Fourteen floors above the street, the roof had been transformed into a garden with a patio and a small greenhouse. The chairs had been pushed to one side so the changing booth could be set up, and the wrought-iron table had been repurposed into a makeup station. A forest of white umbrellas on stands surrounded the scene.

Serena stood on the edge of the roof with her legs spread and her hands on her hips while a photographer with a thick Italian accent ordered her to move a little zis way or a little bit zat. Huge fans blew her dress between her long legs, and her hair splayed out like a wall of vines.

“Back! Lean back!”

She did, just a little, and collapsed over the edge.

I screamed. Everyone looked at me as if I was a crazy person in a courtroom. The fans slowed and the flashing stopped. A man leaned over the edge of the roof, holding out his hand, and Serena climbed back up with a shoe in one hand.

“Perfetto!” shouted the photographer. “Sirty minote!”

Another guy in a tight Y-shirt showed up to help Serena back onto solid ground. Once she had both shoes off, she came right to me.

“Aren’t you cute?” she said, not unkindly. Her face was caked in makeup. It looked awful and unnecessary.

“I didn’t know there was a net.”

“I mean with your collar.”

Maybe it had been said unkindly. Maybe I was just being naïve and stupid to think she’d have anything nice to say. Good thing the choker kept my head high.

“Is it a bad time?” I asked. “We can do this tomorrow.”

“No, no.” She waved me toward the changing tent. “I’m going to Tel Aviv for two weeks.”

She pushed the flap open for me. Inside, designer clothes twisted on the floor and draped from hangers. Two women, one middle-aged, one in her twenties, discussed a belt. Serena pulled off the white dress and tossed it aside. She wore nothing underneath. Her body was a song to the perfection of the female form.

“Sit if you want.” She indicated a white folding chair.

“I’m good.”

She threw the dress on it. “Ruby?”

The younger woman looked up. “Yeah?”

“Can I have five minutes?”

They left us alone. Serena didn’t reach for a robe or any kind of covering. She just stood fully clothed in no more than her name and her beauty.

“We’ve been here since five in the morning without a break.” She rolled her eyes.

“We never talked,” I said. “I never accepted your apology.”

“Stefan made me do it.”

“Oh, then—”

“It was sincere,” she said. “But I wanted to do it in my own way. Stefan turned everything into a game. It was exhausting.”

“He said you guys split up.”

“Yes.” Her hand drifted across the sleeve of a flowing teal jacket. “Enough is enough.” She pulled her hand back and crossed her arms. “I’ve come to see there are better things out there. I’ve been eating fruit I don’t like because I was too afraid to reach for the apple.”

She played with a button on the canvas floor, flipping it with her toe. I realized I wasn’t the one who should tell her about changing tastes or the limitations of a fruit metaphor when living, breathing, changing people were involved.

“And you found an apple already?” I shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d won the genetic lottery. Her world was littered with apples.

“I just had to reach for it.” She kicked the button away. “So. How did you like your trip into our world? Short but sweet? You seemed to be enjoying yourself.” She smirked. Or I was imagining it. “You left early.”

“Yeah. We had to.” I had nothing else to say, but I felt like there should be more. My face probably expressed my search for a feasible response.

“You don’t need to tell me why. I told you. He can’t love a sub. Don’t worry. Plenty of them are capable. Or you’ll decide to do without love. But you’ll be all right.” Serena put her hand on my arm and squeezed it. The gesture could only be decoded one way. Sympathy.

I took a deep breath, laying out the plans I’d made in my mind, and threw them all in the trash. “I came to ask you for a favor.”

She put her hands on her hips. It was impossible to not look at her body. I found myself casting my eyes down.

“Go ahead.”

“I need three people to sponsor me for membership into the Cellar.”

“Do you?”

“That’s the rule.”

“No, I mean, do you really want that?” she asked.

“What do you mean?”

“If he can’t love you now, once you’re a member and he sees you there? That’s not going to fix it.”

I knew that as well as she did, and I feared it. If I didn’t get him back, my sexual life was going to get very complicated and very messy. But I wasn’t going back to vanilla, and I wouldn’t let him. Not with me, at least.

And not with her. Never with her.

That was it. My opening.

I thought I’d pitch her Stefan. Tell her how forlorn he was. But no. She didn’t want forlorn. She wanted to be beaten under a bridge.

“We may fix it. We may not.” I shrugged. “He needs the sweet as much as the kinky. So we’ll see.”

Her bee-stung lips parted and her perfectly arched eyebrows went up a fraction of an inch. Surprise.

I’d been right. She didn’t want him for sweet. Maybe Stefan was too much and she thought Adam was a notch or two more manageable. But Adam said she hadn’t gotten aroused for gentle sex. I didn’t think my statement would stop her from chasing him, but it would plant a doubt in her mind. That was all I needed.

And I needed to assert myself.

I probably didn’t. But I had to.

“When I knocked my head, I was awake. I heard you, and I remember. You’re after my husband. Thank you for being honest with me. Now let me be honest with you. You’re probably the most beautiful woman I’ve ever met. You’re intelligent, and you don’t have any shame. I have no idea why you’re so fucking insecure.”

I was a good five inches shorter than Serena. I was softer and riddled with aesthetic imperfections, but when our stares locked, it didn’t matter. I had the upper hand. Adam was my husband. I knew him. He was mine.

She wouldn’t sponsor me. She wouldn’t bring me into the world she shared with him. A world that I couldn’t access without him. Fine. Let it be then.

Ruby poked her head in. “Can we come back?”

Serena waved them in. “I’m sorry. These ladies need me. We can talk when I get back. I think we can teach each other a lot.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”

She was set upon by the two stylists, and I backed out of the tent.

She’d said nothing I could pin down. Admitted nothing and threatened nothing.

Just had to reach for the apple.

Could something have happened already? Had I lost a battle I’d slept through?

The sun had moved the tiniest bit, but it was enough to send the set into a frenzy of moved scrims and recalibrated light. Men and women in black T-shirts carried reflectors, floods, light meters, shouting numbers and pointing at the sky.

I detoured around them, coming up against the greenhouse. I looked inside as I passed it. Mostly orchids, and a long bed of wheatgrass that was probably sold to a local health food store.

I stopped, because the wheatgrass had taken on a few weeds and, against all odds, they’d flowered.

Dandelions.