I do my best not to stare at Sabine at work. Actually, that isn’t true: I do my best not to get caught staring at Sabine at work. Though on certain days, if I’m feeling downright bratty, I need to get caught. But only by Sabine. I grow more and more brazen in my glances until I see her roll her eyes and shake her head, seemingly in frustration at her computer, an elegant way of camouflaging a response to me:
Fine, I see you, stop already.
Or maybe that’s all in my head.
For Sabine, I’ll try to be as honest as possible telling this story. I say that even as I imagine her correction: no, I’m telling this story for me. An act of narrative trepanning, writing the words to ease the pressure of guilt inside my skull. She’d say my telling this has little to do with her, and even less to do with honesty.
Sabine tends to be right. So maybe it’s better to start with lies.
Our boss Levi lies about our office’s open floorplan; he says we have no walls to “enhance collaboration.” But it’s so our bodies and monitors are visible at all times to anyone walking by. Meaning you can’t take out your cell phone or check your team’s stats for fear of being caught. In fact, sending a personal email has to happen on your break, on your own device, outside the building, just like smoking a cigarette.
There used to be a few individual glass booths with desktop computers next to the break room, for personal use if you weren’t on the clock, but Levi removed them due to pornography use. Or so he said. Levi is a garish, horny nerd with a shit ton of money; plus he’s hyper-connected to every major player in the tech industry. Some
things I’ve overheard coworkers say about him:
“Our company is in Miami instead of Silicon Valley because Levi has a pathological need to dress like a DJ at all times. That’s it; that’s the entire reason.”
“He smells like cologne and STDs. Not the actual smell of an STD but the way an STD would smell if it anthropomorphized into human form.”
But there’s also a reason that Levi gets away with this, and more: “Damn, that pervert can code.”
Levi is, unfortunately, a computer programming savant. Since I’m attempting truth here, I’ll admit there have been times, studying printed dumps of his output, when I come across a section so artful that I’ve actually teared up. At its elegance, yes. But also at the unfairness. Why place such a brilliant gift in such a foul human package?
In his natural form, Levi is a white, almost translucent Midwestern transplant like me. But he thinks his weekly spray tans perform an alchemy of racial ambiguity. “I’m telling you,” he likes to brag, “chicks in the clubs assume I speak Spanish.”
Levi also forbids romantic relationships between employees. We’re too small for it to be a big problem—the company is his AI programming startup; there are only a few hundred of us. When I first got hired, I figured the no-relationship policy was just his way of making sure female employees who sleep with him won’t expect a commitment. Then Isha from accounting and Callum from design got engaged. And immediately fired.
Perhaps sensing everyone’s collective outrage, Levi called a session of “church,” his name for meetings with the entire company. “This isn’t me denouncing love,” he stated. “It’s me respecting it.
When you’re here inside these walls, this company has to be your highest purpose. I ask that you be as passionate about our mission as I am. And if you’re working here and your wife is working here, and she has a problem? Love’s going to ask you to prioritize her over your job. You don’t want to be in that position. I’m doing you a favor.”
Even before Sabine, I never would’ve gone so far as to sleep with Levi to get a promotion. Partly because I’m not straight; partly because I find him abhorrent; partly because I’ve seen it backfire. If he sleeps with you, then he has to go out of his way to prove you aren’t benefiting from it. The last woman I knew who did it, Liset, left after he passed her up for another candidate. Though I’m sure he gave her a stellar recommendation letter.
Before she quit, Liset told me Levi spray tans his penis, too, and he told her he has to get hard before he does it. If he sprays it when he’s flaccid, his boner will have white stripes.
But I’ll admit that I do fem up for the office. I avoid disclosing anything that would compromise an assumption of me as straightpresenting. I even laugh somewhat flirtatiously at Levi’s jokes. Why leave a harmless competitive edge on the table?
One answer, perhaps, which I realized only in hindsight, is that my acting so hetero with Levi meant Sabine didn’t consider me dateable for a very long time. Maybe if we’d been together longer before The Incident, she wouldn’t have quit me so fast. Maybe if she hadn’t begun the relationship already having reservations, I would’ve had more runway.
