“Nice to see you,” he said. He pumped my hand. A sour taste flooded my mouth and I swallowed and backed away. All at once I could hardly stand wearing my mother’s slacks for one more second, these beautiful pants that looked absurd on me, like a satin ribbon tied around steaming summer trash. I had thought that Langham and I had a secret, but I was alone! I’d thought I was better than him, that I’d done him a favor, but it turned out that he was better than me! He had rejected me! It was astonishing—it was right—he had taken a taste and decided he could acquire someone of more worth. Well, he could. I was nothing.

Meanwhile my father had taken it upon himself to extol my successes to the assembled guests. Did they know that I had been granted a competitive fellowship as a first-year English teacher at the exclusive prep school blocks away? No matter that my mother, who was friendly with the dean of the school, was more than likely the reason I had gotten the post, nor that I had been a student there myself, and that my parents had paid full tuition. These elements did not pertain to the narrative my father was now performing, and he did not mention them. I exhibited what I hoped resembled a smile as my mother picked up the narrative, telling the guests that my college thesis had received a prize. I knew I should appreciate these gestures of pride on my parents’ part, but they felt bizarrely unrelated to me, to the rotten core of me, curdled and festering.

Moments later, with an “Anyway—,” my father picked back up on the conversation I had interrupted, continuing to detail the intricacies of his apparently quite successful case. I lowered myself onto the arm of the couch and tried to follow the conversation, to distract myself, but my ears rang and I couldn’t make out the words. I looked out the window: a quilt of tiny lights. It was the last thing my mother always did when preparing for guests: plump the pillows, smooth the coverlet of the couch, then pull the curtains way to the side. Our city. I always marveled at the baldness of this claim of ownership, how gauche it was. And yet I also swooned at the view, at the Chrysler Building in particular, its arches of light reaching up into the black sky. It had always been my friend, and I telegraphed a silent plea to it now, as I had so many times before. Save me, watch me, hold me. It was beautiful, the view my parents had purchased, the image of man’s creation they now owned. Perhaps I was envious. Or perhaps I was repulsed by my attraction to it, which meant I was as materialistic as they.