I imagined her in this room, leaning against the bottles, behind the bar. She would have smiled and welcomed me; she would have unlocked a different house; she would have given me a real place to work, right off the bat. Carey saw herself in me, I knew she did—and she would have treated me like a protégée instead of an interloper.

I sighed, walked around the bar to where she did not stand, where nobody stood, mixed two scoops of instant coffee with half a cup of cold water, choked it back, and returned to the printer’s studio, where I worked until four before falling asleep on the sofa again.

In the morning, back at my bungalow for a shower and slice of toast, I found a note slipped under the door from Marlin:

jes n me went to hudson for the night, didn’t want 2 disturb u, catch u soon, good luck

I experienced a cheek-warming flash of humiliation. In a moment of pity, Marlin tried to make me feel comfortable, then later regretted it. No matter whether or not I told myself that I had come here as their equal, the fact remained that I was clearly a very unwanted gatecrasher.

But I didn’t have a choice. This was where I was. The work had to get made, and I was the only one who could do it. I pushed myself to repress my embarrassment—to keep going, to make breakfast, drink coffee, shower, get dressed, and return to the printmaking studio. After an hour of work my skin burned with the fever of my painting and I was myself again.

I don’t need friends, I told myself. Only work.

The next nine days passed without interruption from Marlin, Jes, Tyler, or anybody at all. Each day was exactly the same: wake, shower, eat, paint, nap, paint, swim, sleep, repeat.

There’s no other way to be. This is how the work happens—when there is nothing else to distract you. The bursts come for hours every day, and then between them, you sleep, because working takes everything out of you—opens a drain at the bottom of your stomach that lets the dishwater out. Then, later, some invisible hand refills you, and the cycle begins anew. It is the condition of my purpose. I am nothing else but this.

I ignored every part of myself that cried out for human companionship so that Prudence, my once-final, now first old maid, could grow shining and luminous.

And it worked.

*  *  *