But our getting together felt fated, and when it finally happened, immediate. I was watching her eat lunch by herself across the cafeteria. She was reading a book, and when she smiled at a line I smiled too, involuntarily, and she happened to look up and see. Her grin was epic, reading me and my desires fully with a sort of amused outrage. As if to say, You know I can see your face and that we’re in public, correct? “Sorry,” I mouthed. What else can you say when you’re caught? “Sorry?” she mouthed back, which seemed like an invitation to come explain myself.
When I sat down, it felt like we were already on a date. I was giddy in her presence. We could read each other’s expressions so well, so wordlessly. She was laughing and shaking her head. “You look like a cartoon right now,” she said.
“Are you single?” I asked this in a near-whisper. Not just because it was best if no one overheard us. I could really barely speak.
“I might be,” she said, with an intonation that conveyed a few concerns. “This is all a surprise. When I’ve seen you in meetings, you seem…”
“To have no self-respect?” She smiled and visibly relaxed a bit at my self-diagnosis. “Yeah,” I admitted. “I leave my dignity at home to try to get promoted faster.”
“How’s that working for you?” Her eyes glimmered. I loved the rhetorical purity of her question, even though it meant I could only shrug, a sheepish admission that I still hadn’t been chosen by Levi for any of the select teams, still hadn’t been promoted.
“Okay,” I agreed, “if my work persona asks you out, you should say no. But this is non-work me asking you out, and I think you should say yes.”
“That’s cute,” she said. “How you tell yourself they’re different.” I believe my jaw dropped at this.
Then she started laughing again, and I laughed too, telling myself she was joking but also knowing maybe she wasn’t.
“To be fair,” she finally said, “I mean…I don’t kiss up to him the way you do. But I do let him call me Rihanna.” She explained that he does this not simply because she’s Black and a woman; it’s a little more twisted than that. The “nickname” came about in her interview, when she told Levi her parents immigrated to central Florida from Haiti before he was born. “Haiti, huh,” Levi had said, “like Rihanna. I’m gonna call you Rihanna.”
Sabine says she’s still not sure whether his ignorance is real or feigned, some kind of mind game, which Levi loves. “Was he testing whether or not I’d correct him and say she’s from Barbados? Did I get the job because I smiled instead of telling him he’s wrong?”
With Levi, you can never really know.
*
Six months later, we’d settled into a basic cohabitation at my place, though Sabine kept her place and continued getting her mail there. On paper, our job couldn’t see we slept together every night.
We drove to and from work separately. And when Levi threw “parties” at his mansion for the programmers (attendance was compulsory), we drove separately as well. Every party included a tour to show us any new home updates, major purchases, etc. We all had to follow him through the house listening to him talk like he was a museum docent.
Prior to the first quarter party, Sabine bet me $20 that he’d say, “And this is where the magic happens” when we entered his bedroom on the tour. I’d bet he wouldn’t, since there weren’t any new hires since the last party. We’d all seen his bedroom multiple times (some of the female employees even more extensively than others); we’d all heard him use that line multiple times. Would he really say it again? We try not to stand too close to one another even at these events, but I couldn’t resist walking behind Sabine on this tour. “And here’s where the magic happens!” Levi boomed. Requisite laughter followed.
“Well done,” I whispered.
“Oh no,” Sabine said, to no one in particular. Then I followed her line of sight and saw it: a small wiry dog in a cage in the corner. This was new. As the tour continued on, Sabine briefly broke our own rules and looked at me. “He showed us the talking toilet but didn’t say a word about the dog? That poor thing. I bet it’s in its cage all day. I wish we could save him.” Then she scurried to catch up with the group and didn’t give me another look again for the next hour and a half, at which point she left.
Sometime between her saying it and her leaving, I got the idea that I needed to steal the dog for her. It would be a valiant act. A rescue. She’d admire my daring.
