The next thing I know, Gary is back. He’s standing over me, asking me if I’m okay.

“Maybe it’s all the crayons and markers we used today, but I’ve been dying to get creative.” I’m talking either superfast or superslow. Am I actually talking or are the words just in my head?

Gary stares at me, then sniffs. “It smells like pot and Sharpies in here,” I think he says. He looks down and then so do I: there’s my open tote bag on the floor, most of its contents spilled out onto the rug. Fragments of memory are coming back to me: I remember digging around in that bag for the handful of pens I’d grabbed before leaving the house yesterday morning. I smirk at the possibility that I had a delayed reaction: after producing nothing in the seminar all day, I may have had a burst of creativity tonight.

I’m groggy now, and headachy, but vaguely aware that something isn’t right. Gary is moving in slow motion around the room, his mouth open in horror. He’s pointing at the photos on the walls, and at some of the framed pictures on the bookshelves. His lips are moving and words are probably coming out but I don’t hear anything until finally he grabs me by the shoulders and yells:

“Jesus, Judy. What did you do?”

What did I do? Apparently, in his absence, and under the influence of whatever kind of cannabis was in Gregory’s desk drawer, I took my supply of Sharpie pens and marked up Sari Epstein’s happy-couple photos: big Dalí-mustaches on the glass over some of the faces; devil horns on others. And then there’s the reprint of the New York Times Style section piece on Creativity Gurus where I drew arrows pointing to Sari’s head and then wrote, in big block letters, THE FOREHEAD. Next to that are several caption bubbles filled with I HAVE A “CREATIVE” IDEA: GET SOME BANGS! and OR: HOW ABOUT A SIDE-PART?

More of my memory is coming back to me: I now remember making those mustache flourishes and writing those caption bubbles; the glee that my old book signing and illustrating pens were no longer going to waste and were finally being repurposed—punishing someone who isn’t even a writer because she had a framed print of a famous Norman Mailer quotation on her bookshelf: WRITER’S BLOCK IS ONLY A FAILURE OF THE EGO.

A failure of the ego. Her ego is so ridiculously huge that it’s eclipsed the fact that her only true creative talent is marketing creativity retreats. Which didn’t even work for me.

The more I blink awake, the more the rage comes back to me. Gary is pointing at a big poster-size blowup of the two of them, Sari and Gregory, from the back, running down a beach holding hands. I’ve scrawled THIS IS SO UNFAIR on the glass at the top of the photo, with a flurry of at least ten angry arrows pointing at them. He sighs, rolls his eyes. “Jesus, Judy. Please don’t tell me you’re jealous of them.”