Standing here now, on the porch outside Ted’s office, Zanne’s jaw ached just as fiercely as it had in those teeth-gnashing days when she still used. She was grinding her teeth again. She inserted her tongue between her molars to make herself stop. The fight with Gaby, what had happened to Phoebe, what had happened to herself—all of it left Zanne feeling exhausted and unclean. Lauren sprinted past with two more yellow fedoras. Whitney Houston pledged her total devotion over the sound system. It was almost time. The party was about to start.

Zanne couldn’t know what she now knew and also bow and scrape at Ted’s feet. Let someone else sweat through their shirt hoping they made the appropriate amount of eye contact with him. It should’ve been Dawn sitting at that desk today, and it should have been Dawn who called Caitlyn Alvarez and coolly told her that the Stablers could no longer accommodate her at their table at the gala, that someone would be in touch to discuss another event at a more convenient time. It should have been Dawn listening to Caitlyn deflate across the telephone line, all the fight going out of her like a balloon caught in a tree, no threat to anyone but herself. And today Zanne should’ve stayed home and let someone else deal with the runaway monkey and the yellow hats while she played hooky with her girlfriend.

Why had she made the call to Caitlyn—because Ted had asked nicely? When Zanne was eighteen, she’d been desperate; she could chalk up her bad choices to that, at least. What was her excuse now? Career advancement?

All around the estate, people were working furiously to pull off the party of all parties. And tomorrow they’d be back at their desks again, looking for a better walking shoe for Ted’s skinny feet, a better bike helmet for Zoe, a better guitar teacher for Flynn, a better yoga guru for Holly. Better, better, better. What a ridiculous performance they were all engaged in, pretending that these matters were urgent or intellectually complex. Chief of staff, what a joke. This wasn’t the West Wing. They were servants, not trusted advisers. They were renting their brains out by the hour, and there was always someone—smart and broke, just like they used to be—who would happily take their place.

Your only choice at the end of the day was to stay or leave. You could find another job, one where the pay was commensurate with the actual risks you were engaged in. Or you could stay and make more money than you’d ever thought you’d have the chance to make. All you had to do was consent to this permanent state of tension: fretting about the dumbest tasks, holding anxiety for billionaires who felt entitled to a worry-free existence, handling what they couldn’t handle, no questions asked.