John woke with a start and scanned the room. Miranda was shuffling in one corner near the door, struggling to get dressed. She held onto the jamb with one hand, pushed herself into a pant leg with the other. She looked tired, disoriented as though she had slept too long. Her tight, dark curls were a mess, standing up at the back, matted to her forehead at the front. What John liked most about Miranda, at least compared to the girls who came before, was that she often fell asleep and stayed the night. He loved the way it felt when she drifted off in the crook of his shoulder, the weight of her head increasing as she let go into sleep. She was swearing under her breath.
     "Fuck fuck fuck," she said, still holding onto the door. With her pants still half-down, she hopped over to the bed and dropped down on the bottom corner. Out of the push-up bra she normally wore, her breasts hung low against her chest, but still firm. Her nipples were long and slim and shaped like teardrops.
     Sun slanted in between the curtains, had already made its way onto the sheets over his feet. For a basement with high windows that looked out onto a sidewalk, his apartment got a lot of light. He was warm, didn't want to move, but his stomach was empty and his bladder full. He sighed and moved the heavy duvet away, exposing his naked skin to the crisp morning air. "Did you open a window?" he asked. "It's only April, for Christ's sake."
     "It stinks in here. You should air the place out every now and then." She looked at her watch and shook her head. "Fuck."

"What are you late for?"
     "A client."
     "But it's eleven a.m."
     "Yeah, well, I'm about twelve hours late. Hand me my leg."
     John reached down under the covers and pulled out her leg, the black blade at the bottom tangling in the blankets. "It's caught."
     "Here," she said, and leaned across him. Her breasts slid over his leg and cock. He looked down at her ass as she struggled with the blankets, one buttock stretching back into a long shapely leg, the other ending six inches below in a twisted and puckered stump. She wrestled with the prosthetic as though it were the last root from a stubborn tree stump. "God, you really can't function in the morning. Fuck, I can't believe I fell asleep again."
     She swung the leg free, passing it over his chest and face before bringing it into place under her stump. As she slid herself into the padded cradle with a soft hiss, John felt his cock expand and roll over on his abdomen. In the daylight he could see everything much more clearly than by the candles they lit at night. Miranda stood up, stepped into her pants and hiked them to her waist. Without buttoning them, she picked up her bra, reached into it backwards, fastening it at the front and then spinning it around into place before lifting it up over her tits. A moment later she was pulling her blouse out of the piles of clothes around the bed.
     "Miranda . . . "
     "Sorry, man. I got to go make some phone calls. I'll let myself out. Why don't you take a nice long shower and maybe wash this stuff? It really does stink in here." With her shirt hanging, two buttons undone, and her shoes hooked by two little fingers, she slipped out of the room and into the hall. John heard her pass through the kitchen and into the stairwell of the building. A few seconds later the curtains bellowed as the pressure changed from her exit sucked new air into the room. John rolled over and pulled the blankets back up to his chin.
     On the nightstand was the envelope she had opened the night before, the ten crisp twenties she had flicked between her fingers as though she were snapping to a quick tune still inside. John blinked and reached over. It wasn't the first time she had forgotten to take her pay.

John scooped his stale clothes into black garbage bags and made his way across the street to the laundromat. It was always deserted so early on a Saturday. A woman of about forty sat on a folding chair near the back, her crossed leg kicking a colorful plastic sandal. She was reading a magazine about celebrities. John smiled and began to separate his clothes into the large, drum-like washers.
     Halfway through the load, John found Miranda's lacy, red thong in the leg of one of his pants. He pulled it out and examined it for the first time in the light. Once, a few months before, she had let him hold a pair to his face, rub them against his chin. She charged him an extra twenty that night, she said, because she wasn't into that weird stuff. Looking through the lace, John could see the woman at the back watching him over her magazine. By the expression on her face, he guessed she was thinking these belonged to his wife or girlfriend. John rolled them into a ball and stuffed them in his pocket.
     Money was on his mind. Miranda had a no nonsense attitude about it, a regular pattern. She came in, hung her bag over the back knob of the door, counted her money and then sat down for a drink. She always kept the envelope with her: even when they hit the bedroom, she'd lay it down on the nightstand where she could see it. John always figured it was nothing personal, just an aspect of the trade. If she ever fell asleep, John assumed she would take it in the morning. In fact, most times, she was gone before he even woke up. Lately though she had been getting sloppy. The washing machine went into the loud spin cycle.
     The woman at the back of the laundromat stood up and checked her dryer. Her legs were short and chubby, but nice, clad in stretchy,

