Tasha is not my name

A woman I have never met walked into Mrs. Adler's apartment and called me Tasha. Not asked. Called. In front of the client, like I was a wrong number she had been chasing for years and finally caught in someone else's doorway.

I don't know a Tasha. Or — I do, maybe. There's a girl who started on the app four months ago, blond, works the Upper East Side, some of my old clients have followed her over. I check her grid when I can't sleep. I am checking it now in my head. Is that who this was. Did someone book Tasha and get me instead, or did this woman just pick a name out of the air because my face fit the slot in her head. Either answer is bad. Either one means I am interchangeable with a girl I already rank above in my own private standings.

She reached for my wrist. I yanked it back and her ring opened a line in my forearm and Mrs. Adler stood there and said nothing for what felt like a full minute. Then she apologized to me. The client apologized to me. That is the correct direction for the apology and also a thing I will not recover from, because the correct direction shouldn't have had to be discovered.

I photographed the welt in Mrs. Adler's bathroom. I backed it up twice. Once is something that happened to me. Twice is something I am choosing to keep.