“Why do you live here?” he asked week five, after we found a golf ball–sized hole in the back of the closet that hadn’t been there two weeks prior. He had been so frustrated when it appeared behind my rain boots that he slammed his workbag against the wood floor so hard that whatever was inside the hole squealed. “This is a piece of shit apartment. Piece of shit. They rob you to make you pay for this.”

“It’s cheap, Fyodor. You want to pay my rent for a high-rise in SoHo? Then I’ll move tomorrow.”

He laughed loud, from his gut, like a roar. “You need to find a rich man, Miss Eliza. Very rich.”

I thought about that Cher quote, “My mom said to me, ‘You know, sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man.’ I said, ‘Mom, I am a rich man.’” That’s how a good feminist would have responded: I don’t need a rich man, I’ll make it big in New York City all by myself. I’m a strong independent woman.

“I’m working on it,” I told him, instead.

I was really working on it.

I interviewed for the job at the Brit & Ash Agency from my mattress on the floor while I watched a roach slowly suffocate to death between my double-paned windows. I told them I was out of town, that I would love to interview, but that I wasn’t going to be able to do it in person. Thankfully it was before video chats were the norm, so I could get away with wearing underwear and the coffee-stained Hanes T-shirt I got in a pack at the bodega for eleven dollars, while slurping down my fifth ramen noodles of the week and proffering my passion for writing press releases for high-end designers.

I’d done my research to know exactly what they wanted me to say. I spent hours at the Tompkins Square Library googling until I found Lena, then Brit & Ash, then the opening for a senior account executive. It was no surprise to me that two days after my interview they offered me the job. I’d made sure I was the perfect candidate.

I just couldn’t see them in person until I confirmed I had a job. Because I couldn’t see them in person until I could buy the kind of clothes I needed and to do that I had to make sure I’d have a salary to pay off the Nordstrom Rack credit card debt.

It was three weeks into the job that Lena and I first spoke. I had just plucked a transparent glass mug from the cabinet in the kitchen and was holding it up to the light to see if the edge was actually clean. The top-of-the-line dishwasher in our office’s kitchen had nothing on all the Tom Ford reds and Armani purples.