I was again among people finding a certain kind of transcendence while I struggled with even having a sense of self. I looked down at my lap and saw the envelope sitting there. I opened it and saw the check was made out for seven hundred dollars. Though I was grateful for the sum, I had mixed feelings about what it meant for her to standardize this kind of thing. I watched each person having an epiphany. We were hardly the first set of people in Los Angeles to pay money to learn how to feel. But I wanted to tell them that Bethanny wasn’t exactly setting them free here.

At the end of the exercise, they were as awe-inspired as our group had been, and I watched all of them embrace in some kind of pact of the forever-changed. I wanted to feel that. I really did. I hung back until the last of the devoted had fawned over Bethanny. When I finally reached her, the conference room had thinned out.

“I’m ready to come back,” I said.

“I’m so glad,” she said, and smiled at me. “I have a client for you. Lawrence has a lot of personality, and he’ll be ready to meet you soon. I’ve done a lot of the initial work. Do you want to meet with him alone, or would you like me to be with you?”

“How far have you gotten?” I asked.

“We’ve worked our way through pain avoidance, a few of his letters, and really it’s just a matter of getting through the final questions of his questionnaire.”

“I can do that,” I said.

“I want to ease you back in.”

“What method does he prefer?”

“He is adamant about a hood, but I’m going to handle that. I just want you to focus on finishing up the questions. The rate will be the same. He just really needs some companionship.”

The next morning, I woke up to my phone ringing and realized I had forgotten to put it on Silent. I didn’t know what time it was or who would be calling me. The list had gotten short since I had stopped responding to most everyone’s texts. I didn’t recognize the number and hesitated picking up, but the ringing felt like an emergency.

“Hello?”

“Is this Evelyn?”

She said she was a friend of Daphne’s. Daphne had told her she could use me as a backup for Pierre.

“It’s not that I don’t want Pierre,” she said. “He’s just a handful.”

“He seemed pretty relaxed when I was with him.”

“She said he really liked you.”

“Do you need something?”

“Maybe just a little break.”