“Pine City,” I told her. “They’re called Pine City.”

“That’s it,” she said, her bony fingers rising to her temples, a vein in her forehead gently deflating. “Thank you. I would have died if I’d forgotten.”

“What do you know about the application process?” I heard myself asking, liquor burning in my esophagus, adrenaline shooting through my spine, stars in my eyes.

“There’s no process, it’s completely private,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s invitation only.”

“Would you call for me? I’m dying, Susan. I need space, like, yesterday. Everywhere else is full.”

“Hmm,” she said, peering at me. “What do I get?”

“What do you want?” Anything—I would have given her anything.

“A painting,” she said. “I want a discount on a painting.” Though she’d never come to one of my shows, I wasn’t surprised. Susan could turn around and sell it again in five years for twice the price; whether she liked my work or not, I made paintings, and paintings were things that you could stock and sell short.

“I’ll ask. Hold on.”

I pulled out my phone and texted Jacqueline. Four a.m. in Paris. She was out at a restaurant, still, and wrote back right away, and five minutes later we’d agreed that Susan Bricklings-Young would be the proud new owner of Obedience, the one on the poster for Rich Ugly Old Maids, for a 20 percent discount that would come directly out of my cut. (That hurt. My appetite for money at that point was monstrous. I was in voracious desire—not to keep—to spend. I wanted to melt emeralds into a plastic that covered all the walls and all the ceilings, so we could live inside them; I wanted to paint a twenty-foot-high waterfall in facets of hard-shine aluminum so that inches away you felt terribly afraid that the painting itself would cut you open. I wanted to drink every color so I could piss rainbows. I could never, ever go back to a different kind of life.) So I told Jacqueline it was worth it and when she said, in a blithe, indifferent way, Whatever, c’est your vie, cherie, I felt like even more of a fraud.

When I finished texting, Susan handed me a fresh drink and told me she’d get me to Pine City. We clinked glasses.

“You look like her, you know,” Susan said, squinting drunkenly.

“Like who?”

Susan twitched. “You know—the one who drowned. The morbid one. There’s something about your silhouette. It’s rather uncanny.”

“Where did she drown?” I asked.

“Up there.” Her eyes darted from side to side, and then she leaned in. “She filled her boots with cement and walked into the lake.” She waited for my reaction.

“By herself?”

“That’s what they say. She was always moody. Nervous, if you know what I mean. Something behind the eyes. Anxious.”