“Great. So basically we’re helping perpetuate that bias?” If all beautiful people were good, Matthew would have been a saint. The high forehead and the hair that was always falling into his eyes. The arcs of his shoulder blades. The dainty divot in the middle of his bottom lip that I stared at while he slept. In a strange way, to think that my trust in him had been hardwired comforted me. But what a mistake. So much cruelty was committed in the name of beauty. And in the name of art.

“Maybe. But I guess there are opportunities to do good. Last week, this woman called to schedule services for her sister to celebrate the fact that the sister’s cancer had been in remission for three years. It’s kind of cool to be a part of that. Even though most of the people who come in here are raging lunatics. Or perverts. Or petty thieves.” Emily leaned back into a box of packing peanuts, rubbed her hands over her eyes. I still didn’t know much about her. I knew she rented a room from a family in Brigantine. That she took college classes at night. But I didn’t know what she did for fun, or even what she wore when she wasn’t at work, when she was finally able to shed the impersonal black blazer and pencil skirt. Once I asked her whether she had brothers and sisters, but the look on her face made me wish I hadn’t. When she was nervous, or anxious, she fiddled with the cross on the chain around her neck.

“Why do you ask, anyway? I thought this was just your ‘get back on your feet’ gig.”

I didn’t really know the answer. I had never asked myself at the gallery if it was good, or fair. I was getting what I wanted. “Just something I’ve been thinking about, I guess.”

“One good thing about this company is that it’s almost entirely run by women. It could be a good place to start a career, in that sense. Even if they are as crazy as the guests most of the time.”

“How are your classes going?” I felt self-conscious asking—as though I were creeping back toward the discussion we didn’t have about me seeing her loan balance, but I was curious, and besides talking shit on everyone else at the spa, school was the only other thing she’d open up about.

She sat up, and I picked a Styrofoam packing peanut from her hair. “Okay—I’m taking exams next week, and then I start a new session. At this rate, I’ll be done in, oh, two, two and a half years.”

“That’s great.”