I was trapped.

My stomach hurt.

Luckily, I had someplace to be. For the past few weeks, since the school year had started, I’d been taking myself to a bar on Saturday afternoons to do my grading for the week. It was a bribe—grade a paper, take a few sips—and it made me feel like I had company. I liked my teacher-in-a-bar persona: diligent, but nonchalantly so. Plus, by the time I left, I was usually tipsy enough to deal with the evening. I’d left my backpack with my school stuff near the entrance to the living room, and I slid out the accordion folder full of papers and tucked it under my arm.

“I’m going out,” I called to Jojo.

“Are you sure?” She peeked out of the kitchen and waved the spatula.

I told her I was and waved the folder in return.

“Okay. Let me know if you want to come tonight…”

“I will.” I turned abruptly and then, as a corrective, blew her a kiss. It felt rigid and forced. If I were auditioning for “Easygoing Roommate,” I wouldn’t have gotten the part. So I grabbed my handbag and fled, through the door and down the stairs, past our landlady’s yapping dogs and out into the morning.

One good thing about a bad hangover, like having the flu, is the immediacy. There’s little room for preoccupation with what transpired last night, or what’s going to happen tonight, or next month, or next year. All that dissolves in the face of the pleasurable hum of pain: that low-grade nausea blooming like algae in the gut, the cotton ache in the skull. Soft bird chirps are piercing, the sun slices right through the brain, each car horn is an assault. The rest is for later.

Unfortunately, my hangover wasn’t that bad.

It was noon, early for a Saturday in this neighborhood. We lived a twenty-minute walk west of the park. Our neighborhood was row houses, tire shops, a few artisanal this-and-thats, the subway roaring overhead, the swampy green canal. Homey, or trying to be, with a strong under-taste of the industrial. It felt barren at its core.

I walked northeast, toward neighborhoods riper with life. A girl rode a plastic kid’s bike she was too big for, her knees bucking up past her shoulders. But she pumped vigorously, her feet spinning at a rapid clip. The air hinted at cold. The trees were mostly still green, but a few browned leaves lay scattered on the cement. I hadn’t put on a jacket but I probably should have, or at least a bra; my nipples were obvious and I crossed my arms tight, pressing the folder into my chest. I thought again about the student I’d reprimanded the day before—Lacey was her name. I had banged the desk right next to her face like some kind of dictator. The classroom was the one place I was usually able to keep my temper tethered, and I was never more ashamed than when it showed itself there. But today was not yesterday. Today I would atone. I stepped toward the curb to let the girl bike past me and smiled at her, but she was on a mission, and I felt a puff of wind as she left me behind.