_HER took me to a boutique down one of the side wings of the mall. I had never noticed the little shop before. I had never even noticed this wing before. The main crowd was not here; the current was idle. It was a shady, stagnant finger off the main arm of the mall's chaotic mighty flow._ HER: Get in the chair. _I looked where she pointed. It was an antique barber's chair, cracked leather on a tarnished pedestal. It looked inviting, and a little suggestive. I clambered aboard. The leather was cool against my thighs, and spoke silently to me of wistful summer, of radios and air-conditioners, chewing gum and torpor in the hot forgotten streets._ # HER: Lean back. _I freely admit: the way she commanded me made my slow burning guts ache with a twinge of secret terror. HER sat down (I watched the way her stress-worn jeans plumped out firmly between the cushion and the armrest of a rigid chair) and commenced the business of publicly waiting, mostly ignoring me._ _[Enter HIM]_ # HIM: You're over eighteen, right? _I think I actually giggled. It was okay. I watched, not as from a great distance, but up close, right up close, intently, feeling every whisper of every fiber, as HIM tied my wrists and ankles to the chair with ragged lengths of muslin. HER put the magazine down, lit a smoke, examined her fingernails, blew the smoke out sideways, glanced off to the left at something._ # ME: What are you— _HIM's hands against my testicles were dry and warm, coarse and faintly electric. However the blade, when it came, was all ice and steel. I thought, absurdly, briefly, about the psychological implications of the whole scenario, in a metaphoric sense, and then it was all over, I was flying, my guts dropped out, a scream I'd never imagined wrenched itself from my throat, I was nude, I was naked, I was cherry red and younger than zero. I passed out._