Maya had not left the house in four hundred and twelve days.

She counted the way other people counted money: quietly, and with a small private dread. The pandemic had taken the world first and her nerve second, and what it left behind was a two-bedroom craftsman on a quiet street, a window seat with a good cushion, and a body that had learned to do all its living inside a three-foot radius of glass.

She told herself she was fine. Groceries came to the door. Work lived in her laptop. She had everything she needed.

And then, somewhere around month eight, she started standing at the window.

It began innocently — a glance while the kettle boiled. But the street had a rhythm, and rhythms become rituals, and rituals become needs. By month ten she knew the whole choreography by heart, and the choreography had become the only sex life she had.

The mail carrier came at 10:40 every morning, rain or shine. He had forearms like a man who lifted things for a living and a habit of whistling under his breath as he worked the mailboxes, and he was her daily fantasy. In it, he knocked — a package, needs a signature — and when she opened the door, her robe slipped open as she signed, showing everything. He looked. He smiled. Their eyes met — and she stepped back into the hall, her eyes begging him to come in and take her. He stepped inside, kicked the door shut behind him, and walked her backward until her shoulders hit the hallway wall. His mouth was on hers before the robe finished falling open. He lifted her like she weighed nothing, pressed her back against the wood, and took her standing there while the day’s mail slid through the slot and landed on her bare feet. She came with her forehead against the wall and his forearm braced beside her head, and then the truck pulled away outside, and she was alone in her hallway with her robe still tied and her hand between her legs and her nipples hard enough to ache.

Thursdays brought the gentlest fantasy, delivered right along with the groceries.

The grocery delivery girl — twenty-three, bright eyes, hair piled in a messy knot. The standing rule was that the bags were just left on the porch: Maya got the notification, waited until the truck pulled away, then fetched them. But one Thursday she was on the phone with work, distracted, half-listening to someone drone about quarterly numbers, and she went to the door without checking whether the truck was gone. She’d already pushed open the screen door before she noticed the girl — crouched at the bottom step, taking the delivery photo.

They both froze. Maya was in a sundress so thin it was nearly transparent, braless underneath — and she was bent over reaching for a bag, giving the girl a complete view of everything. They were both shocked. But the pleasure in the girl’s eyes was obvious. She didn’t look away, not right away. And when she finally did, she gave Maya a slow, knowing smile that said god, you are gorgeous, plain as words.

That was real. That had actually happened.

It was enough. That night Maya lay in bed replaying it — the girl’s eyes on her body, that slow smile — and her hand drifted down on its own. The thrill of it being another woman went through her like a current. She’d never been with a woman, had never let herself wonder, and now she couldn’t stop wondering. In the fantasy, she didn’t hesitate. She said come in — you look overheated, and in the kitchen she stepped close and said I saw how you looked at me, and backed her against the counter, and took her time. The girl came apart under Maya’s mouth with a sound like something tearing, and then, eager and clumsy and shaking, she went to her knees to return the favor. The look in the girl’s eyes, and the sight of her mouth on her, pushed Maya into an immediate and intense orgasm.

In reality, she never met the girl at the door again — just the truck, pulling away, watched from her window. Which was fine. The window was where the fantasy lived.

Saturdays brought the fantasy she didn’t like admitting to, even to herself.

The lawn boy — twenty-six, all shoulders and sweat — and when he did the backyard, the show was hers. The other two fantasies had brushed against real life, however lightly: a slipped robe, a look, a folded paper crane. This one never had. Maybe that was why she let it go the furthest. She watched from the window while he mowed shirtless in the heat, and the fantasy always started the same way: one brutal Saturday she stepped into the garage doorway with a glass of water for him — tight white cotton T-shirt, tiny micro shorts, no reason to be dressed like that except the heat and him. She poured the glass, and then, talking about the bad heat, she poured a little over herself to cool off — down her throat, over her chest, the white cotton going transparent and clinging. He stopped mid-step and stared. He followed her into the garage’s shade. She backed against the workbench. He didn’t ask — she produced the orange extension cord coiled by the wall, tie me up, and he bound her wrists with hands rough from the mower’s grip. The mower was still running out back, covering every sound she made. No softness. His weight, the flat of his hand, his hand over her mouth when it got to be too much. She came biting his palm.

Then the real mower would cut off, and he’d gather his things in the backyard, oblivious, and Maya would stay at the window with her thighs pressed tight together, watching.