The vodka stilled my nerves, which had been shot since I left the city. I checked my emails while I sipped my drink and saw that another blogger had written me, to ask for a comment on Matthew. I deleted the message. I had plenty to say about Matthew, but those were private, jilted thoughts, and I figured the only way I could salvage even a shred of dignity from the whole situation was to say nothing. The art world loved nothing as much as a controversy, but I’d retreated home for a chance to be someone else—a reprieve from humiliation as the central fact of my life. The week before I’d clicked on a link someone sent me to an article in Jezebel, only to be greeted with a photo of myself crying, my mouth hanging open in a dumb gape, mascara running down my cheeks in thick rivulets. Is This Art? the titled asked. I closed the browser window before I could read another word.

The vodka was cheap and had a sharp, medicinal taste, but soon enough its blunting warmth crept into my throat. I wasn’t worried about the job interview, but it was unsettling to be in Atlantic City again—coming home had filled me with an inarticulate dread. It was in the atmosphere, suggestive and hazy. In the feral cats that flattened themselves to shimmy through gaps in boarded-up storefronts. In the empty casinos that loomed along the boardwalk with darkened windows and chains slung across their doors. It was in the patrons lugging their oxygen tanks behind them on little wheeled carts, clear tubes running into their noses, and the tattered posters on the telephone poles pleading for information about a missing teenage girl. The entire town was like a dreamscape tilted toward nightmare.

I wanted a second drink but knew that would likely lead to a third, and whatever pity was being extended to me would evaporate if I showed up to the interview drunk. And, as much as I hated to admit it, I needed the job, needed the money if I was ever going to start over. It was only my second week back home, living with my mother again, and I had already resolved to stay only as long as it took to save up for my first month’s rent and security on a new place back in New York. By my math, if I scrimped, I could be back in the city by September. I tried not to imagine where I’d end up—a dingy sublet, a windowless closet, mice scrabbling in the walls. But I thought that even the worst of my options would feel like a small success.