I lay there, picturing Carey doing the same, unwilling to sacrifice the minutes it took to return to her white bungalow, working as hard as I did—no, harder—but I could not picture her quitting, walking in here and saying no, no more, I don’t need this, it’s not for me. Painting was hard, but I knew what would happen if I stopped. It would be like the days after Ohne Titel, when I was lost and depressed and devastated. Carey was the same. Obviously. It killed her to stop. There had to be a reason, I thought. I worried that it was the nature of the labor itself—that eventually you had to quit or you’d die alone, become the rich, ugly old maid of my imagination. Working like this kept you estranged from people. I had an awful thought: What if—what if, even with success, and travel, and friends, and lovers, and a beautiful home, all the things I want, all the things she had—what if, no matter what, it simply became too lonely? Carey worked, alone in this room for months on end, years on end, while Jes and Tyler—what—fell in love? I thought about Jes’s possessive meanness, performer Jes, who managed to be the center of attention by doing something extraordinary. Was the temptation to perform because Carey wanted to be more like Jes? Was she afraid of losing Tyler? Had she lost him already—was it an attempt to get him back?

These questions ran ragged in me, little hamsters on their wheels of doubt and anxiety, and I drifted alongside them until morning.

At dawn I rolled onto the floor, willing myself awake, face pressed to the cold concrete, trying to muster the energy to get up. When I turned from one side—ugh studio, so much work—to the other, facing the dirty orange tweed, I noticed the cardboard edges of shoe boxes poking out beneath the upholstered skirt. Seconds later I was on my feet, dragging the sofa aside to reveal a treasure trove of boxes beneath, and then I was wide awake, active, cutting open the tape that held the first box closed with the edge of my thumbnail. The nail broke. I bit it off, spat it to the side, and wrenched the box open.