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The Stupidest Thing I Ever Did Because of Reading an Advice Column

The party that Alysoun drags me to is in a huge empty Gold Coast third floor loft on Goethe on the which is bathed in spotlights and packed with hundreds of people. She kept reminding me all throughout dinner tonight that she “had to” make an appearance at this event, not to mention that some big part of her advertising budget and the success of a finely-tuned, much agonized over layout depended on her being seen tonight, not to mention that running a teen magazine is not as easy as it looks. I tried to think of ways I could get out of having to come along. Since I was essentially bored and even the thought of arguing that I had to go back to my apartment to do laundry, or that I really should call my mother, or I had a deadline quickly approaching seemed implausible, I relented and joined her in a cab.

After we deposit our coats in a small dark room, I saunter up to the bar and over to the window behind it, peering out and down at the long stretch of street. It's fascinating how dark and empty Goethe is, even though it's packed with parked cars, some of them double-parked, with hazard lights flashing rhythmically. All tow-away zones and hydrants contain a parked Lexus or Mercedes or idling limo.

This party is a post-pre-publication party for Macaulay Culkin's new wryly self-deprecating, self-conscious, urbane autobiography It’s Kevin’s Life. Alysoun tells me that while he, reportedly did not do much, if any, of the actual writing of the text, Macaulay insisted on remaining a "key player" in several decisions about which photographs of his family, his friends, and which ones of himself starring in various early 1990s blockbusters (some of which Macaulay is featured wearing a big red cape), would appear bound in the middle.

“He’s very scrupulous,” she explains.

Now, Macaulay sits in a corner, wearing a black suit and pale blue tie, all loose-fitting Brooks Brothers, with his blonde hair slicked back and a pair of sunglasses on. He smokes an unfiltered cigarette and sips a frozen daiquiri, attempting to smile when some of the photographers ask him to, other times when nobody is looking or paying attention, maybe just to check if he still can.

There are also about fifty other editors and writers and staff photographers from the Reader, the Tribune, the Sun-Times, New City, Crain's Chicago Business, and Alysoun's staff from Teen People, most of whom I've met at one time or another, some of whom I can actually name. They mingle, look at copies of the autobiography from one of the stacks assembled on a table near the bar, talk to each other, and stare at Macaulay, who occasionally looks over with this completely petulant snarl on his face and when he does the writers quickly avert their gazes, giggling, and look at each other’s shoes and how everyone’s toes point inwardly.

The atmosphere in the loft is kind of bustling. The open spaces are crowded with waiters wearing white tuxedoes carrying trays of tiny vegetarian wonton and pork spring rolls, others carrying trays of dozens of tiny shumai, others still offering arrays of beef, chicken, turkey, tofu, lamb, goose, and meatball satays over portable containers of flame, everything happening in a frenzy. When the champagne starts to circulate, I quickly reach for a glass.

These sorts of functions still manage to unnerve me, no matter how much I drink. My ex-girlfriend Sarah is a graduate student studying anthropology and never had that many friends. Her idea of a good time was always dinner and a Harrison Ford movie, anything low impact. We broke up six months ago. I’ve been dating Alysoun since then, though we’ve known each other since college.

Alysoun requests another Manhattan and after the bartender makes it for her, she returns to a conversation she is having ten feet away from where I am standing with my editor-neighbor Stephanie, who does book reviews at the Reader this week, and a tall blonde man who, I'm guessing, is Stephanie's date.

I remain standing by the window, looking out onto Goethe, which is still completely empty except for three workmen with hard-hats digging out of a section of the street where the sidewalk has been taken away. Thirsty, I lean into the bar and order a Heineken. When the bartender hands it to me, I take a sip and walk over to Alysoun's conversation.

"So, how's it going, Martin?" Stephanie asks, putting her arm around her date's waist.

"Great," I say, eyeing a passing waiter and tray of shumai, "The shumai are outstanding."

Stephanie's date says, "Yeah, this publisher always orders Thai from Dao for these things. It really is good."

Stephanie looks at him, shrugs at Alysoun and me, and then realizes something. She says, "I'm sorry. Martin, this is Steven. Steven, this is Martin."

I extend my hand, which Steven grips limply and shakes.

