Since moving to New York, I’d lived in several different apartments, most of them dumps. I shared my first apartment with Lana and one other roommate. Lana got me my first job in New York as a photographer’s assistant, working for Emily Miller, who was considered the grande dame of event planning at the time. (I’d done similar work in Florida, on occasion, so I already had many of the necessary skills.)

One day Emily’s lead photographer had a family emergency. I flew to Puerto Vallarta and shot a wedding that night. The pictures were remarkable, especially the ones of the children. Within a year, her clients were calling me to photograph their kids.

In the end, she and I had a falling-out. She mistakenly thought I was going to give her a cut of my business. She viewed me as being indebted to her and thought I ought to be grateful. I suppose she’d always considered herself superior to me, but I’d chosen not to see it.

I quit my job waiting tables. After two years I had a regular roster of clients and I’d doubled my rates, so I moved into my present apartment, which wasn’t gorgeous, but it was respectable and more my home than any other place had ever been.

“Cute kid,” one of the movers said when he removed a photo of Jasper that had been hanging on the wall in order to wrap it.

“Thanks.”

“Where is he now?”

“With his dad.”

He nodded knowingly and covered the picture in bubble wrap.

“I got a kid,” he said. “Two years old. Man, what a lot of work. How old’s your kid?”

“Five.”

“Ohh.”

“He’s hearing impaired. He goes to a special school.” Why did I say that?

“Too bad.”

“Right now he’s at school.”

A minute earlier I’d said he was with his father. I was angry with myself for such an unnecessary stumble. And angry with myself for caring what the man thought of me.

When the men left, I opened the door of the bedroom and my cat raced out. Sitting on the floor of the kitchen, I leaned my back against the cabinets. Eliza ran in circles through the apartment. As she passed me, she hissed. I pushed her away. Then she lifted one paw and scratched me across my chest, above the neckline of my shirt. Red raised lines appeared on my skin, along with a drop of blood. For a minute I thought about throwing her out the window. She must have seen the hatred in my eyes. She hissed at me again.

“What is it?”

She stood completely still.

“What the fuck’s your problem?”