The museum's Palazzo architecture rose above narrow streets. Cars inched past cluttered orange construction scaffolding, parks with monuments and memorial benches, and parking lots stuffed like tins of sardines. The drivers craned their necks in all directions, peering up at stoplights, throwing their hands in the air when other cars would not let them merge, and laying on the horn when they were cut off. Pedestrians waited on street corners, eyes flicking between their phones and the traffic, breath puffing in the late winter chill.

Within the walls of the museum, Cole sat on one of the long, flat benches in the center of an expansive gallery. His knees poked through tears in his jeans, frayed from wear rather than factory-induced distress. The black of his sweatshirt was faded nearly to brown from a lifetime of washing machine cycles. He had stepped into a puddle while avoiding a bike earlier, and the water that seeped through a crack in his sole dampened his left sock. He masked the discomfort of a wet sock well beneath a pensive expression as he stretched his legs out and leaned back on his hands.

On the towering walls behind him hung the portraits of nineteenth-century gentlemen, women, families, and their pets. Some sat primly in the confines of their gilded frames, dressed in shining satin gowns and delicate lace, stoically observing the rest of the gallery. Others were wrapped up in conversation around tables laden with bread and ale or beside fireplaces that yawned dark and cold between their trousers and skirts. They discussed serious topics with furrowed brows and tense lines or made merry, throwing their smiles into the air and exciting the dogs at their feet.

Before Cole loomed one of the few landscape paintings in this gallery, a low, panoramic view of heavy clouds threatening a storm above pale, rolling grasslands. The broad strokes of oil created sharp contrasts between the dark clouds and the light being crowded out of the frame. He curled his fingers under the edge of the bench and tilted his head.

Footsteps echoed across the empty, polished hardwood floors, gathering closer to the gallery in which he sat. They sharpened when a security guard stepped into the room. He wore a dark blue uniform, jacket unzipped to reveal his flashing bronze nameplate, slight beer belly, and sparse utility belt. His eyes flicked around, sliding across the paintings to land on the Cole.

"The museum closes in fifteen minutes," he said firmly but not unkindly. His finger tapped against his belt buckle as he waited for a response, a quiet beat in contrast to the sharp snap of his gum.

Cole tore his eyes from the gathering clouds to blink at the guard. "Thank you."

The guard nodded. His footsteps faded as he entered another gallery to look for other remaining visitors. Cole pulled out his phone, the cracks in its screen catching the ridges of his finger pads, to double-check the time. He stood but lingered a few more moments with the dark clouds and wind-beaten grass.

But it was time to go.

A few other lingering visitors milled about the locker room, fiddling with the locks to remember their combinations. Cole headed straight for the same locker he used each time he came. Its door was red, part of a promotional mural pasted over the entire wall of lockers that advertised a traveling exhibit the museum had been hosting for a few months. His fingers spun the lock with deftness curated through repetition. His bag, a small duffle as worn as his clothes, the zipper resewn more than once, barely fit in the locker. He yanked to get it out.

As he passed through the lobby, the receptionist turned to give him a small wave. She stood on the wrong side of the front desk, refilling the flyers about the upcoming timeline of museum events. Cole waved back. He came to the museum often but had never seen her on this side of the desk. He now knew that she wore impractically high, pointy black heels to work, but they probably did not hurt her feet since she usually sat behind the desk.

Outside, the sun hovered low above the buildings, glinting off the windows and blinding the drivers so that they had to hold their hands over their eyes as they peered up at the stoplights. Cole tightened his jacket around himself to ward off the evening chill and joined the trickle of pedestrians that gently swelled into a river cascading down the steps into the metro station. Each train filled with the after-work rush, people swaying with the momentum while they buried their noses in a book, scrolled through their phones, or gazed out the window.

Cole stepped off at a stop in a neighborhood on the outskirts of true downtown, where the parallel parked cars sat in front of duplexes and crowded into little parking lots behind strip malls. The buildings here were much shorter, but the sun had already sunk below their rooflines, casting a hazy shadow of dusk in which headlights flicked on, and stoplights glowed.

