It was still a mystery to her why a computer that sent random messages had a telephone number.

And what would have happened if she’d gone over to that man’s table and handed him a scrap of paper with her email?

Whenever I do your tarot I get a conflict between three people. One of them is going to back down. Call me: 415-295-5143

Zoe’s name didn’t fit her. When I first saw her I thought she should dye her hair some color that suited her better: that dirty, dark, ash-blond was even worse than the over-the-top variety—like a light bulb or a highlighter pen—that only looks good on a small number of women. Her face had a moisturizer sheen; her clothes ran the whole range of shades between brown and beige. Everything about her was on that spectrum. She read romantic fiction, corrected proofs, and her name didn’t fit her. Zoe sat across from her in the office where she’d accepted a shit awful job. Chances to publish her writing had been thin for six months, and a friend had told her that he was leaving a temp job that consisted of inputting a catalogue into Excel. She detested Excel but for working only two hours a day, Tuesday to Thursday, she earned three hundred euros a month. Twelve euros fifty an hour for that shit awful work. Lots of people had told her it wasn’t so bad, that the pay could have been worse, but for her the job was as bad as they came. Zoe’s desk was across from the computer with the Excel sheet she had to fill in without getting the lines mixed up or missing works from a catalogue that was fifty percent self-published books, with the other half being grant-assisted. Most of them were written by men who were either local celebrities or former academics over the age of seventy; for example, a book called Twilight of the Aged Olive Tree was by a writer from Jaén called Bernabé Gómez, born in 1937, who was a professor at the Jaén Institute. The book was funded by the Torredonjimeno City Council.