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breasts. It’s all done with flesh prosthetics and special disappearing blood serum that covers everything, but is gone by the time the client leaves the room. For as much as Val gives me a hard time, the club wouldn’trun without the Surpanakha player and the Deer. We make the most money, and it’s well deserved. I can turn demonness like it’s nobody’s business.
    In the chamber, I try to fight it, but I fall asleep, the REM reducers wearing off . In the dream, I’m walking with my dad. He’s dressed like King Dasaratha, in the best costume I’ve ever seen. He has a heavy gold crown and ornaments and is robedin real silks made from silkworms. He’s even wearing a fake beard made of real human hair.
    “I thought you hated the Epics,” I say to him. “Remember?”
    He points and I look ahead of us and Tania is standing on a dance platform, naked, her small breasts curving up towards the ceiling. She presses a button and molten gold drips down from the sky, covering her body. Then my father walks overto her and presents her with a set of bronzed antlers fitted with gemstones. I look to my right and see Val disappearing down a corridor. I go to chase him but then remember my father is here. When I look back, it is just Tania, glowing so brightly I can’t see anything else.
    “Where is he?” I yell, but the air is sucked out of my throat. “Where did he go?”
    The lightening chamber timer wakesme with a start.
    After my prosthetics are firmly situated and the blood packets are full, I pull on a blond wig over a skullcap covering my thick curls. I pick a silvery sari with a strapless blouse and line my arms with glass bangles. I lean close to the mirror to apply the lip thickener and eyelash lengthener. I’m going to be focused tonight. I’ll show Val how good I am. I’ll make peopletip out over their allowances.
    While I’m turning in front of my mirror to make sure everything’s in place, I see Tania looking at me.
    “What do you think?” I say.
    “Not sure yet,” Tania says. “So, we’re like, the same thing, right? We’re the bad guys?”
    “Not in this place,” I say.
    “What’s she like?”
    “Who?”
    “Surpanakha.”
    “You just saw her.”
    “You didn’t really seem demonness-like.”
    “Huh, well, you should come into the DFR with me sometime,” I say, heading towards the door.
    “I’d like that,” Tania calls after me. I shake my head, try to remember that it’s her job to seduce me, wonder what she wants.
    I usually have a strategic pattern for the night that I switched up recently. I used to go to the bar first, get an elixir—something super strong to jumpstart me, and drinkit with a straw. I’d use that time to scope out the floor, make sure I was using my lips and tongue a lot. I shake my hips and sing to the remixes. That way I can scope the whole room, clock what kind of clients we have going on. Then maybe someone would pull me onto the dance floor. But tonight, I just push to the middle of the heaving crowd, DJ Adhara mixing tracks from the latest Ramayanamovie— The Taking of Ceylon, III —with reverberating sounds from his electronic tablas. MC Indus wanders through the crowd rhyming the Ramayana verses in his signature Spanish-afflected flow. Adhara loops a haunting flute melody that brings everything together. I dance with my eyes closed, feeling the music. I don’t even think about pulling anyone for the first twenty minutes, I just lose myself.I find it attracts more people in the end, even though I already start to sweat off the skin lightener. By the time I get to the bar, I already have a few people clamoring to buy me drinks.
    There are a couple of Rams, their costumes identical, the kind you buy at the big, cheap hundred dollar stores on the main drag—overly-bright blue skin pigment that’s already evaporating around the eyes.You can tell they’re new to the scene. They’re young, just finishing their vocational year that will place them in either