He adjusted the strap of his bag and walked through a maze of side streets, passing the high fence around a preschool run by the Methodist Church, cutting through the parking lot of an abandoned car wash, and making a face at the black and white dog that always put his paws up on the chain link fence to bark whenever anyone went by.

The club was in a nondescript single-story building with white siding that was built to house the law practice of a father and his sons. The windows had since been blacked out, the parking lot and adjacent empty lot repaved, and a simple red neon sign hung above the door. That was decades ago. Now weeds poked through cracks in the asphalt, and grime clung to the siding, which could use a good power wash. But nobody was interested in what the outside looked like.

The front doors would not unlock for another thirty minutes or so, but the back door was propped open by a metal bucket filled with sand and crumpled cigarette buts. Cole ducked into the dark opening, leaving the sunset flaming across the sky behind for the blacked-out interior where midday might as well be midnight. Dim fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, their covers gritty with age and bug carcasses, but they could not be heard above the chatter of the dancers who had arrived already.

Some of them roughhoused in the rows of lockers, putting each other in headlocks just to show off their biceps and adding new dents to the lockers as they knocked into them. Most were already shirtless, wearing only jeans or sweatpants. Their laughter echoed off the metal and drew glares from the others, who had to lean into each other to hold a conversation above the noise. Some dancers sat in front of the long mirror that ran the length of one wall, framed by bright vanity lights, and ignored the ruckus in favor of focusing on touching up their makeup. Those by the mirror were a glimmering line of sequins, multicolored feathers, and thin shoulders.

All of the dancers were male, but the club catered to a wide variety of customers. Cole avoided the roughhousing at the lockers and set his bag down on an empty spot along the counter beneath a name written on the mirror in red dry-erase marker – Nikki. He did not make eye contact with his reflection, instead smiling at the boys who flanked his spot before shucking out of his ripped jeans and faded sweatshirt. 

He was pulling off his damp sock when the boy to his right finished his eyeliner, capped it with a flourish, and turned to look at Cole's bare torso and legs. "How are you? You look like you've lost weight."

"Fine." Cole laid the sock across the edge of the opening to his bag so it could dry, then pawed around for his g-string and black lacey booty shorts. "You look like you've gained some."

The boy clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth and rolled his eyes back to his own reflection. They exchanged the same greeting each time they worked together, which was not often. Cole did not even know the other boy's name. His spot was not marked.

The catty greeting was untrue, but regardless, the other boy's eyes cast down to his waist, where it peeked out beneath his crop top. Cole stepped out of his boxers and into his outfit, covering the underwear with a tiny spandex skirt – which hardly hid the lace, let alone his balls – over which he layered a mesh tank top with lots of little glittery rhinestones sewn all over it.

He was sorting through his makeup bag for black eyeliner when a pair of sharp nails dug into his ribs. This was also a familiar greeting, so the elbow he threw out was mostly out of annoyance rather than surprise. Alexis jumped out of the way and cackled as he rubbed his side and scowled at her.

"For you." She reached around him to tuck an envelope into the frame of the mirror beneath his name. A little pink heart sealed the tip of its flap. Cole held up the black eyeliner in triumph and ignored the card. Alexis rolled her eyes and leaned over his shoulder to inspect her lipstick, pursing her lips all big and red. Cole caught one of the guys by the lockers eyeing the way her leather pencil skirt stretched across her ass.

Alexis was classily hot with natural come-hither eyes and pouty lips, so it looked like she was always making a sex face no matter what. She was not afraid to show off her curves, bamboozling everyone everywhere she went with big round tits that constantly tried to fight their way out of whatever little top she stuffed them into. Cole had run into her at the grocery store, so he knew that even there, browsing through the yogurts, she drew second looks, caused people to crash their carts together, and that sort of thing.

