Her shiny hair smelled like the same shampoo she’d been using since we were teenagers, an expensive scent that had always made me feel self-conscious, and all I could do was look down, my face red and my ears burning. I got in my truck and drove off, trying to concentrate as I navigated the asphalt highway at seventy miles an hour. Though I rushed to Marlin’s studio, tulips clutched in my hand, when I stood over Prudence their significance was gone. Whatever had propelled me to need them had disappeared. I wanted to throw the tulips on the ground.

Instead, I filled a jar with water, clipped the stems, and arranged the flowers on an empty table. They looked better there, I realized, and suddenly all I could see of my borrowed studio was what Max would see: the way the paint spattered on the floor, the meticulously spaced cups along the wide tables, the racks of hanging squeegees, and the poetic smears of printer’s ink lurking on each door and frame. All I could see was a photo shoot, a glossy cover of my life, only the style and none of the substance. #studiolife. It made me crazy. It stopped me from seeing or feeling any of the things I needed to see or feel in order to make the work, because even at thirty-four, being around Max made me childishly desperate to be like her. A vein popped in my forehead.

As I looked at Prudence with new eyes—Max’s eyes—I realized that she was complete: There was nothing left to do. A swirl of disappointment passed through me. I wanted to come to this realization on my own, not with Max’s eyes in my head.

I looked around the studio. On to the next one—or ones. I needed to find the nearest hardware store as soon as possible, get more materials, to move to the next painting, but suddenly the stress of what lay ahead—eighty days of nonstop work—and what happened—my life falling apart, Max so safe with her husband and the home he gave her—hit me, and I told myself it was time for a break, that I’d earned it, that I needed to take a breath.

Five minutes later, clad in a tattered red bikini and sunglasses that were 60 percent duct tape, I pushed a rubber inner tube from someone else’s porch into the water, the waves crashing gently over the round, matte-black surface.

One hand held the tube. The other, a bottle of bourbon from the Mission bar.

*  *  *