But when I walked up my little stoop, and in through the door that I’d walked in so many times, broken now so that I didn’t have to use my keys, I felt like maybe I was really going to need their sympathy. Everything was destroyed. The paintings had been pulled off the wall, the books taken off the shelves, the food raided from the wide-open refrigerator. There was a gaping burn hole in the middle of the living room where somebody had started a fire. There was a garbage can where more fires had been built in the middle of the main bedroom. The toilet was overflowing with shit and piss, and I thought animals, what kind of animals would do something like this? Then I felt bad about thinking it, because I know that it’s really messed up to compare people to animals—hadn’t I just yelled at my dad for it? But I had never seen humans act like this, so that was where my mind went. I put my hand over my mouth then, and a little gasp came out of my throat. I started sobbing. Marcia put her hand on my shoulder again as I stood there in my ruined little place that I had loved so much, where I had come back after nights out on the Lower East Side, where so many of my friends had slept in the guest bedroom, where I had sat with my sketchbook and drawn. All these memories came flooding back to me then, and I cried and cried.

I leaned into Marcia’s massive bicep and wept like a baby. After a few minutes she patted me on the back and pulled away.

“Is there anything left that you want to take with you?” she said. “There doesn’t seem much point in us staying here any longer.”