black fabric. Stirrups disappeared down the arches of dry, scaly feet into her thong sandals. She looked John over and smiled invitingly. The whir of his machines died simultaneously, like jet engines cooling down.
     As he shifted his clothes into the dryer, John thought of the first time Miranda had come over. When the buzzer had rung and he'd let her in, he was shocked: there was nothing wrong with her. She was tall and blonde, wearing a short black jacket over a white blouse and long black billowing pants. John frowned, thinking of her ad, but she walked past him and over to the couch where she sat down with a loud click. As her pants tightened around the knee, John could see the articulated shape of her prosthetic leg. She smiled and ran her hands down her thighs.
     "I'm Miranda," she said.
     "Obviously . . . " he replied nervously, regretting his tone immediately. She frowned and reached into her leather bag.
     "Do you have anything to drink?"
     John moved to the kitchenette and poured two glasses of cheap rye over ice. The bottle was almost drained and he was forced to wait as it drizzled a fair amount into each tumbler. As he came back into the living room, Miranda had laid out six types of condoms on the coffee table, as well as a printed list of rules. John set her drink down beside a fluorescent pink circle wrapped in cellophane.
     "Two hundred, right?" he asked, and pulled a folded envelope from his pocket.
     She nodded and took the cash, counted it with her quick, sharp snaps, then stood up and began looking around the apartment. She lingered over his music collection. She pulled out an ELO vinyl, set it on the turntable and said, "So what do you do?"
     "Is it your leg?" he asked, taking a sip of his rye. She looked at him closely, set the needle on the record and walked over to the coffee table to pick up her drink. She knocked it back with a single belt.
     "Is that a problem?"
     "Well, I just thought . . . I thought it would be an arm or something."
     "Or something? You know, it's kind of limited, really. I mean, fifty-fifty, arms or legs."
     "Oh, I—"
     "Would you like to see?"
     "I guess."
     Miranda stepped in close to his chest, looked him in the eye. She laced an arm around his neck, then another, until she could cross wrists behind his head. She pressed herself against him, starting at the top and slowly moving down until he could feel the hard metal of the prosthesis against his knee. Her breath was cool against his neck, but her skin was hot. She slid her hands down his back and sides and then trailed them to her midriff where she slowly undid the button at her waist. She stepped back and began to slide the pants down over her skin. She was wearing a high-cut black thong, straps resting up near her waist. There were some flesh-colored bandages crisscrossing under the fabric of her panties. An inch below her hips, she stopped and looked him in the eye again. She nodded questioningly and he swallowed and nodded back.
     A loud screech sounded the end of his drying cycle. John tried to move around the woman between him and the folding area, but she seemed to be purposefully blocking his way. She looked up at him and smiled. John thought of the underwear in his pocket. She had obviously seen it, knew it came out of his laundry bag. He wondered at the nerve of some people. Didn't she know he was seeing someone?
     John packed his clothes without folding them and left the laundromat in a huff.
    Once Miranda had stood back, fully naked, John almost couldn't believe what he saw. It was long and thin with hydraulics stemming out from a central pipe about as thick as her femur would be. At the top, the padded cradle met her thigh and waist in straps and bandages. At the bottom, the pipe burst out into a long, scooping blade like a hockey stick turned on its side. The prosthetic was significantly slimmer than her other leg. The overall effect felt exciting, but somehow unreal, as though he were suspending his disbelief for a special effect in a film, as though he were being fooled. She turned around slowly for him, looking over her shoulder at all times, her head snapping round like a dancer as she moved. Her push-up bra created wonderful cleavage. Her ass was nicely framed in the thong. Her leg ended just below her crotch. John felt his cock rise and strain against his pants.
     "Would you like it on or off?" she asked.
     "Off? Maybe it's best off?"
     She smiled, somewhat blandly, and moved towards him, only now with a noticeable limp.
     Inside his apartment building, John stepped into the elevator and pressed the button for down.

