“Slap yourself in the balls, loser,” Akara Fang commands to a voice on speakerphone. She’s in her early twenties, with a slender nose and cyan-hued hair that hangs around her face in glossy sheets. With her pale complexion and high, sloping forehead, she looks a bit like the subject of a pre-Raphaelite portrait, as if Rossetti had taken a fangirl at a Paramore concert as his muse.

The man on the other line emits a dry, high-pitched exhalation, somewhere between a sob and a squeal. Akara throws her head back and laughs, revealing pearly pink gums.

“Harder,” she demands. “Do it again or I’m gonna ...