I had been working. It had been an Adderall day—it’s best for sustained mental labor; coke is all fragile flashes. As I came up, however, I made a crucial mistake, and instead of turning to my sample chapter Word doc, I’d gone down a rabbit hole of lefty talking heads discussing the election.

“Why aren’t you working? It’s only five.”

“I was. And anyway, this is my home. I don’t have to tell you when or why I’m back.” She tapped her foot; she was still wearing her work shoes, and the knocking sound they made on her floor was menacing, like the sound of a teacher smacking your knuckles with a ruler. She kicked the pumps off and came nearer to me. She paused. “Are you on something?”

“Just Adderall.” I waved my phone to indicate that I was occupied; my earbuds were in, and the podcasters were still yammering.

“Jeez, Neil. Aren’t you a little old for this?”

“I have a prescription,” I lied.

“It’s an amphetamine. You’re high on an amphetamine. Look at you, you’re picking your face like a fucking meth-head.” She walked away, just as my mother did when indicating that the final word had been uttered. She opened the fridge. “And you ate the takeout already.”

“I didn’t eat all day. You finished the takeout last night, remember? You got up after we had sex and you finished the yellow tofu because you couldn’t sleep.”

“I’ve done Adderall, Neil.” She slammed the fridge door and a red Stanford magnet clunked to the ground. “I liked it, too. Too much. And I have to say that I don’t think you should plan on drinking the expo lemonade if you haven’t done some serious work on your addiction tendencies.”

“I don’t see how that’s your choice.”

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“It means,” I said, yanking out my earbuds, “I’ve been giving as much to this as you. And I don’t see how it’s your call whether or not I get a share of the gold I’m putting my ass on the line for.”

“I think you should go home for a while, Neil,” Anita said. “Like, now-ish.”

She stomped into her bathroom, and I waited for her to reemerge for another round of argument, but instead there was just the tap water running. I could see her wiping her face clear of makeup, shedding her daytime sheen.

I sped the whole way back to the East Bay, too irate to absorb anything as my podcasters wrapped up their doomed polling predictions, all of them so certain about the future.