I felt Abe behind me. I kind of fell into his body and he took my weight without stumbling, held me for a second so I could get my footing again. “Come on,” he whispered. “I’ll take you downstairs.”

Stella stayed behind. I couldn’t imagine what she was saying: She’s been under a lot of stress. This is something she’s been working on. She hasn’t been herself, not really, since she was twenty years old. Abe got me sitting on the bed, tilting a little, and set a glass of water on my nightstand. “I assume you can get yourself to sleep,” he said stiffly. I realized he was blushing.

“I couldn’t,” I said. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

My words weren’t arranged. They wanted to get from my throat to his eyes, to change the way he was looking. “I’m sorry that—”

He held up his hand, the red of his palm. “Whatever it is, don’t bother.”

This came as a relief. I wasn’t sure I had anything to say.

I woke up early. My heart was beating in my skull. My stomach felt hard and dry as bones. I couldn’t tell if I was still drunk or just remembering being drunk. Hangovers made my head feel like the inside of a car on a hot afternoon. I didn’t know if I’d vomited the night before. I couldn’t smell it.

I cupped my hands under the bathroom faucet and drank so much tap water I could feel the weight in my stomach. Water helped but it stood like a dirty pond inside. The apartment was quiet. Abe was at work, even though it was a holiday, and Stella was sleeping.

I took out a couple hundred from a Wells Fargo ATM, my account still fat with my midmonth deposit, and got myself a motel room. It had curtains the color of pepper and sheets the color of mustard, a coffee table covered in cigarette burns like black acne. It rented by the hour, a room for hookers or poor men cheating on their wives. I booked it for three nights. It was only a five-minute walk from the apartment. I thought about Abe or Stella walking below and never knowing I was up there.

I got three liters of gin and a carton of orange juice. I bought five frozen burritos and put them in my minifridge. It had a brown stain up its side, like the floor had vomited upward. I locked the door and chained the lock.