Maybe, as she strolled through those dingy aisles, she thought of her parents. Her mother and father, who loved her with their midwestern stoicism, and who were from strong stock—a line of farmers, maybe, though they themselves were not farmers—who had hopes of her living a traditional life full of family and marriage and children and church on Sundays. And all she could do was dream of escape, escape! She had fled that fate, and had felt guilty, and the random items that now appeared in the thrift shop—an old washstand, a hunter’s trap—reminded her of home and gave her a pang. But it lasted for only a moment before she remembered where she was, and how she was, and how she came to be in California, the land of palm trees and dreams. And then, in a corner booth, way in the back, in a poorly lit part of the store, a flash of white and yellow clanged out of a box of sundries, and walking toward it she grew excited, the promise of beauty in the midst of junk. She unwedged the framed print of The Flapper, its bright, obnoxiously feel-good message cutting through any nostalgia to remind her of the task at hand, of shopping for a new apartment on a new adventure in California.

So much of the characters’ lives happened offscreen, and it would be these kinds of details that would occupy my mind and my life in the coming months and years. The amount of thought and emotion that went into my project was maudlin—it went beyond all art, all pretension of greatness. The depth of my feeling and the wildness of my imagination was a farce unto itself. Even I had to laugh at it. I would have been rejected by every artist working for me had they known how much personal melodrama was invested into this project.

I needn’t have worried, though. Since beginning the work, I spoke with very few people. After initial interviews and screenings, I put some distance between myself and most of the workers. The lunches were the only exception, and even then I kept busy with setting out food or rattling pots and pans. The person I spoke with most regularly was Ray, and we mostly discussed the ongoing work, what cornice I preferred, if I wanted this or that shade of paint. Ray was a chain-smoker and always had a cigarette between his fingers, and he had a talent for lighting his next cigarette with the dying cherry of the one in his mouth, like an Olympic torch that never extinguished. The nail on his right middle finger was dark, almost black, from nicotine.

I felt safe with Ray. Sometimes I went out to the construction site and watched its progress, but I stayed out of the way. If he saw me, he came over and stood beside me as if he was keeping me company. But we rarely talked. I never learned the names of his family or pets, or if he lived alone, or what health problems he might have struggled with, or what losses and triumphs he had endured in his life. Instead, we looked over plans or drawings or paint swatches, and sometimes we stood together in silence and watched the activity around us, observing the task that was unfolding, or the next task revealing itself. When I was around him there was no inkling of a past or future, only the present. I was grateful.