I pretended to go to the bathroom, then snuck back to Levi’s bedroom, moving silently in the dark, on the lookout for any blinking lights that might indicate a security camera. I didn’t know if the dog would fit inside my large purse; didn’t know if it would bite or resist. But when I opened the door to its crate in the dark room, it allowed me to scoop it up and place it inside my bag like this was a daily occurrence.
I tried to do quick, waving goodbyes, making steady progress toward the exit. But just as I’d almost reached the front door, Levi called out after me. “Not so fast,” he said. “Come back here.”
I swallowed. Could I pretend to be a lot drunker than I was? Would I have to perform some untoward act on Levi to keep him from calling the cops on me? Would he accept a topless handjob? Oral or vaginal sex seemed like they’d be equally traumatic with Levi. There was no lesser evil in that situation.
As I walked back toward him, I tried to clutch the bag close in case the dog wiggled. My pulse was roaring in my ears. There was a moment I thought I might vomit all over Levi’s ten-thousand-dollar sneakers.
“Here. Take this.” Levi handed me a bottle of quite fancy champagne.
“Wow,” I said. “Thank you. Great party.”
*
At home, Sabine’s reaction was not the gushing admiration I was hoping for.
“You realize you probably just ended us, right?” In my head, I’d decided that at worst, I alone would get caught and exposed. But Sabine was right: if Levi put me under a microscope, it followed that our relationship would probably come to light as well. “You risked our jobs and us being together for a dog? You know Levi will probably keep you and your long blonde hair and fire me, right? He’ll say he’s sure I put you up to it.”
“Shit,” I said, digesting this. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I wanted to make you happy.”
“You wanted to feel loved,” Sabine said. “Acting careless isn’t thinking about my happiness.”
This was accurate. My mind started racing for ways to fix it. “Maybe I can go back and say I left my phone? Try to sneak him back in?”
Sabine picked up the dog, considering. “Either Levi’s got security camera footage of you taking the dog or he doesn’t. If he does, you could return him and still get shitcanned.”
“I really didn’t see any cameras. I looked.”
“Well. For now, what’s done is done.” Sabine nodded toward the champagne bottle. “We might as well drink that and hope you got away with it.”
“I promise I’m very ashamed,” I said. “But do you find the new criminal me a little sexy?”
She just sighed. But later, in bed, she lifted my pajama top and poured the slightest bit of champagne down it; I laid back as she licked its path down my torso and parted my legs, then drizzled just a bit there, too. I gasped at the feel of its cold bubbles followed by her hot, firm tongue, was about to lean back and close my eyes when I saw him: there was the dog, eyes locked with mine, staring at me like this was a show he’d paid for.
For reasons I couldn’t yet articulate, I began moaning louder, gripping my breasts and squeezing my nipples as I writhed against Sabine’s mouth, all while keeping steady eye contact with the dog. I guess I was testing something. Would he look away, maybe even show confusion at the increasing volume of my cries? But he did nothing except stare.
The next day at work, I felt like I was going to faint going through the metal detector. I was certain its alarm had somehow also been outfitted to pick up on recent dog theft. At my desk, my hands shook as I typed my password into my computer. It seemed likely that it wouldn’t work; that I’d call IT and say, “I can’t log in,” and they’d direct me to HR, where police would be waiting.
But that didn’t happen. Instead, Levi came out and announced a new ten-person project team. When he called Sabine’s name, I had to clench my teeth to avoid smiling, both with pride and relief. He’d hardly pick her for a team if he suspected even her passive knowledge of his missing dog’s whereabouts, right?
Except then he called my name. Right after hers.
Sabine’s poker face is legendary. She didn’t look bothered or freaked out in the least. She successfully “introduced” herself to me along with the others. But I had what felt like a series of nineteen consecutive panic attacks throughout the day. I sped home, beating Sabine there by nearly fifteen minutes even though we left around the same time.
“He definitely knows,” I blurted. The dog ran to her and began jumping at her legs. “Picking both of us? Saying our names right after each other? It’s too exact to be coincidence—”
“Both of you need to calm down and give me a moment,” she said, shutting and locking the door. I realized she hadn’t even put her bag down.
