Going back to the dorm where Jeremy and Chad lived was not an option. She ran across the street from where she’d vomited, leaving Daphne shocked and squealing, and raised her arm for a cab. “North,” she said. In Times Square she saw the big hotel with the stupid restaurant on the ground floor and told the driver to stop. The lobby was scuffed marble and smudged mirrors and people in sneakers rolling oversized suitcases. She felt confident she would not encounter anyone she knew here. When it was her turn at the check-in desk, Claudia told the clerk with the eyebrow ring that she didn’t have a reservation.

“How many nights?” the woman asked, typing.

Claudia had not thought of this. “Two. No. Three.”

“I’ve got a junior suite on the fourteenth floor open for the next five nights.”

“I’ll take it.”

The woman took her ID and her Visa and gave her an envelope with two key cards inside.

“Have a nice stay, Ms. Castro.”

On the way to the elevator she saw an ATM and took out the maximum: $500.

The room faced west, overlooking the Hudson River and toward New Jersey. Her phone was off for now. She’d already missed the baby and she wasn’t ready to handle the possibility that people would start messaging her about the video popping up somewhere. She looked at the bed and realized she didn’t have anything to sleep in. She had the antibiotics and the PrEP pills in her purse, but not a toothbrush or a hairbrush or a change of clothes. Claudia took off her pants and the bra beneath her shirt, but when she climbed under the covers the sheets were cold and she felt exposed. Like something was going to creep up from the edge of the bed. She put her pants back on, filled up a glass with water, took her pills, and turned off the light.

In her dreams, her cell phone was too big. She couldn’t slide it into her pocket. It kept growing, flashing, the video playing too loud. The laughing and the grunts and her silence bouncing off the walls of a bathroom stall. The water from the toilet running over. And she couldn’t get the door open without putting down the phone. But the floor was filthy and now the room was lined with overflowing stalls going back into infinity.