Alysoun says, "We've been in meetings all week over this stupid layout change. I had to sit in on focus groups of two hundred twelve-year-old girls all wearing Gap fleece pullovers and chewing pack after pack of Bubblicious." She pauses, turning around and pulling a lamb satay stick off a tray that a grinning obsequious waiter holds out for her. She looks over the satay, glistening with sauce and still warm. She takes a bite, chewing quickly, makes a humming noise like it's really good. She then continues, everyone still standing around listening but now distracted. "It's been really hectic."

Steven mumbles, "My beer is warm."

Stephanie and Alysoun both look at him, and then at each other, despairingly.

Alysoun quickly fills the silence. "You know, we should really get together and talk sometime. You have some really great ideas."

Stephanie smiles uncomfortably and shrugs, studies an abstract painting in watercolor on a wall. "Sure, yeah, sure," she finally says, clutching to Steven's arm, maybe trying to bring his attention back to the conversation. Right now he gazes longingly at a tall plastic ficus near the bar.

“What have you been working on, Martin?” Stephanie asks.

“‘My step-brother is an alien… and he wants to have sex with me,’” I say. They all laugh.

"Right," someone says.

Macaulay Culkin has left the position he's been slouching in for most of the night and is walking around the loft, shaking hands, posing for pictures and a couple of interviews. He approaches our circle and leans towards Alysoun. As they hug, I notice that he's much taller than I expected and even more so up close. He towers over Alysoun even though he's only seventeen or whatever. After they hug, we shake hands.

"This book is going to make things happen," Alysoun says to Macaulay and the rest of us, looking across all of our faces. "We're definitely on the road."

Macaulay tries to force a smile, but it arrives weakly. He doesn't have the energy.

Steven says, "I really liked Home Alone. You were really funny in that. It was really good. Really funny." Alysoun, Macaulay, Stephanie, and I are silent. Macaulay says "Yeah, thanks," uneasily, trying to pull something off his tongue like a hair or something he's just imagining exists. Nobody knows what to say and finally Macaulay looks at me, quietly offers "Thanks for coming" before lighting a cigarette with Alysoun's lighter. He stumbles off, shaking his head, his long blonde hair falling loose in the front, long strands swaying back and forth.

"What?" Steven asks Stephanie.

Stephanie waits a long time before saying, "That was just so... inappropriate." She stares at the floor, tapping her foot quickly.

Alysoun looks like she wants to do something, change the subject, get another Manhattan, eat a satay, something, but instead she just stares at Stephanie and Steven blankly.

"I... liked... the movie. I was just paying him a fucking compliment. That's all," Steven whines.

"You could try to pretend to be a little more professional, you know," she says, and then turning to Alysoun, "Sorry."

"Whatever. I don't care," Steven says, and stomps off to the bar.

"He is such an idiot," Stephanie says, and after a thoughtful beat adds, "I guess that's what you get when you hire temps."

When Alysoun and Stephanie start talking about layout ideas and photographers and catch phrases, excluding me, I walk over to the bar and order an Absolut Citron. Now this side of the loft is practically empty, the party having moved on to the other side where a DJ is playing danceable C+C Music Factory, Divynls, Four Non Blondes. As I'm turning around with the drink, I notice Macaulay Culkin standing next to me, lighting another cigarette.

He takes a drag and while he exhales he says, "So what do you think?"

Not sure of what he's referring to, I say, "It's pretty cool," nodding.

"I don't know," he says, looking at the party on the other side of the loft, a group of highly stylized drunk girls line dancing, then at Alysoun and Stephanie, then at Steven staring doggedly out of a window, and sighs. "I'm just trying to figure out what it all means, I guess."

"I think that makes sense. I think everyone wants that," I tell him.

“So how did you end up with this crowd?” he asks, scanning the room, squinting.

“I write,” I say, softly. “I’m a columnist.”

“For what paper?” he asks.

“The Reader,” I say. “I’m actually syndicated now, so maybe-“

“Martin… what?” he asks, looking at me kind of urgently.

“Donovan,” I say. “Have you-“

“I can’t believe this,” Macaulay says, setting his drink down on the bar. He jerks his head from side to side like he’s frantic to find somebody to tell this to but nobody is there.

“What?” I say, starting to get a little concerned.

“You’re Martin Donovan,” he says, and this time he starts laughing.

I take a gulp of my drink and it almost makes me choke. “Right,” I say, gently.

“Okay, so, I read this column of yours,” he starts.