“Sorry.” I walked over and took her coat and hung it up while she took off her shoes and put on slippers.
“It is absolutely coincidence,” she said. “And I’ll tell you why. Wine?” I nodded and sat on the couch as she brought back a bottle and two glasses, running through her very logical theory with a nearabsent level of anxiety I can only describe as wildly arousing. “Let’s play out what you’re saying. He knows. And since he picked both of us, he doesn’t just know you stole his dog; he also knows we’re lovers. How would he know that?”
She handed me a glass of wine, which I chugged. “What if he doesn’t know we’re lovers,” I finally conceded, “but he knows I stole the dog. You’ve been picked for a team before. Maybe the message was only to me.” I poured another glass and started to chug it, but Sabine pulled it out of my hand.
“Try some deep breaths. If he knew, you’d be fired. You’re okay.” “Maybe…he thought my stealing it showed initiative? In a
fucked-up way?”
Sabine chuckled and started running her fingers across my throat. “I think there’s only one kind of female initiative Levi likes… and it isn’t that.”
I smiled and put my fingers overtop hers, intertwining them. “What kind does he like?” I asked, quietly, playfully.
“This kind,” she said, lifting onto her knees and straddling my lap. I reached behind her and pushed her close to my face, breathing hot air against the crotch of her pants, then began to unbuckle her belt. I looked up at her, making a show of sucking two of my fingers until they were slick, then pulled her underwear down, my fingertips barely touching her, until she got frantic enough to lower herself onto them. I wrapped my other arm around the left side of her waist, and placed my face against the right side, gripping her tightly, pushing steadily then stopping till she whimpered, then slowly starting again. When her legs began to shake I slid under her, dragging the tip of my tongue across her front until she was seconds away, then I took out my fingers and climbed out from beneath her, standing up behind her, moving her legs farther apart with my hands before starting to finger her again from behind. I pressed my cheek against her back, wanting to feel like I was sinking inside her in every way.
That’s when I saw the dog. Three feet away. Eyes locked with mine.
Sabine screamed, reaching back and grabbing my wrist, holding my hand still. At first I thought she screamed because she saw the dog looking at us too, but when it continued into a moan then softened, I realized she’d just finished. She laid down to catch her breath and pulled me on top of her; I clutched her with a sinking worry as she kissed my head. “No more paranoia about the dog,” she declared. “Okay?”
“Okay,” I said. Then, “But real quick—”
Sabine groaned and sat up. “Hand me my wine.” I did.
“Why didn’t he say a single word about his dog today?” I questioned. “Why hasn’t he sent a MISSING poster to the Slack channel for all of us to print out and hang up all over town? Why isn’t he on social media offering a huge reward for its return?”
“Maybe we should smoke a joint,” she offered. “I’m serious.”
“I am too. He probably got wasted at the party and figures one of the seven women who stayed over accidentally let it out and it ran off. He probably bought a new one ten minutes later.”
“True,” I said.
“But what,” Sabine asked drily. “Just say it.”
“What if we got picked because Levi can watch us having sex through the dog?”
Sabine nearly spit out her wine. “Stop it. First of all, robots don’t pee in your closet.” She nodded toward the dog. “This one already owes me a new pair of Oxfords.” It felt like an unspoken agreement that we weren’t naming the dog yet. At least in my superstition, it seemed like the moment we named him, we’d be caught.
“I don’t think he’s a robot,” I agreed. “But…I dunno. What about an ocular implant or something?”
“These are really words coming out of your mouth right now?” “He was in Levi’s bedroom.” Sabine let out a long exhale.
“Uh-huh. So you’re saying he made a bionic dog to record sex with unsuspecting women.”
“That way he’d never have to worry about them finding the camera.” The look in Sabine’s eyes after I said this worried me. It seemed like if she could press an EJECTION button on the couch that would launch her out of the apartment, she would. Inexplicably, though, I continued instead of giving it a rest. “I mean, isn’t that what Levi would do?” I asked. “If he were him? Which…he totally is?”