Six days later, Miranda still hadn't called. John tried her several times but only got her machine. He waited until he heard the entire message each time before hanging up. He knew she had others clients, suspected there

were probably many, that that was why she always called him to schedule. Right from the start, she was the one who set up the next date. It was a nice arrangement, at least when it worked. Usually they'd be together about once a week. Two hours, four hours, all night — it depended.
     John had begun cleaning the apartment everyday, just in case she showed up unexpectedly. He kept the forgotten envelope of money beside the bed where she had left it. Sometimes he took the cash out and counted it like her, ten quick snaps. He was seriously tempted to spend the cash. In the supermarket that morning, he had come up short and was forced to write a check knowing that his account was absolutely dry. And payday wasn't until next week. He had thought of the money at home, wondered whether he should run back for it. He wrote the check quickly, signed with his left hand and sweet-talked the lady into taking it on his word.
     As he was leaving the store, John felt his penis swell in his pants for no reason. Damn, a week without and he goes wild like a teenager. He stopped by a window near the exit and sat down on a thin ledge to wait the hard-on out. Women walked past pushing their carts and holding small metal baskets. His cock pressed harder against his jeans and he was forced to set his bags down and adjust. His face flushed, his muscles tingled, he could feel his breath getting quick. He was starting to panic when he realized what was causing the reaction.
     Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a woman standing in front of her cart. He turned for a better look. She was about forty, had medium-sized breasts in a black sweater, wore her hair up in a bun, but below the waist she appeared to be all metal. The chrome grid of the shopping cart hid everything from her navel down — from this angle, it appeared as though she were a double amputee in some cheap wheelchair. If he squinted, he could even pretend that the cart was a set of prosthetic legs that ended in wobbly wheels.

He wondered what she would look like naked, removed from her lower torso, her body coming to a tapered end below her bellybutton like a balloon. John sucked in a quick breath and rubbed his forearm against his crotch. He set a couple of the plastic bags down on the floor beside him, the others on his knees to hide the erection.
     Just off to the woman's left, another shopper stood examining oranges with her arm hidden behind a red I-beam pillar. John stared, amazed at how with a little imagination it looked as though the pillar were attached to her shoulder: a massive, powerful arm. He imagined her removing the prosthetic, the puckered hole it would leave in her shoulder.
     Nearby, an Asian woman stood stocking shelves from a trolley. Beside her a low display frame hid her left leg. John thought of Miranda's leg — so skeletal, so permanent — of what it would look like lying in a coffin next to her bones. In a thousand years it would still gleam.
     He slipped his hand over his zipper and rubbed once, hard. A tremor rocked him, and as he spilled cum into his pants, his head cracked loudly against the window. Several people nearby stopped to look at him. He lifted his bags and fled the store, an indigo stain spreading in his jeans.

That night John hit the streets like he used to. He needed someone to take his mind off Miranda. The air was cool, but not freezing and the girls were out everywhere by about eleven. John worked his way along the top of the park before eventually heading in. Two women approached him almost immediately. One was short and slightly fat, the other was tall and wiry. Too tall, perhaps. Without even thinking about what he was going to say, John spoke.
     "You got everything in the right place?"
     "Honey," said the tall one, "I got everything you want, plus a little something extra."
     John looked her up and down. "Less is more, buddy. How much?"
     "One fifty," she said, moving closer. "Maybe just a hundred for you."
     "I'm really looking for something else — maybe someone without everything — you know . . . all their limbs?"
     The two hookers took a step back and looked him over. "Sweetheart," said the little one, "you're in the wrong part of town. And there ain't no directions I can give to point you in the right direction."
     Embarrassed, John turned and walked away. He could almost hear the trannies shaking their heads. "Freak," he heard one of them say, almost as an afterthought.

John had reached down Miranda's side and felt where the bandages met the padding of the prosthetic's cradle. He slipped a finger under the fabric and worked it around to the back of her leg. As he nuzzled his face into her neck, he could feel her take a handful of hair at the back of his head, her nails scratching lightly at his scalp.
     He moved down to her breast, freed it from the bra with one hand, cupped it, licked the nipple. Below, he moved his hand up and down the shaft of her leg, trailing it up and over her panties. Her skin was hot under his palms, sweaty in places. He trailed his tongue down her belly to her pelvis, pulled