“Okay,” I say, looking at him a little quizzically, and maybe a little nervously.

“Your advice… shit, I don’t know how you did it, but there was this one, it must have been only like a month or two ago, it was this guy who wrote to you about a girl he was fucking, and she was like getting all sentimental and shit.” He stops to light another cigarette.

“I think I remember that,” I say, lying poorly.

“Wait a minute,” he says, his eyes widening, exhaling smoke into my face, which makes my nose itch, and I rub it. “So, this guy, you told him that the girl like wasn’t worth all the bullshit and-“

“They usually aren’t.”

“And he should break up with her.”

“So, okay,” I say, trying to lead him to some kind of point.

He lowers his voice and looks at me severely. “I broke up with my girlfriend because of what you said. I started thinking, ‘Shit, maybe the dude has a point’ and ‘Fuck, I’m, like, too young to get pushed around by some girl, some girl who wasn’t that great of a fuck in the first place, some girl who always assumes I’m going to pay the check and then complains when I want to sit in the back of the bistro.’”

“So, you're happier now?” I ask.

“No,” he says, practically shouting. I look around us casually to see if anyone stares. A couple of reporters from the Reader whom I barely know look at us and snicker. “You really fucked me up.”

“I’m, shit, I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, trying to decide on a good moment to step away from this, growing more and more unsettled by each passing second.

He starts laughing. “I wrote something about it,” he says.

“Oh… yeah?” I ask. “That sounds like a good way to, well, deal,” I say.

“It’s in there,” he says, pointing at the stack of autobiographies. Without him having to say anything, a bartender brings a copy over to him. He has trouble flipping through because of how tightly bound the pages are. He finally reaches a table of contents, and flips it around so I can see. He holds a thick, dull index finger to the chapter title, “The Stupidest Thing I Ever Did Because of Reading an Advice Column.”

Before I can say anything, he snaps the book shut.

“So you’re, well, -“ I start.

“You’re a big fucking asshole,” he says, his voice barely louder than a raspy mumble though I have no trouble hearing him. “And your writing sucks. Your advice is some homogenous Martha Stewart shit pretending to be contemporary. You’re a big loser.”

He walks away before I can even try to explain anything.

I’m standing alone, next to the bar.

Okay, what the fuck just happened?

I finish the Absolut and figure I'm kind of drunk at this point. I start to wonder if I just imagined this interlude during a moment in which I was zonked out or something. I sashay over to the other side of the loft where I bump into one of Alysoun's editorial interns and she looks up at me, smiling, and asks if I want to dance. I say sure, without missing a beat, confident in my light-headedness, and we dance to Haddaway singing "What is Love?" and at first, I turn my head a couple of times to see if Alysoun is watching me, but when I decide that she's not, and probably has forgotten that I'm even here, I get comfortable and start focusing my attention on the intern, Samantha, I think, and she's cute, this small slithering body, bouncing curly red hair. She's wearing a white dress shirt and a miniature black skirt. She catches me looking her over and smiles, amused by this, and shouts, "This is really a blast, isn't it?" over the music and I nod and scream, "Yeah, I love this song." As "What is Love?" turns into "Pump Up The Jam," Samantha and I stop dancing gradually and she says she's thirsty, so we cross through the party and down the long stretch of loft to the other side and the bar. I order her a glass of champagne and after the bartender hands it to me, she reaches for it, brushing my hand with her sleeve as takes it from me. She drinks it quickly and hands me back the glass, exhaling and licking her lips.

I watch Alysoun’s eyes as she spots me and Samantha talking and breaks free from her conversation with Stephanie and also, I notice, Steven who has rejoined them, having returned from his exile at the window. She excuses herself and comes over to the bar, empty Manhattan glass in one hand.

"Hi," Samantha says to her cheerfully.

"Hi, Samantha. Hi, Martin," Alysoun says, mockingly. "What are you two doing?"

"We were dancing," I tell her. "And Samantha was thirsty so we came back over here."

"That's cute," Alysoun says. She's about to start walking back towards where Stephanie and Steven are standing but in the same moment, they start for the center of the loft, where the party is basically now going on.

"I talked to Macaulay Culkin," I tell Alysoun. She turns around.

"You did?" she asks. "What did he say?"

"He's read “The Guy,”" I say. "He thinks I'm an asshole."