At a regular strip club, she would make a killing, but here, she did alright behind the bar. She took working in a club that primarily catered to the gay community as a challenge. She wore low-cut tops while vigorously shaking cocktails and leaning over the bar to wipe it down, analyzing each customer to see if they batted an eyelash. But people liked her because, as much as she enjoyed being looked at, more than anything, she loved talking shit. Cole had never known her to be without a smirk and a juicy detail of gossip playing about her lips.

"You know," she said, whipping lipstick out from thin air because there was nowhere in her skintight dress she could have hidden it. She uncapped it and kept talking as she freshened up her pursed lips, the words coming out long and mumbled. "You get more of those cards than anyone else."

Cole rolled his eyes, which looked extra dramatic since he was pulling one of his lower lids down to draw the eyeliner across his waterline. Alexis snorted.

"Everyone wants to be your Valentine." She used her lipstick to draw a few bright red hearts around his name on the mirror. The guy who wrote it was long gone, but Cole was still here. The hearts would probably linger after Alexis had gone and left him here, as well. He kept drawing on his eyeliner.

She decided she was bored with Cole's lack of reaction and flounced off to shove her tits in someone else's face. He lifted his foot up on the bench to strap it into a platform heel, shaking his head and wondering how the hell he ended up in these monstrosities instead of a comfy pair of work boots like the boys by the lockers. It was because he, like all the other guys along the mirror, was small and lithe, unlike the guys by the lockers, who were broad and built.

A couple of other dancers flitted in and out, arriving for work and checking the schedule. Cole did not try to learn anyone's name anymore, so he did not bother to see who he would be on the stage with. However, a few people had been around long enough that he got to know them through osmosis. Tres stopped to drop a kiss on top of Cole's head as he unwound a scarf from his neck, late for the shift, just like he was every night. Juan was having a meltdown about a broken strap on his outfit, and Tommy, who was straight and always made sure everyone was well-hydrated, consoled him for a while.

Cole was in the first round of dancers, which meant he needed to get out on the floor soon. But the card caught his eye as he stood and got his sky-high heels under him. They put him at the same height as some of the tallest guys in here, several inches over six feet, since he was actually a decent height to begin with. The envelope had his name scrawled across the front, each 'i' dotted with a heart. It might be from someone who wanted attention or just to be nice or to convince him to work on Valentine's Day, which he never did. He tucked it into the pocket of his duffle beside the ones from the day before.

Out on the floor, shiny garlands of red, white, and pink hearts and glittery gold cupid cutouts hung on every wall, contrasting with the neon blue lights that dimly illuminated the stages and reflected off the rows of glass bottles behind the bars. The club's owner had rolled out a menu of Valentine's Day-themed cocktails, and he was requiring all the dancers who worked on the actual holiday to incorporate red into their outfits. The whole week leading up to it was so kitschy. It used to make Cole's skin itch, but it did not bug him as much anymore.

The customers were not all that different from any other time of year: lonely widows and divorcees, people who did not want their wives to know, young guys looking for a good time, and the occasional straight woman. People who were saying fuck-it. People who also appreciated the irony of going to a strip club on a holiday that was meant to be about relationships. Cole did not mind the customers. The owner, Logan, who took the whole thing so goddamn seriously instead of admitting the marketing gimmick, was the one who got under his skin.

Music thrummed through the room, vibrating the stages with particularly strong baselines. It skittered all over Cole, loud and jarring for now, but by the time he left tonight, it would ring in his ears far past when he fell asleep. A few customers, who must have been waiting for the door to open, had already found their seats, but for the most part, it was not crowded yet. The bouncers outnumbered the customers.

A guy sitting near Cole wolf-whistled at him. He looked vaguely familiar, which mean they had been here before, or maybe he sat next to Cole in the waiting room at the Department of Human Services one time. Either was a possibility. Cole turned away and winked over his shoulder while arching his back and dragging his thumbs under the stretchy lace of his shorts. He let it snap against his skin, then grabbed the pole and got to work.