The Bronx scrolled by through the rain-streaked glass. Apartment blocks and no-name storefronts. Concrete abutments adorned with elaborate graffiti showing polychrome swirls, 3D effects, portraits big enough to rival Mount Rushmore. I marveled at the artistry. How wonderful it must be to have a talent like that, one you could exercise all on your own, needing nothing but a blank wall and a can of paint, no office space, no computer network, no conference rooms or business cards or HR departments. Whatever my own talent was, it was worthless without clients and a support staff.

The graffiti gave way to the cemetery. It seemed to go on for miles, 150 years’ worth of dead bodies, many of them interred in ornate mausoleums that must have cost a fortune. You can’t take it with you, the saying went, but somehow these rich people managed to, or at least managed to ensure that no one else would get it. Rich people could manage anything.

It was raining hard by the time the train pulled into the White Plains station. I stepped off and looked around for a clock and found it on the station wall. I was way too early. I’d left plenty of time to avoid any possibility of being late, but I should have come later and saved the peak train fare surcharge.

I lingered under the roof in the station and read the front-page headlines at the newsstand until it was time to go. I flipped up the hood on my parka and hurried past the taxi line and across the street. The rain fell in planes that flapped with each gust of wind like sheets on a clothesline. At least it wasn’t snow, I thought for a second until David’s voice spoke inside my head: Stop being such a fucking Pollyanna.

I wasn’t a Pollyanna. I always knew how bad things were. But I also knew that David was spiraling too fast. I had to find some way to slow his descent. So I labored to find the silver lining in every setback, searched to find some way to put a positive spin on the negatives. It all backfired, though. Now David believed not only that his life was ruined but also that he’d married an idiot.

I was an idiot. An idiot to waste money on train fare for a job I’d never get. To shiver through the cold and wet for a job I’d never get, risking another bout of bronchitis for which I had no health insurance and no prescription plan. To miss my weekly plasma donation appointment this morning. That was twenty-five dollars, lost forever. To miss an extra shift at the bar this afternoon that might have earned me enough in tips to pay the electric bill this month. All for an interview that was a mere courtesy. At best. At worst it was window dressing for HR to conceal the fact that the job was already promised to someone with insider connections. I should have given up months ago, years. David had. But somehow I couldn’t stop trying. Maybe he was right. Maybe I was a Pollyanna.