At a corner table, I wrung my hair out into the dishtowel. All around, people were leaning in toward each other, talking with varying levels of boisterousness, eating cake and sipping espressos even though it was already night. I slouched into my chair.

“Yes, what you want,” asked the waiter.

“Red wine and Sacher torte,” I said.

He scribbled onto his pad and turned toward the table next to me, people he apparently knew. They shared some words in German and exploded in laughter.

I turned away, staring now at a woman a few tables away, her thinning hair dyed a putrid red. She chewed big bites of her own Sacher torte, flecks of chocolate flicking out at her companion as she spoke. Her scalp shone through what looked like sparse implants. I looked away in disgust, stared at the safe sight of my ragged fingernails.

The waiter clanked my wine onto the table without looking at me. “Danke schön,” I said to his retreating form. I took a big gulp, and wine dribbled onto my chin—I wiped it quickly with my hand, then looked around. No one had noticed. I took another sip, felt my scalp melt.

The Sacher torte arrived. I took another sip of wine first on my empty stomach, to feel the rancid pleasure of it and the swift little ache in the temples, before I sank my fork in. I dunked the bite into the pile of schlag alongside it and chewed the dry cake, then ran my tongue along my teeth, worrying the spaces in between, where microbits of cake had taken up residence.

My table shook as a man wedged himself between it and the one alongside, trying to get to the seat against the wall. He had a beard, thick as a forest; he had eyes like outer space. I slid my table over, making room for him. He sank into the chair next to me and I felt his heat, wanted to shift over and press my arm against his. Now he reached into his pocket for a handkerchief, which he passed over his face and then down over his beard, that lush crop of hair. He took out a notebook and pen and began scribbling, hunched over his writing.

“Writing anything good?”

The man continued to scribble. He probably spoke only German.

“You know who you look like?” I said.

He paused his pen and looked at me: those eyes. “I know who I am.”

In retreading my dream, I’d come fully awake, and now I took in the details of my surroundings. The radiator, its interlocking carved shapes; the wooden dresser; the streaked mirror; the small window above my bed; the cheap curtains fanning out above me—my room. Brooklyn.

I was still wearing my shirt-dress. I was cold. There was an ache at the top of my skull—no wonder I’d been drinking in the dream. My mouth was mossy and dry. “Hello,” I said to the room, testing out my voice, which emerged deep and crackly from my chest, the upper register dissolved.