She had hoped making this video, because doing this was her morning routine, would dampen the flames of anxiety licking at her stomach. And it wasn’t like she hadn’t asked herself this question before. If she went into her archive, she’d see she’d asked this the morning before she had headed to Oberlin, the morning before her first wedding, the morning before signing divorce papers, before joining the film conservatory, before what she had thought were monumental dates with so many people who only ended up disappearing in another month or so. If Margot had been a wiser person, she might have considered if making every life change a performance was actually harmful. If consistently trying to mold her life into something consumable was keeping her from being transformed. But instead, Margot watched the reversed screen as her face clenched with anxiety at not being able to answer the question. Lines around her eyes and mouth appeared deeper, a red zit was on her chin, her hair was too long, and was one of her ears drooping?

Margot took out her vitamin powders. One promised to give her the moon’s wisdom, help with night vision, and soothe nerves. The other was for sunlight serenity and glossy hair. She chose moon’s wisdom, poured it into her glass of tap water and swirled until the water turned light green. As she gulped down the bitter liquid, Margot read more of her novel. It was about a small-town couple; the husband kept engaging in affairs—with bank tellers, with the administrative assistant at his company, with the hairdresser—and the wife pretended to never know. None of the women were named, only given jobs. No one wanted to leave each other despite the affairs because they were always imagining “their sad brown apartments in poor school districts and they deserved better lives than that.” On the plane, the novel had seemed hilarious and a little sexy. Now, Margot wondered if the book was saying something she couldn’t understand, and if the writer should maybe be a little less smug about it.

And then, a knock at the door, breakfast was ready.

*  *  *