Zanne ran her fingers through her hair and tugged. “For the money.”

“That’s not why.”

“No, really. I was drowning. I never would have been able to pay off that debt on my own.”

“Come on. You weren’t working for a banker or some Saudi prince. He wasn’t just any rich guy. I can’t help you if you don’t know what you really want. You have to be gunning for it. Life’s too hard for anything else.”

“Why would you want to help me?” Zanne asked.

“Because we’re the same, you and me.”

“Are we?”

“Why’d you let me see Ted today?”

“The real reason?” Zanne asked.

Phoebe nodded.

Zanne thought about the disclosure agreement. Yes, she would honor it. “Because I wanted to see what would happen next.”

Phoebe threw her open hand at Zanne. “See what I mean? Read me what you have in there.” She pointed at the notebook, which Zanne had pulled out of her pocket along with the emails.

“Oh, I... I don’t know.”

“Read me the most recent thing you wrote.”

Zanne thumbed through the pages. “Milk, cereal, toilet paper, motherfucking caffeine.”

Phoebe tilted her head and frowned. “The second-to-last thing, then.”

Zanne turned to another page. She squinted at what she’d written there. She tugged her hair again, took a deep breath, and began, “‘We are motherless children, desperate to please but cynical about our chances.’” After thirty seconds, she stopped. She closed the notebook and looked up.

Phoebe beamed, as if Zanne were one of her students and that confession a sonnet.

“Yeah, but...” Zanne swept the notebook in a small arc across the tabletop with her thumb and third and fourth fingers, back and forth as if it were a pack of cigarettes. People were connecting with the confession she wrote, but she felt rudderless. You needed both halves of the equation to make a whole, the idea plus the execution. She’d lost the first half working for Ted, and now that she’d quit, she’d lost the other.

“But what?” Phoebe asked.

“It’s gonna sound crazy.”

“Crazy’s my favorite.”

Zanne’s index finger hovered in the air over her notebook, as she recognized that leaden feeling flooding through her, threatening to sink her. Grief. She tapped the book’s cover twice.

“I’m gonna miss it. My job. I was good at it.”

“I know.”

“No, not today. I did a terrible job today. I didn’t see you coming at all. But most days, I was really fucking good at it. For a long time, I did my job and did it well. I liked being good at something.”

“We all want to be good at something. No, fuck that. I’m a good English teacher, but I want to be a great filmmaker.”