I hadn’t been inside the casino since the new tower had been completed. The ground floor of it was made up of a long, tunnellike hallway that curved around a swimming pool, which was capped off by a glass dome that was filled with rattan cabanas and lounge chairs, lush with imported palm trees and hibiscus. The casino had named it the Swim Club. Even from the outside, it reeked of something saccharine and something chemical: piña colada mix and chlorine, suntan lotion and canned pineapple. The cocktail waitresses wore aqua bikinis and delivered brightly colored drinks on wicker trays. The spa was just across the hall, the entrance a metal door installed in floor-to-ceiling plate glass. Maybe it was the effect of that quick drink, but between all the glass of the Swim Club and the spa’s façade I was reminded of an aquarium, and I had the slightly unnerving, claustrophobic feeling of being underwater and being watched. I looked up to the ceiling, found the glossy eye of the nearest security camera, jerked my gaze away.

The spa door looked heavy but was light when I pulled on the handle, and I staggered back as it swung open. I looked up to the camera again, knowing my every misstep was being transmitted, recorded, noticed. Before Matthew’s show, it might not have bothered me in the same way, but now the cameras felt pointed, their gaze transformed from omniscient and impersonal to invasive, judgmental.

Unlike the casino floor, with its layers of stimulation—chiming machines, clicking poker chips, dizzying spin of roulette wheels—there was a chastising hush in the spa. I was immediately conscious of the way my cheap polyester dress swished as I walked. I had left the city in a rush, not bothering to take much, and so the only interview-suitable clothes I had were things I’d left at my mother’s years ago. I could’ve brought more from New York—the Alexander Wang cocktail dress Matthew bought me for my birthday, the Rachel Comey oxfords I treated myself to after my first raise—but the morning I left I’d looked into my closet and everything seemed like the wardrobe for a play I’d never even seen.

In the lobby of the spa, a tall blonde woman about my age stood behind a long, brushed steel desk. There was a partition of frosted glass behind her, and combined with the bank of lights that shined down from the ceiling, it seemed as though she were on a stage. She had a dancer’s posture, shoulders back, chin high, her spine pulled up out of her hips. The kind of grace that looks effortless but demands great strength.

She looked up and offered me an obliging smile. “Are you checking in for an appointment?”

Her hair fell over her shoulder, and it was so shiny it practically gave off a glare.