The price was crucial. I had fifty dollars, with which I had planned to redecorate my boyfriend Joe’s little house. I had gone back to him despite him (evidently Leda Van Hoerderbroeck had found him unsatisfactory). But a few months later, Joe had to go east, to Florida, in fact, to visit his mother. His plans were always meticulous. He would drive, taking six days for the trip each way. He would be gone precisely forty days, spending Christmas in the bosom.

Meanwhile, the rent was paid and I was to mind the house. I had fifty dollars left of my life savings. I had dripped the rest away in the months since my attempted suicide. Finding a new job had seemed too much for each day as it dawned. But I wanted to commit some massive act of love, to create some ineradicable mark that would tie Joe to me in an external way, some clip and chain independent of my awkward body. I thought of the decorating because Joe admired the house of a local effete of our acquaintance, a man whose personal incapacities were in direct proportion to his undeservedly large income. Joe had never so much as tacked up a calendar, and a certain deference prevented me from attempting my usual weeds-in-jar approach to ornament. But now he would be gone, this was my chance. The noise, smells, and mess would not disturb his rituals. Besides, I knew I had to keep busy or I’d very soon be raving, caught once more in my old ailment. Not knowing what he was up to for such a long time would be a rich agar for my imagination.

I asked him if I could paint the bedroom while he was gone. He said it was very nice of me. His pleasure at the idea puffed me up, to the extent that I abandoned my original plan to spend twenty-five dollars on the house and to live on the rest. I could go around to the college cafeteria and wait for an acquaintance to walk through the line with me. I could go to dinner at my mother’s. I could steal.

He left. I wept. Bawled actually. That night I ate all the food in the house: potatoes, fried; six eggs, fried; half a loaf of bread, toasted, with butter and jam; two bananas; and the last of the coffee cake that remained from his farewell breakfast. I slept all right.