Sabine made a show of staring over at the dog. He was absentmindedly licking his asshole.
“Okay,” I agreed. “You’re right. I’m spiraling.”
*
The next day at work, I got promoted.
“I’ve been watching you lately,” Levi told me. “And I like what I see. Keep doing what you’re doing.” I’m not positive, but I think Levi then did, in fact, stare at me for what seemed like a few seconds before walking off. I guess I could have imagined it.
I wasn’t sure what I believed. Levi’s words to me having zero subtext or being all subtext felt equally possible. Sure, my whole Levispying-on-us-via-living-dog concept was farfetched. But it also made sense in a simple way that felt true. I decided I wouldn’t bring up the theory with Sabine again; it wasn’t something we had to agree on. In fact, to her, my promotion seemed to prove the opposite: she didn’t think Levi would promote me if he had even the slightest suspicion. Maybe so. Maybe Levi had no idea his kidnapped dog was now living with two of his employees whose intimate lives just happened to check off both the lesbian and interracial porn category boxes.
Or maybe my ill-advised spontaneous theft had actually put us in a win/win situation.
That night, as Sabine and I began having celebratory promotion sex, I tried to be mindful of the dog’s view. I could tell Sabine was getting a little frustrated with my frequent repositioning. I attempted to make the deviations from our usual routine feel organic, subtle: my ass suddenly tilted into the air instead of grinding against her leg, my back arched, my hair down and loose. I wanted to be as casual as I could in making things more visual. But I noticed that the more I moved, the more still Sabine became. The louder I grew, the quieter she got. I was fine with doing most of the work, though.
“Open your legs for me,” I whispered. But when I moved my head between her thighs, she suddenly pinned me there, immobilizing me.
“Hold up,” she said. I looked at her and was horrified to see her looking at me, then looking over at the dog on the end of the bed, calculating his line of sight with the position of my splayed ass cheeks. “Oh. God.” She released me from her grip and sat up quickly, getting under the bedsheet and pulling it up over her chest, like a stranger was in the room with us. “You’re acting for the fucking dog.”
I watched her eyes despondently move up to stare at the crown molding at the top of the wall. When Sabine’s very angry with me, she stops looking at me. That’s how I know when something’s resolved to a point of satisfaction: her gaze returns.
“From now on,” she finally said, “the dog goes out of the room when we have sex.”
I scoffed a little. “But you don’t even believe that’s happening.” “But you do.”
I guess I did more than I didn’t. But I tried to downplay it. I was panicking a little. I’d already benefited so much from the dog being there, in just a few days. Why did Sabine need to take it away when things were just getting started?
“I mean, I don’t actually, but…I dunno, it’s like…a confidence boost for me. Like that book The Secret. What’s the harm if it’s getting results?” “What was happening just now? Were we having sex, or were you putting on a cam show for our male boss in your head? Because that’s sure how it felt to me. And I’m not down for that.” “Sorry,” I said. “I thought I was…doing both.”
“If you stop talking right now,” Sabine generously offered, “I’ll try to forget you ever said that.”
“You’re right,” I finally conceded. “No more voyeur dog in the room.” Now she turned to me and nodded, her eyes meeting mine. I crawled over and kissed her, which she didn’t return but did allow. “You should talk about this with a therapist,” she muttered, half smiling but not joking. I kissed her again.
“Can the therapist watch us have sex?” She laughed and I kept kissing her; finally she turned to me and opened her mouth, drawing me closer, but stopped when my hand began to find her body beneath the sheet.
“I’m not fucking you tonight,” she said. “You messed that up.” I nodded. “Can we just make out?”
We kissed until we got tired; as we fell asleep, I could hear the soft, wheezeful sounds of the dog snoring.
*
So the new routine became this: anytime things began to get horny, Sabine would pick up the dog, deposit him in the hallway, and shut the bedroom door.
And if Anish, one of the team coordinators at work, hadn’t abruptly resigned the next week to go work for his friend’s newly funded incubator, I probably wouldn’t have interrupted this system. But suddenly, there was a new opening that would be a significant promotion. And myself and four others were called to a conference room and told we were in the running. Levi would be meeting with each of us individually and making the decision over the course of the next few days.
