so King Kong would pick me up," Karen stated flatly.

Jay stared at her.

"It's not a metaphor or a joke. That's what happened. That was my day at work last Thursday. They sent me on diplomatic duty for the Coalition at age fifty-seven, and I came back twenty-six. Same as Faye Wray."

"Wow." Jay ran a few quick mental calculations. "Wow. That makes you by far the strangest thing I've seen today."

Karen laughed again. This time there was less edge, more ruefulness. "I hope everybody got a good long look. I was carrying on loudly enough. I hope they remember me that way."

Jay crossed their arms. It was still quite chilly outside, and they wondered when Karen would start shivering. "You think it's going to wear off?"

Karen nodded. "It was just to teach me a lesson, I think. About meddling in things above my pay grade. Deities don't grant lasting boons. That'd be like running a store on permanent sale, or offering drugs at the first purchase price indefinitely. It's definitely going to wear off."

"You have any idea how soon?"

The woman looked defeated, almost deflated. "No, but I'd be surprised if I made it a week. I missed all this, you know? I missed it all."

Jay nodded. "I can imagine this lifestyle gets addictive."

"No, that's not what I meant. I meant I missed all this. I never did it. This was never my lifestyle. I didn't go to bars or clubs, I didn't go dancing, I stayed at home and studied. I don't even have any friends, Jay."

Jay smiled at her. "Sure you do." They fingered the necklace. "Either a friend bought me this, or I'm an asexual sex worker. Which sounds more likely to you?"

The third time was the charm. Karen's third laugh was actually warm, though she seemed to have permanently lost the unaffected confidence of youth. Was it just Jay's imagination, or was the woman's grateful smile more matronly than coquettish now? "You're the first person to spend this much time with me in ages without getting fed up."

"You're the first time to spend this much time with me in ages," Jay said. They smiled to indicate the sentence was complete. They stopped smiling to add: "Not counting at work, of course."

"Work." Karen rubbed her thighs, as though the muscles within had suddenly discovered what they'd been up to for the past few hours. "I'll be back at work soon. Didn't want to show up looking like this. Not sure how much I want to show up at all. I'm a fucking mess."

Jay linked arms with her again, and started walking. "You're a hot mess, though."

"You're a terrible therapist."

"Why do I have to give you therapy? It's my birthday." They both looked up at the stars together. "And you know what I was going to do for my birthday if I didn't come out here with you?"

"Work," said Karen.

"Work," said Jay. "This was a better idea."

"Don't get old, Jay." Karen tapped the bridge of her nose thoughtfully. "Age, but don't get old. And for the love of god, don't get old when you're still young."

"Speaking of still young." Jay shot her a mischievous glance. "You, and the night, both. What say we head back inside, finish those drinks, and find you someone to go home with?"

"What say we don't." Karen kept them moving past the entrance to the bar. "You want to do some old maid shut-in shit with me instead?"

Jay arched a brow. "What did you have in mind?"

Karen pointed down the street. "There's a new tea parlour around the block I've been wanting to check out."

"Okay," Jay said cautiously. "And I'm guessing by 'tea' you mean liquefied rumours you can drink and then experience?"

"Nope." Karen pressed one hand into the small of her back, massaging out a kink. "I mean tea, the drink. Made out of leaves."

"Magic leaves?"

"Nope. Tea leaves."

The process started on the third cup. It started with the blonde leeching out of Karen's hair, bleaching it grey and white. A thin line formed on her forehead, only visible when she dipped her chin. Her eyes unfocused very slightly, and Jay finally understood what that inexplicable gesture had been. The woman normally needed glasses.

"Ugh." Karen set her teacup down. "I feel like death."

"Maybe that counts," Jay smiled.

"Counts?" The administrator cocked her head. "Counts for what?"

"Someone dying on your date, because nobody else did." Jay looked her up and down. "The first phase isn't so bad! I'd still date you, honestly."

Karen reached across the table and picked up Everwood's phone. They'd gotten chummy enough that the act was socially acceptable. She swiped a few times, obviously calling up the forward-facing camera, and stared at what she saw in front of her for a moment before nodding. "Yeah, that's it. It's over."

Jay frowned. "What's over?"

Karen put the phone down, and gestured at herself with both hands. "The quickening. There can be only crone."

Jay's frown deepened, and then suddenly they burst out laughing.

Karen was frowning now, too. "What?"

Jay pointed at her. "This is what you were afraid of? You look like a black and white photo of a blonde in their forties, with a colourized red dress. Except for the hair, I probably look older than you do!"

Karen was nonplussed. "You're just saying that."

Jay was near tears. "Honest, I'm not. You look great. Really great." They sipped hurriedly at their tea to avoid laughing again, and almost achieved choking. "Holy shit. I hope I look that good when I'm your age."

Karen considered them thoughtfully. "I guess you're only as old as you act?"

---

They exited the boardroom together, Jay patting Karen on the back of her skintight vest as they headed for the cafeteria. "Save you a seat?"

Karen nodded companionably, and headed for the break room. She needed a mug of coffee; the planning group for handling the global giftschreiber threat was a real energy-drainer, not least because almost every personality in the room was at least two sizes too large. Karen knew this was true of herself as well. She felt better about it than she had in years.

Harold Blank caught up with her at the coffee maker. "Hey, ask you a question?"

"A second one, you mean?" Karen raised the monogrammed mug to her lips.

"Have you met Everwood before?" the archivist asked. "I didn't think so, but you seemed pretty chummy just now."

"Oh, you know." Karen smiled demurely. "We dated when I was younger."