The radio shrink would have said, I guess she died of a broken heart, and I would have ended my life and ruined his, for no reason, just a naked drunk dead woman in his room who’d gotten herself naked, and drunk, and dead.

But I wouldn’t see the radio shrink again. I was gasping and out of the tub, and somebody was knocking on the bathroom door. I don’t know why knocking—the door was unlocked—but the water was sloshing onto the floor, the tap was on, it couldn’t have been on all this time, and I would find out it was raining into the bathroom below, I had caused weather, and the radio shrink had packed up and left but had hung the DO NOT DISTURB sign on his door, and had paid for my room. Was gone. Dawn from Baton Rouge was a disembodied voice again, but the redheaded woman from the front desk, Eileen, she was here, slipping across the floor, tossing me a robe, turning off the tap, tidying up my life.

“You’re all right,” she said. I could feel her name tag against my cheek. “You should be ashamed of yourself, but you’re all right now.”

I would like to say this was when my life changed. No. That came pretty quick, within hours, but not yet. I would like to say that the suggestion of kindness took. That I went home and wished everyone well. That I forgave myself and it was as though my fury at myself was the curse: forgiveness transformed me and I became lovely. All that came later, if at all. He was wrong, the shrink: nothing ever happened to me that made me cry more than I did in those weeks of aftermath. I’m one of the lucky ones. I know that. I became kinder the way anybody does, because it costs less and is, nine times out of ten, more effective.