When I stepped into his office, he gave me a look that felt a bit impatient. “This job would be a big move up,” he said. “I can’t just give it to you based on potential. You need to show me why it should be yours. I need to see it.”
“I understand,” I told him. “I hear you.”
That night, while Sabine was in the shower, I put the dog inside a box with my laptop. Then I called myself on Facetime from my cell, and hid my phone as best I could behind a plant in the bookshelf across from our bed.
When Sabine came out of the connected bathroom, I was already on the bed naked, waiting for her. I patted the comforter. “Come here,” I said. “Door’s shut. The dog’s out.”
“I’m sleepy,” she said.
I had an answer for this.
“Then let me give you a massage.” Soon my touch began to lightly wander, and after a few minutes she was asking for me inside her; it wasn’t long until I was straddled topless over her back, fingering her, licking my lips and looking toward our bookshelf, smiling coyly. It would’ve worked perfectly were it not for a delivery person, or maybe maintenance; someone in the hallway that suddenly drew the dog’s attention and made him bark.
I realized too late I hadn’t muted the volume on my phone. He’s usually such a quiet dog.
“What was that?” Sabine propped up onto her elbows. “He’s fine, probably someone in the hallway—”
“Stop.” The dog barked again, and soon Sabine had shaken me off. She followed the barks straight to the bookshelf, where she found my phone. She looked at it like she was reading a text message from another lover, proof I was cheating, then put the phone down and began getting dressed.
“Sabine…I know you’re mad,” I tried. “But I really need this. It isn’t even real. I’m up for Anish’s job, and this helps me feel like…I don’t know, I have a competitive edge or something.”
“I need space. I’m gonna sleep on the couch.”
“Why? This is just an imaginary thing. It’s not hurting anybody.” “Did you really just say that to me?”
Now I saw an irate Sabine staring right at me. She’d never done that before. Glowered at me directly. I wasn’t sure what it meant. But I didn’t have to wonder for long, because then she walked to the living room and shut its sliding partition.
*
The next day, she was gone before I woke up. At work I tried to get her to glance at me all morning, but she wouldn’t. At lunch she disappeared. When I finally caught sight of her again in the afternoon, she still refused to look in my direction.
Before I left work that evening, Levi called me into his office. “I’ve narrowed it down from five candidates to three,” he told me. “You’re one of them. But the ideal candidate has to demonstrate creativity. An ability to perform even when there’s a curveball. Is that you?”
“I can perform,” I promised.
When I got home, Sabine wasn’t there, and neither were any of her clothes or toiletries. She must’ve packed up her things on her lunchbreak. She’d left her key on the counter. I tried calling and texting, but she wouldn’t answer.
Before bed, I sat down in front of the dog with my vibrator. This is what I do at night now. The faster I can get another raise,
the faster I can rise in this company, the sooner I can influence Sabine getting promoted, too. And then won’t she have to forgive me? Admit I was right?
At work, it’s easy to pretend we’re still together, because we always had to basically ignore each other during the day. For me, this makes it easier to be patient. I wonder if it has a similar effect on her. And I mean this; this is the truth: if I don’t get this next promotion and results continue to elude me on my own…if I have to start occasionally bringing one-night dates home in order to get to the next level…I won’t be doing them for my own pleasure. Or for any other reason than to get to a place where Sabine and I can in fact both benefit. I know Sabine would disagree with this, so I’ll note that, in fairness. Her opinion would be different, but here’s mine: If those dates happen, I can honestly argue I’ll be doing them for us. And if Sabine wants to stay firm and refuse to share the spoils with me, that’s her decision. Of course I’ll be heartbroken. But it would be ridiculous to turn this opportunity down.
I’ve got to hope she’ll come around eventually.
__________________________________
From Be Gay, Do Crime, edited by Molly Llewellyn and Kristel Buckley. Used with permission of the publisher, Dzanc Books. Copyright © 2025 by Alyssa Nutting.
