When bedtime came Chrissy and I usually retired at the same time to avoid disturbing the other since we shared the bedroom. Each night I read a book or magazine in bed and then wrote a letter to my parents back home in Indiana. I told them about my day and gave a mini weather report. I always told them it was sunny. I wrote about the flower shop and what I ate for dinner. My letters were reassuring and detailed, full of exclamation marks and hearts. I would have been ashamed to show them to another person, it’s true, but these letters were to people who’d known me as a child and still thought of me as a child, and with these small flourishes I answered the questions every parent had: Was I happy? Yes. Was I safe? Yes. Was I still their good girl? Yes.

Afterward I switched off the light by my bed, turned over, and fell into a heavy, uninterrupted sleep.

On the couch, the dog snored.

The dog, the dog. The bird. They kept growing bigger and required care and feeding and watering, and though the dog did her business somewhere in the wild during the day, the bird’s cage was forever being filled up with shit and debris. Food in, food out, everyone getting older, the obscene proof of time.

The animals weren’t the only flaws in my world. The other large one was that my reality was manufactured and required continual maintenance. For those tasks I needed to retain some thread of the self I had been saddled with at birth. I called these the off days.

Once every two weeks I, as my old self, delivered new plants from the greenhouse to the storeroom of Arcade Florists to replace any dying ones. If needed, I also restocked the small market on the corner with food and supplies I fetched from the main house’s kitchen, where Bernie the delivery boy had deposited them, always checking first to make sure he was not around. (I’d memorized his delivery schedule, but part of me always feared an unpleasant surprise that would result in an accidental meeting—a sick day of his, perhaps, and a resulting off-schedule delivery.) To restock the market I had to transfer all of the food from the twenty-first-century boxes into the 1970s packaging, in addition to stocking the shelves, which took time. Shopping trips to the market occurred on the alternate week, letting a week elapse between the distasteful task of stocking the shelves as my old self and the enjoyable task of shopping for food as Janet. Those seven interim days allowed any scarring of the illusion to heal back over.

I cleaned the apartment building inside out, too, on the off days—this wasn’t too disturbing a task inside the apartment, as Janet and her roommates were tidy, clean people, but I also checked in on the other apartments (and buildings) just to make sure the toilets and sinks were running smoothly, and for this grim reality there was no part to play. Until I was Mr. Roper, or Mr. Furley, I was just plain old Bonnie for that.