"Oh, my god," she says, covering her mouth, approaching me. "Oh, my god. I think I-"

"He said he wrote about it in his stupid book," I say, trying to speak loudly enough for her to hear me over the music, which for some reason seems to have amplified in the last two minutes.

"Well don't worry, Martin," Alysoun says, laughing. "I'm sure nobody who reads you would read something like that," she says, pointing at a giant poster blow-up of Macaulay's book over which fills an entire wall in the corner of the loft.

"I hope you're right," I say. "Something, you know, bad like this could be, well, I don't know."

"People react to things in two ways," Alysoun says. "They will either venerate you or revile you. You never know which it’s going to be." She starts backing away.

"I hope it's not the latter," I shout.

"If it is," Alysoun shouts, having almost reached the dance floor, "you'll be ruined."

Later, at a small table in a semi-quiet corner of the loft, Samantha and I discuss her job and how much "fun" it is working for Alysoun and how they're all really freaking out over a new feature and how they have interviews lined up with Brandy, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Boyz II Men. I say, "wow" and "that's really exciting" several times. I feel like throwing up from all the champagne and wonder how soon it's going to take for something like this Macaulay situation to get around the office. I tell a stupid joke during an uncomfortable pause and Samantha laughs heartily and though I'm not quite sure why she does, I try to smile but it comes out all crooked. When we stand up from the table, Samantha leans forward during a hug and kisses me on the cheek, but since she's shorter than I am, her lips catch part of my face, and while her lips are soft and full, I tense up, and when I lick the corner of my mouth I taste grape lip balm. I know without turning around that Alysoun will have been watching and she will have seen Samantha and I kiss on the lips, an event which will in a week or a month end up skewed in such a way that I will start wondering myself if I did, in fact, initiate it.

I don't want to turn around, and lurching towards the first topic I come up with, I ask her if her parents live in Chicago and she seems excited to begin telling me everything over the Kris Kross booming out of several tiny speakers, but I stop hearing what Samantha is saying when I spot Alysoun, with her coat on, walking and saying goodbye to the hosts and some of her staff, leaving the party. I run over to the window and when Alysoun reaches the street, she doesn't look back at the building, and I want to call out for her but I feel paralyzed. I watch her enter a cab quickly and it speeds off, leaving nothing behind on Goethe besides the workmen, still shoveling black dirt out of the section of sidewalk where the concrete has been removed, looking like they've made no progress. Behind that, all the parked cars.

"Whatever," I say, stepping away from the window.

"She said to let you know she was leaving," Stephanie says, inching towards me.

"She didn't tell me," I say. "I don't really care, though."

Samantha is still standing by the bar, interlacing her fingers anxiously and looking from side to side like she's uncomfortable. When a group of Reader people approach, Stephanie touches my arm supportively and tells me she'll see me later. I return to the bar, say hello to Samantha.

"So Alysoun left without you, huh?" she says, looking deep into my eyes.

"Seems so," I say. Waiters begin to stack copies of Macaulay Culkin's autobiography into boxes around us.

"She seemed pissed," Samantha says, twirling a swizzle stick in her wine glass.

"She's always pissed," I offer.

Samantha, eyes still glued to my face, mentions that the party is starting to get cold. She pretends to shiver and orders a Chardonnay from the bartender, who stops reading the jacket flaps of Macaulay Culkin's autobiography that he didn't write, yet was able to say something disparaging about me, of all people, me who had nothing to do with anything that's gone wrong with his or anybody's life, when Samantha calls out her drink order.

"Yeah," I say, after the bartender turns around and reaches for a bottle of Chardonnay, even though I'm feeling a little warm from the drinking and dancing and all the lights in the loft.

After accepting the Chardonnay from the bartender, Samantha touches my shoulder. "You want to go somewhere and get a drink?" she asks, her voice sounding courageous all of a sudden, and unwavering.

I look at her eyes, brown and large, and I take a step back and for a second I see Alysoun's face in hers and it startles me, but then I'm back to Samantha, pretty, a thin line of perspiration above her eyebrows, rubbing her hand over her wine glass, fingernails cut short, glossy green polish.

"We could go to Lincoln Park. Gamekeeper's, Karma Police, Alumni Club, wherever," she says, getting increasingly more excited. She touches my hand and drags a finger down the sleeve of my jacket.

