The woman stopped beside a closed door. An empty nameplate bracket was mounted to the wall beside it. “And here we have your new home away from home,” she said, and with a bright smile swung the door inward.

The door met resistance halfway through its arc. A stack of file boxes stood in its path. The office was prison cell–size, and the desktop, windowsill, and most of the floor were taken up with stacks of boxes.

“Oh, dear.” The woman’s smile fell. “It hasn’t been set up. Or cleaned,” she added with a recoil at the layer of dust on the desk and windowsill. “I’ll have to call someone . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Once I would have been dismayed, too. But I looked past the dust and the clutter and the obvious fact that the space was in service as a storeroom. I looked past it all to the window. The glass was grimy, but through it I could see out over the city from a height of thirty stories. It was my window. This was my office, and they were going to pay me to come and work here every day, and I loved it as much as I once loved our sparkling Chelsea apartment.

“No need,” I said, crossing the threshold. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll take care of everything.”

I FOUND THE supply closet and the cleaning products and an empty office next door that I could shift the boxes to. They all bore international shipping labels, from such exotic locales as Kuala Lumpur and Yangon and Chiang Mai. After I wheeled them on a handcart to their new home, I unsealed one for a peek at its contents. Up rose a musty, spicy scent, like stale chai or a perfume gone rancid. But there were only documents inside, in English mostly, invoices and purchase orders and inventory spreadsheets. Routine business documents from factories abroad.

I polished my desk and dusted the windowsill and foraged through the supply closet for a stapler and tape dispenser, pens and legal pads. The office wasn’t yet equipped with a computer or even a telephone, but within an hour my desk was otherwise set up. I adjusted the chair height and tried it out. It squeaked when I rolled back, so I returned to the supply closet for some WD-40 and flipped the chair upside down on a mat of paper towels. I was on my knees behind the desk when Marcia Post reappeared at the door.

“Oh,” she said, stopping abruptly. “My.”

I looked up from the floor. “Yes?”

Her suit jacket was buttoned correctly now, and her hair was smooth. She’d regained her composure. “I’ve heard from Mr. Barrett. He does apologize for all the confusion, but he’s gotten it all organized, even though it’s midnight in KL.” Her tone was one of admiration that anyone could accomplish so much at such an hour. “Tomorrow the IT staff will be here to install your phone and computer, and here’s your employee manual”—she placed a three-ring binder on the desk—“and meanwhile you have a full schedule of orientation activities ahead.” She placed a memo on top of the binder.