I walked into two soggy feet of swampy jetsam, made from the wall plaster and the more modern insulation in the ceiling, puffed up to a shredded marshmallow by the chemical tide. My scaffold and hydraulic lift were dented and bent into uselessness, their legs and posts buckled beneath them like an animal tumbling to the ground the moment after being shot. Beneath the jetsam lay everything else, including twenty or so unfinished paintings that were once stacked next to the sofa. Boiled into a seamless mass, the paintings resembled what you get when you heat crayons together on the stove. Even my laptop was melted into a silver disk.

I spent nine hours in there trying to piece together some semblance of who I had been, but it was ruined—all of it. Even the folder with my birth certificate, kept in an (unlocked) vintage safe by the door, had soaked in the chemical bath for so long that it was blank—the embossed STATE OF FLORIDA was intact but my name was wiped out. Same with my passport, bleached into emptiness. In the end I walked away with a bag of ghostly, rotten photographs, a strangely unharmed pink-and-green silk varsity jacket, my camera, notebook, cellphone, and the stone totem that my father’s colleagues from the pipeline sent me when he died. My whole life fit in my backpack.

But the biggest problem was one of my own making. My new gallerist, that brass ring, Jacqueline Milot, called and asked if the paintings had exploded. Because, she said, you’re, forgive the expression, so hot. I’ve had dozens of calls. Everybody is so excited about the explosion. The article! I mean, you can’t buy that press, I’ve tried many times. So, I am asking: Please tell me you had my Rich Ugly Old Maids in storage. I know we paid for some of them to be crated, the ones that already sold. That building was such a hazard…and you know, even if I want to, which I do not—I cannot sell hasty remakes. People would think that was sloppy, especially for an unproven young woman, no matter how talented you are. Female painters are the bargain of the century, I keep telling everyone, but a bargain is an Hermès scarf on sale, you know? It must not look like the price. I hope you had them in climate-controlled storage, like we discussed. (We had not discussed this.) Because this show looks like it is going to sell out. If it goes, I can sign you for life.

Yes, I repeated obediently, staring at my notebook.

Yes, I had them in storage. (In a way, I did. At the Academy they taught us to keep detailed records of each and every project, and my notebook held the recipes for every Rich Ugly Old Maid.)

Only Prudence blew up.

The other six were fine.

Could I have an extra month or two?