"It's getting late," I say, pulling my hand away from hers, probably sounding totally unconvincing. "I was going to do some stuff in the morning. I need to go grocery shopping. You know, right?"

She knows I'm lying and just glares at me, the look on her face saying "You idiot" for her. I just stare back at her, waiting to see what happens next.

After a minute, she breaks the stare and rolls her eyes. She says "Whatever" completely sarcastically and walks away.

"I think you're just a total heartbreaker," Stephanie says, having walked away from the middle of a conversation with the managing editor of New City and the news editor from Teen People, when she saw Samantha get pissed and storm off, now leaning towards me lasciviously, holding a plastic cup between us and then lifting it to her mouth and swallowing the last drops of a vodka tonic she had been soaking up, her fifth of the evening. She tosses the empty plastic cup onto the floor, letting it roll around in front of where she is standing, almost losing her balance in doing so.

"I'm just kind of going through the motions right now," I tell her, not paying attention to what I'm saying.

She looks at me, batting her eyelashes, and then takes a ChapStick out of her purse and opens it, gliding a glossy strip over her bottom lip and presses both her lips together, rubbing them over each other.

"Didn't anybody ever tell you that you could be anything you wanted to be when you grew up?" she asks in a seductive whisper, moving in close.

I don't want to flirt back and it seems like it would be impossible to change the subject right now. I just stare at the empty champagne flute I'm still holding and don't say anything.

And then we're sitting at a tiny table with a pink menu in a table tent that has fifteen varieties of martinis on it at Monkey Bar on Addison and Stephanie is chain-smoking Marlboro Lights nervously but trying to pretend that it's seductively and she ashes into a large glass sculpted ashtray, already almost full of cigarette butts even though we've only been here twenty minutes. A jazz band is taking a break from a long, loud set or maybe they've finished and are packing up for the night and now Hootie and the Blowfish plays, not too loudly on every speaker in the ceiling but it's all scratchy and tinny for some reason like somebody's lined all the speakers in a large sheet of foil.

I watch Stephanie's lips move and figure she's probably in the middle of a conversation with me but I can't hear her over what I'm guessing is "Let Her Cry," a track on the CD which I think maybe stuck on repeat. Stephanie has one hand resting on the edge of the ashtray and her other rests on top of mine.

I'm depressed about Alysoun leaving the party in the loft on Goethe and I wonder if she went home or to Brian's or to the 7-Eleven for snacks or what. I feel my beeper and look at the display to see if she paged me and I just didn't feel it vibrate over the jazz or the tracks the DJ was spinning back at the loft. No messages.

Then I hear Stephanie say, "What are you thinking about?" and this breaks my trance like a loud snap.

"Alysoun," I say.

She rolls her eyes and looks at me wearily. "Oh, Martin," is all she can say.

"Do you care?" I ask her, watching a woman get up from another tiny table and knock half a Screwdriver onto the floor. Neither the woman nor the two men she sits with, both in blue suits and one wearing a gray floppy hat oddly enough, notice the drink or the glass rolling under their table.

"Do you?" she asks back, half-mocking me and half-curious.

Everything starts to feel ridiculous when I’m sitting in the back of a stopped Yellow cab. I wind my Swatch a couple of times, since it seems like it's not keeping time like it usually does; maybe there's something wrong with the battery or I’m just imagining things. The cab's not moving because of a red light that takes forever to change at Belmont. I'm sulking in the back, sipping a Strawberry Passion Awareness Fruitopia and flicking a thumb against an index finger over and over. The driver, twenty-three and Mexican or maybe Indian whose placard reads Harold Adebisi, doesn't talk but he has the Broadway cast recording of Rent playing and I think about asking him to turn up the volume during "Tango Maureen" but upon thinking it over, I decide I'm too tired to get into it. The driver startles me when he tells me that I look sad and I say "Yeah," but I don't feel like going into detail and then I'm fortunate that we've reached Alysoun's four flat and I take ten dollars out of my wallet in two fives and push them at the driver, even though it's like a four dollar tip, but before he can say anything or even thank me repeatedly, I open the door, step out of the car, close it. The driver speeds off though I thought he was comprehending things when I asked him to wait around for a second, "just in case."

Standing outside of Alysoun's building, I approach the thick glass and wood door and press her intercom button. She answers quickly, like she was standing next to the box waiting for me to ring up, and forgot that she should wait a minute before answering so it wouldn't appear to be this way.

