I’m a writer.

Lately, whenever I wrote anything down, even if just in my diary, I imagined someone smarter than me methodically and mercilessly taking it apart, refuting my every claim, no matter how provisional. I gradually stopped putting anything on paper. I spent a lot of time thinking about how this might change.

At the coffee shop, I would stop thinking about anything. I focused my entire being on the next thing to do. The same few images and phrases turned over in my head until they were worn smooth like pieces of quartz in a rock tumbler. I whistled little snippets of melody from pop songs until they didn’t sound like music anymore.

Most of the time I was working with Angelie, a stage actor from Iowa. She spent all her breaks smoking Marlboro Lights on the sidewalk looking at Instagram. If not for the apron she would have looked a lot like the clientele. Her clothes were all expensive-looking, slightly too big on her, and either black, bleach-white, or gray. She had a rotating cast of boyfriends who all loved to visit her at work, looking busy and rich. She seemed lost in a fantasy of her own life. She picked the playlists. We didn’t really talk.

On Friday I locked the door, pulled down the grate, and looked down Driggs Avenue at the gathering purple of the sky. I could just make out the beginnings of the bridge, murmuring with traffic.

When I got home, Adelaide and Minna were in the back yard.

“Hey,” Minna said. “Haven’t seen much of you these past few days.”

“The girl works six days a week,” Adelaide said, without looking up from her phone.

“So true,” I said.

I sat on the upturned milk crate after yanking it out from one of the ganglier burdocks.

The sky was a gentle pale blue gradient above the unbroken rows of buildings. The world felt still and open.

“You doing anything tonight, Leo?” Adelaide said.

“Yeah,” I said. I had forgotten about the party until that moment. I texted Nadine, who sent me the address and told me that it had already started.

“Oh, are you going to that housewarming party at Katie’s?” Minna said.

“Yeah.”

“Vi Rodriguez lives there too, right?” Adelaide said. “Did you know she and Nadine used to date?”

“I did know that,” I said.

“Right,” Minna said. “I remember that. Even at the time I thought it was weird.”

“Yeah, it’s like Morticia Addams dating the Grinch,” Adelaide said.

We all had a good laugh at that.

“If you ever get a chance to talk to Vi about Nadine, take it,” Minna said. “She has some crazy stories.”

“Like what?”

Minna and Adelaide exchanged a glance, the meaning of which I couldn’t determine at all.

“I don’t know if I’m at liberty to say,” Adelaide said. She twisted a strand of her hair around her index finger.