I crested the stairs and there it was: the front door to Apartment 201. A small landing extended into a tiny balcony in front of the picture window, and a wrought-iron railing hemmed it in. Large potted plants lined the railing side of the balcony: a lemon tree, a peony bush in a large planter, several bushy ferns. All the pots were ceramic or terra-cotta, and their sizes varied in a pleasing way. The chaise lounge on which Chrissy sunbathed in early season credits was on the small balcony, too. Around the door and doorbell vines crept up the walls—Brenda checked her notes and assured me these were noninvasive vines, and also nonflowering, so bees would not be a problem; they were decorative but real, and the name she mentioned flitted right by me. I took the key ring again and Ray reminded me what key matched, and—yes!—there it was! It was even marked (they were all marked with the corresponding door number, bless him) and, with shaking hands, I turned it in the lock.

The door opened, and I stood there, breathing fast. I had arrived. I felt the apartment’s air wash over me like a baptism, ushering me into a new state of being. Every molecule seemed rarefied, sacred, as in a church or ancient cave, something deep and mysterious and spiritual. Undeniably transformative. I stepped inside.

I had asked, before we started this tour, that Brenda and Ray not follow me into Apartment 201. I wanted to be the only one to touch its finished floor. As soon as I stepped inside I knew it was the right choice. Nothing would sully this moment.

It was a strange experience, seeing the apartment from this angle. The TV viewer never got a view of the apartment when entering through the front door, because it would have revealed the studio cameras. That troubling fourth wall now faced me, so I crossed the apartment, to where I, the viewer, used to be once upon a time, and I turned around and pressed my back against it, looking at the apartment in the way to which I was accustomed. There was the couch, the television, the plant stand by the window. The Flapper! Every plant was in its place—I had settled on the plants seen in Season 1, and figured I could swap them out as necessary—and they sat in their macramé holders or hodgepodge pottery or wicker baskets, the parlor palm sitting to the left of the doorway . . . Oh god, it was beautiful. The carpet was a limp yellowish-beige, but it was layered with a knockoff Persian area rug that sat under the couch. In front of the door was the rug with its double-diamond pattern in pinks and reds and deep blues, ragged and worn from years of use—secondhand, no doubt, as most things in the apartment must have been.

I walked through the apartment and touched everything slowly, lovingly. I was shaking, hot and cold chills raking through me as if I were sick with the flu.