Alice wore a lot of brights. She wore coral with white, bitter yellow with white. She read an actress’s advice about the dangers posed by financiers and overconsumption of salt. She avidly apprised herself as to the rise of so-and-so, designer to Mrs. Bush. It was 2002, and American morality was again ascendant, or so the press proclaimed. It was a time of stalwart renewal, faith, and swift justice. One day, walking south on West Broadway, Alice saw a man in his thirties in khakis bellowing wildly into a pay phone receiver: “WHAT YOU NEED TO UNDERSTAND IS THEY WON’T STOP UNTIL THEY DESTROY US.”

Alice made a rapid turn.

She had canned olives, ketchup, and saltines for dinner.

The office was still.

Marcy was located behind a sliding-glass panel, and Coop apparently worked somewhere else and checked in remotely.

It did not occur to Alice to ask questions about HAFF’s own finances, and even if it had she would not have done so. She was set up at the conference table with a whirring Dell and fed summary data via email attachments.

Alice was often idle.

At 10:31 a.m. on one Friday, Alice had already completed the newsletter for the week to follow. She was now a full five days ahead of schedule. At first she was pleased with this achievement and began typing up an account of her meager earnings and their destinies (rent, loan payment, Metrocard, utilities, credit card, food), but then she began to think of Marcy, who was as ever silent, a sweater-toned shadow behind the bluish partition. What if this was all only a test? What if Marcy was recording each of Alice’s keystrokes, what if it was known that today alone she had already devoted over twenty minutes to Tara Reid’s thoughts on self-realization, plus another fifteen to a search for “real cork wedges lace-up platform”? And then there were the 2.5 hours yesterday allotted to GeoCities research into the exploits of the three most popular girls from high school, clicking through eighty-eight photos of Justine Talbots superbly depilated in a cherry-red one-piece mid-jump on some frat’s backyard trampoline, not to mention pages by Jamie White and Jenny Hayes, their assorted infants and corgis and stoner babydaddies, everyone drooling in hoodies.

Or the more than two hours she had squandered Wednesday pretending she might permit herself to consider deferment of her student loans?

Alice cycled back through the week.

The drive labored.

If they fired her now, she might have to miss a payment, not to mention what would transpire in another two weeks, when rent came due.

Alice was knocking on Marcy’s panel. She rapped, thrice.

Alice’s heart was struggling around like a separate creature. The only thing that could save her now would be a full admission.

She tried, “Marcy?” This was a squeak.