I’m not saying a risk-heavy lifestyle of erratic creative production is better than any other way: only that what it is, is mine. It is what I know. Every shade and stripe of every possible variety of connection is about wanting, above all else, to be known; for someone else to see as much of you as possible. Shared experience is important. It’s not everything, but it’s something, because nobody wants to be explaining at forty to a hostile audience why they are the way they are, but you don’t want to punch below your weight class, either, and wind up with somebody who only loves you because they don’t know any better—because the day they do know better is the day they’ll walk out the door.

What I mean is, if you’re somebody like Tyler, or somebody like me, it’s hard to form new friendships. I wasn’t insulted by the way he’d come around after the first-quarter buzzer, and I took him at face value when he gave me Carey’s studio because I truly did appreciate it. And—she was dead. She didn’t need it.

But I was wary about the others. I had no idea what they meant to each other, or what Carey’s studio meant to them. I couldn’t see their allegiances, their hurts and scars, the depth of their love for each other. I knew it was there, like how you know the air is there, but I couldn’t even begin to guess at the particular chemical makeup of the thing or how much oxygen was in it—or whether or not it would explode under pressure.

*  *  *

It took an eternity to physically unpack, assemble, and space forty-eight sawhorses, but I did it, and when it was finished it was the middle of the night and all I wanted to do was collapse. I considered sleeping in the truck bed, but double-checked the loft, though it looked empty from below.

Miraculously there was a long orange sofa, a vintage four-seater spackled with smears of paint, shoved all the way at the back. It faced the wall. I couldn’t be bothered to move it, so I fell into it, pulling a stiff canvas drop cloth over myself as a blanket.