Deidre stood to greet me. She was a tall, breastless, wiry woman with a dark, razor-cut bob who wore, like Emily, all black. She reminded me of the women who used to come into the SoHo art gallery where I worked: Ferragamo pumps, chunky gold jewelry, Barneys bags swinging at their sides.

“You must be Lily,” she said, eyeing my dress, then my purse, then my shoes, as I stood to shake her hand. Her skin was so soft in mine it felt nearly liquid.

“Deidre Bergman, the Mid-Atlantic regional manager for the company. Please, have a seat. Thank you, Emily.” Emily responded with a beatific smile. Deidre turned for a moment to draw a pen from a silver cup on her desk, and Emily took the opportunity to mouth good luck to me.

Deidre’s office smelled like lemon verbena and was furnished in the same style as the front lobby: sleek, low-profile chairs made from chrome and covered with white leatherette, a glass-topped desk, another orchid. Deidre turned to my résumé and ran a long, bony finger down the page. She scanned it with a disconcerting quickness, looked up at me, and was silent for long enough that I felt anxious. A general air of disapproval, of rejection, had filled the room, and I’d barely spoken more than my name.

“Do you have any questions about my résumé?”

“You have an impressive work and educational history. Tell me, why here? Why now?”

I expected this question and had rehearsed the answer to it again and again in my head the night before, but hadn’t landed on anything that spun things right. I needed an answer that seemed plausible but that wasn’t the truth: I didn’t have much of a choice.

“I want to start over,” I blurted. So much for staying calm. But I was surprised to realize that I meant it. Deidre seemed amused by how earnest I was. I wasn’t like Ramona and Matthew. Or even like Emily, who turned on such a generous, obliging smile for Deidre, even though, just seconds before, she had called her a bitch. I wasn’t like any of them: able to dissemble, able to pretend.

“Why’s that? An art history major at Vassar, lands a job with a prestigious gallery in New York, and leaves it all for a part-time job in Atlantic City. Just seems like an unusual path.”

“It … it didn’t feel like my world anymore.” She stared at me, eyes flashing with what—mockery? knowledge? For all I knew she’d googled me the way I googled this spa; maybe she had read all the write-ups of the show, could trace my path from that life to this desk with as much precision as I could. But to my relief Deidre only held my gaze for a second or two before nodding, apparently satisfied.