Leather and Latex

The jacket came home on a Tuesday, which should have told me something. Nothing good ever happens on a Tuesday. It's the day of the week that just exists, no expectations, no promises, and that's exactly when the ambush lands.

Jennifer walked in with a Nordstrom bag and that specific smile she gets when she's already decided something and doesn't want to hear my opinion on it. The bag crinkled against her hip. She set it on the kitchen counter like it was a centerpiece.

"You bought something," I said.

"I bought something." She pulled it out. Black leather, cropped at the waist, silver zipper, the kind of jacket that costs more than my car insurance and looks like it belongs on someone with a motorcycle and a criminal record.

"It's nice."

"It's more than nice." She held it up to her chest and looked at her reflection in the microwave door. "It's me."

I didn't know what that meant. We'd been married six years and I thought I knew what "her" looked like. Cardigans. Jeans that fit. Hair that stayed the color God gave her, a kind of dirty blonde that she always said made her feel invisible. She'd never once complained about being invisible before that Tuesday.

The jacket went on the hook by the door. For three days it just hung there. Then on Friday she wore it to the grocery store. On Saturday she wore it to brunch with her sister. By Sunday she was standing in the bathroom with a bottle of self-tanner, and I was standing in the doorway watching her do something I'd never seen her do.

"What is that?"

"Fake tan."

"Why?"

She didn't look up. "Because I'm pale, Nathan. Because I want to look like I've been somewhere."

"You've been to the grocery store."

She laughed, but it wasn't a real laugh. It was the laugh you give a joke that isn't funny because you're already somewhere else in your head.

Two weeks later her hair was a shade of auburn that made her eyes look sharper. She'd started wearing makeup, not the lazy kind she used to do for work, but the deliberate kind. Contour. Winged eyeliner. A lipstick so red it looked like a warning. She'd come home from her office job looking like she was about to go somewhere else, and then she'd go somewhere else. Drinks with coworkers. A late spin class. A friend's birthday thing I hadn't heard about until the night of.

I'd ask who she was with.

"People," she'd say. "Just people."

The first time she mentioned Sinead, I was half-asleep. Jennifer was sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to me, scrolling her phone, and the light from the screen made her look like a stranger.

"I met someone at the gym," she said. "Sinead. She's Irish. She's got this energy, I don't know how to describe it. She makes you feel like you've been doing everything wrong your whole life and nobody told you."

"That's a compliment?"

"It's a wake-up call."

I let it go. What was I going to do, tell her not to have friends? I'm not that guy. I've never been that guy. Maybe that's the problem.

The night out happened on a Friday, three weeks after the jacket. Jennifer spent two hours getting ready. I sat on the couch and watched a baseball game I didn't care about and listened to her moving around upstairs, the blow dryer, the clatter of a makeup brush against the sink, the little sounds of someone building a version of themselves. When she came down the stairs I felt something I hadn't felt in years, and it wasn't good.

She was wearing the leather jacket and a black dress underneath it. The tan had taken. The hair was auburn. The red lipstick was on. She looked like a woman who could walk into any room and own it, and I was sitting there in a t-shirt with a mustard stain on it.

"You look amazing," I said.

"I know." She kissed me on the cheek, quick, like a sister. "Don't wait up."

She was gone before I could say anything else.

I did wait up. Of course I did. I sat there and watched the game end and then watched the post-game show and then watched some documentary about deep-sea fish that I couldn't follow because my brain kept circling the same three thoughts. Who is Sinead. What kind of energy. Why does my wife look at me like I'm furniture.

She came home at two in the morning. I heard the key in the lock and the click of her heels on the tile and then she was standing in the living room doorway with her jacket open and her eyes glassy, not drunk glassy, something else. Something lit from the inside.

"You're awake," she said.

"I'm awake."

"We went to this place. This club. It's called The Velvet Room. You wouldn't believe it, Nathan. The people there. The way they dress. The way they move. It's like another planet."

"Who's Sinead?"

She smiled. "She's my friend."

"What does she do?"

"She's a stylist. Sort of. She helps people become who they really are."

"That sounds like a cult."

"Everything sounds like a cult when you're on the outside of it."

She went upstairs. I sat there for another hour. When I finally went up she was asleep on her side of the bed with her makeup still on, and the red lipstick had smeared across the pillowcase like a wound.

The next morning she was different. Not in a way I could point to. Just different. She hummed while she made coffee. She didn't complain about her back. She looked at her phone and smiled at whatever was on the screen and when I asked what was funny she said nothing and turned the phone away.

That afternoon she took a shower that lasted forty minutes. When she came out she was wearing a robe and her hair was wet and she sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me with an expression I couldn't read.

"Sinead invited us to a party," she said.

"Us?"

"Both of us. Next Saturday. She wants to meet you."

"Why?"

"Because you're my husband. Because she wants to know the person I live with."

I should have said no. I should have asked more questions. I should have done a hundred things that weren't what I did, which was say okay, sure, sounds fun, and then spend the next week watching my wife transform in front of me like a time-lapse video of a flower opening into something with teeth.

The party was at Sinead's apartment. Jennifer wouldn't tell me what to wear. "Just be yourself," she said, which is the worst advice you can give a man who's about to meet the person his wife has been turning into.

We drove over at eight. The building was in a part of town I didn't know, all brick and ivy and streetlights that hummed. Jennifer buzzed the intercom and the door clicked open and we walked up three flights of stairs. She was wearing the jacket. I was wearing a button-down shirt I'd ironed twice.

The door opened before we knocked.

Sinead was tall. Taller than me, which is rare. She had black hair cut sharp at the jaw and eyes the color of pale beer and skin that looked like it had never seen the sun. She was wearing latex. Full-body latex, black and gleaming, like she'd been poured into it. It caught the hallway light and threw it back.

"Nathan," she said, and her voice had that Irish lilt Jennifer had mentioned, soft and sharp at the same time. "I've heard so much about you."

She held out her hand. I shook it. Her palm was cool and dry.

"Come in," she said. "We're just getting started."

I looked at Jennifer. She was already inside, already drifting toward the sound of music and voices and something else, something I couldn't name yet.

I stepped through the door.

That's when I saw the vape on the coffee table. A slim silver thing, unremarkable, except for the way it seemed to glow faintly from within, like it was holding its breath.