We walked through Mr. Furley’s apartment and everything was in its place, down to the SS Titanic lifesaver ring in the bedroom and leopard-print pajamas in the drawers.

Then it was time to go upstairs. I couldn’t wait any longer. I wanted to see Apartment 201.

For most of this time, and as we left the Furley apartment, Ray and Brenda followed behind me, Brenda running her mouth the entire time, looking at the screen in her hand and listing out loud all of the items that we were looking at, like a docent giving a museum tour. Other than his brief moment of happy triumph with the lever, Ray had remained quiet, hands folded over his chest awkwardly. At some points he stood off to one side, as if waiting for it all to be over.

I wondered how much of this seemed ridiculous to them, impossibly eccentric. In some of my many moments of solitude over the past year, I couldn’t help but put myself in my workers’ shoes and speculate on their judgments of me, occasionally finding myself drifting into full-blown paranoia, but mostly I indulged in generic hatred and shame. I was ashamed not of myself but of myself as seen by others, which I sensed was happening even more than I suspected. I was born into the working class, after all, maybe where Ray had been born, and here I was, flush with money, and look at how I was spending it. I had a fleeting vision of Geannie’s Beanie Babies. Did my Three’s Company obsession appear to Ray and Brenda as the Beanie Baby collection had initially appeared to me—an utter waste? Embarrassing? A childish, luxurious squander of riches? I remembered Krystal standing at the doorway of my bedroom, her face a mask of disgust. You win a billion dollars, and you’re spending it on this dumb shit.

The thought was small but persistent. Peck, peck, peck. We were ascending the red clay tile stairs to the second floor, to my destiny, and yet I was preoccupied with the possibility that people hated me and my dream even as I walked up to meet it. And then my internal voices started sniping in response—They’re paid! They can go fuck! Now, looking back, I see that the sudden hostility toward Ray and Brenda was largely unwarranted; they had done nothing but help me, frequently exceeding all expectations. But in that moment an undeniable, annoying feeling continued to rise within me until it took a recognizable, sickening form: I wanted Ray to like me. Not as a boss, but as a person. I wanted his complicity in all of my shenanigans. If he judged me harshly, I would be crushed.

But as quickly as it came this new realization coolly bounced off the wall of my brain and back into the despair hole it came from. I swallowed as if to tamp it down permanently.

For we were nearing the top steps. I was about to meet God. My autonomic systems shut down all distractions.