"Who is it?" she needlessly asks.

"It's, uh, me. It's Martin."

"Just go away, Martin. Nobody cares. Go," she says, her voice echoing through the narrow vented speaker and down the street. It's totally empty out here, everybody asleep, no sounds at all when Alysoun is not speaking.

"I don't want to leave," I'm saying. "I need you right now."

“Okay," she says, her voice crackling over the intercom before clicking off. Then silence.

Upstairs in her apartment, Alysoun boils water for tea. I sit in a chair at her kitchen table rubbing my eyes.

"So what took you so long to get here?" Alysoun asks, looking at me, lifting an eyebrow devilishly.

"I went and had a drink with Stephanie."

“Lucky her," she says.

"I can't believe I've been ridiculed by someone who... who... fucking-"

"Had a net worth of three and a half million dollars before he was twelve years old?"

"I never said that."

“Ridiculed,” I say.

“Publicly,” she says, reminding me.

“Maybe no one will find out?” I wonder aloud.

"So you like Samantha?" she asks. The question distracts me instantly.

"What do you mean? We were just dancing together."

"Be careful, Martin," she says, softly. The kettle starts whistling and she stands up to turn off the heat. "You never know what something means to someone else."

"Alysoun, you have nothing to worry about, I mean, shit, I was just trying to be nice-"

"Martin, listen," she says, standing in front of me. "As long as you never cheat on me, I'm yours forever. You don’t have to apologize. Get it?"

"Yes, I get it," I say, reaching out and putting an arm around her waist. She kisses my forehead and then pulls away, starts pouring hot water into the mug she set before me.

“Why didn’t you tell me about what he wrote in that stupid book?” I ask.

“Martin,” she says, reaching into a cabinet and taking out several bottles of pills. “I had no idea.”

“Didn’t you read it? You were going on and on about how great it was.”

She laughs. “Of course I didn’t read it. Martin, I run a magazine. Not a coffee shop.” She places three Tylenol and a multi-vitamin in my hand. I swallow the pills with some of the tea, which is almost cool enough to drink without grimacing.

I fall asleep in Alysoun's bed with my clothes still on. When I wake up, she's still asleep and I leave her apartment quietly. Walking down the deserted street, the three-in- the-morning cold and sharp wind blows at me ferociously, my clothes and overcoat rendering themselves completely impotent with each successive step. A few minutes of snow after a couple of raindrops follow. I can't find a cab anywhere, not even after I reach Belmont, even though a couple of cars cross the intersection each minute, even though it's three in the morning and I'm cold and outside and alone and mocked. I approach a flock of pigeons huddled together. From where I'm walking the whole thing looks like a snowy gray blur. As one of the pigeons descends from a tree branch to join the others, furiously flapping its wings, it brushes past my right hand before reaching the sidewalk and this freaks me out. I can't stop shivering for five minutes.

When I get back to my apartment, I fall asleep again, this time naked and in my disheveled bed. At some point, I have a dream within a dream and the first part I don't remember but in the second dream I awaken in the middle of the night as Alysoun leans across me reaching for her watch, which is on the nightstand. Her small breast touches my back and I feel her nipple harden as it glides across my skin. I pretend to sleep, shutting my eyes tightly, attempting to breathe evenly. Light and images from the television envelops the room in a blue fog, which I can see through tiny slits. I start to feel antsy, having trouble staying still. I hear Alysoun sitting up, strapping the watch to her wrist.

I pretend to stir, then open my eyes, adjust.

"Hi," she says quietly, looking at me. She leans towards me and touches my forehead gently. "Hi," she repeats, this time slower.

"What...time is it?" I ask, staring at green LCD numbers on a blurry alarm clock face, unsure if I'm awake or still dreaming.

"It's really late," she says. And then, as if remembering something she forgot, "I probably should go home." She slides back onto the mattress, underneath blankets. "Work," she sighs.

"But you... live here," I say, confused, rubbing my eyes.

"Martin, Sarah will be waking up any minute," she warns. "You have to get me out of here."

I stare at the wall across from the bed behind the television, a framed poster of Reality Bites Sarah and I bought at a store in L.A. sways slightly on a hook like there’s something else in the room. Before I can do anything, I wake up, this time for real, with the sensation of tightness in my throat, my heart pounding.

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