her panties aside and licked lightly against the sides of her mound. Her back arched slightly to meet him, her leg clicking quietly as the knee joint bent.
     John slipped his hand under the padding of the leg and began to pull at the bandages, but stopped abruptly, and pushed himself up on all fours. Miranda's breath caught in her throat.
     "Do you need help getting it off?" she asked, peering at him through the tossed curls of her hair.
     "No," John said, leaning forward and working her panties off over her legs. He reached under her back and lifted her by the ass to his face. He pushed his tongue between her legs while she wrapped her flesh leg around his neck, her Achilles tendon pressing on his head, driving his mouth against her.
     Without removing his mouth, he picked up the metal leg and put it over his back, felt the knee joint bend into place, the long scoop of it in the depression of this lower back.
     Miranda reached a hand into his hair and pulled him tighter against her, shuddered, throwing her head back against the pillows and arching up high into the air with his body as support. The bed began to creak. Her leg began to creak.

He called Miranda's again. There were three rings before she picked up. Her voice was drawn and tired, like she had been asleep for too long again.
     "Hey, where've you been?" he asked, his voice sounding more concerned than he planned.
     "Baltimore."
     "What the fuck were you doing in Baltimore?"
     "What do you think?"
     "You went all the way to Baltimore? Why? How?"
     "He's some corporate guy. Flew me out for the week."
     John paused, wondering how much a week cost. He thought of his savings, of upcoming paychecks versus rent and food, did some quick math in his head. Wasn't going to happen. "How'd he know about you?"
     "It was a referral."
     "Referral?" Even John could hear the disbelief in his voice.
     "Well, first of all, John, it's none of your fucking business. But yes, a referral. How many of us do you think are out there to satisfy you freaks and your fucking needs?"
     John went quiet and sat very still, trying to press the receiver closer to his ear and mouth. He could hear her light a cigarette and inhale long. She took several more slow puffs before either of them spoke again. They had been on the phone for over fifteen minutes. A new record.

     "I'm sorry," he said, looking down.
     "Yeah, me too."
     There was another extended silence as she finished her cigarette and lit another.
     "I'd never been out of the city before this, much less on a plane," she said. "Not since I was very young."
     "Was it fun?"
     "I guess so. I went to the museum while he was at work. They have a very nice museum there."
     "Do you stay overnight with all your . . . clients?"
     "No."
     "Just me?"
     "No." Her voice was growing calmer, more relaxed.
     "How many clients do you have?"
     "I used to have more. Now I have three. I make enough off three a week."
     "But that's only, what . . . six hundred, right?"
     "No, it isn't. It's well over a thousand . . . And even if it wasn't, how much do you make a week?"
     "A thousand? Oh, you mean . . ."
     "Yeah, you're my oldest," she said sarcastically. "You're still under the old rates. Like rent control."
     John laughed. Looked at the nightstand with the money on it. "So why'd you take this Baltimore thing?"
     "I just wanted to get out of the city for a while."
     John nodded, remembered she couldn't see him, then grunted. He hesitated for a moment before asking, "Are you going again?"
     "Maybe," she said. "I don't think so."
     An hour later he asked, "Can you come over?" When she arrived, she was wearing a black outfit like the one she wore the first night they met. Was it the same one? He wanted it to be the same.
     She limped into the room, sat tiredly on the couch and kicked off her shoes. She looked weary, but perfectly comfortable, as though just returned from a rough day at work. He glanced at her shoes where they?d fallen beside the couch leg. They were virtually indistinguishable, yet, he knew, one was much heavier than the other. He swallowed dryly and moved to the kitchen to prepare her drink.
     What is she thinking right now, he wondered. How does she get ready for something like this? He thought of the money she had left behind more than once, the row of clean twenties. Was she testing him? Trying to tell him something? What would change if she was? He opened the freezer door for ice, the motor kicking in with a cold breeze across his chest, the vibrations running through the machine?s metal and trembling against his hand. He grabbed couple cubes barehanded and dropped them in the glass. On the first night she had spent most of the time on top of him, moving her hips and abdomen in small circles, and every time they had been together since he waited for the sensation of her heat and dark lowering over him.
     Out in the living room the couch creaked as she stood. He could hear the soft step and click of her approach behind him. He turned and moved through the door towards her, producing the money from his pocket of his shirt. In the kitchen behind him the freezer fan died with a whine and the apartment went silent. He handed her the drink and then the money, the green bills still tucked in the envelope she had forgotten.