As I crossed the street back home, I felt a familiar hum in my nerves—one that reminded me of sitting in my first art history course freshman year, watching slides of paintings click by, color-struck, nearly twitching with excitement. I tried to recall all of the portraits one by one. The man with the tattered ears and slack jaw who operated the roller coaster out on Steel Pier, a cigarette pinched in his fingers. The woman with a flower pinned to her lapel and a piece of yellow carbon paper crumpled tight in her hand. The man with a prosthetic arm from the elbow down, the way the artist had emphasized the mechanical gleam of it in the light.

This painter wanted people at their weakest or their greediest or their most pandering selves. I wondered how I could find out more, if that swooping S in the signature gave me enough information to start with. Here, I thought. Here is where everything changes, the upswing. This is when I start inching my way back to who I’m supposed to be.

IN CONTRAST to the buzz of excitement about the paintings, my shifts at the spa had been brutally dull. I had forgotten the reality of service jobs: the stretches of hours spent both waiting for something to happen, for customers to serve, and also hoping that you wouldn’t have to do anything at all. Or the exhaustion of having to be subservient to the customers who did come in, the brutal self-effacement it involved. Yes ma’am, of course, sir, please, allow me. My pleasure my pleasure oh no it’s really my pleasure.

By the end of every shift, I felt numb and empty. On my way out I often stopped at the bar, exhausted, ordering a drink or two because it felt like something to do, because it felt good to be the one who was waited on, who got to make requests. Then, walking lazily through the rows of slot machines while I waited for the drifty, buzzed feeling to wear off, I watched men in VFW hats and women wearing fanny packs that bulged like exterior organs smoke Marlboro reds and sigh at their bad luck.