That’s how I’d always viewed it at any rate. Ever since I was a kid, museums to me were like amusement parks, where every painting was a portal to another dimension of the artist’s creation. It was why I initially wanted to be a fine artist, but I didn’t believe I had the purity of talent, plus I wanted to eat, move out of my parents’ house, pay my own bills, and so forth.

I considered the plain white wall across from me. What would I hang on it? It would have to be big, huge in fact, to cover so much real estate. A landscape? Something that felt like I could step right into it and smell the sun-warmed wildflowers or the new-fallen snow or the damp darkness of a forest at night. Should it be desert mountains in all their bronze and purple glory? Or maybe a seascape to counteract the arid climate, something with big blue-green waves crashing on a rocky shore? Perhaps, a still life? A bowl of lemons so vibrantly yellow that the blistered rind seemed like it could be plucked right out of the painting and the one lemon sliced open made the viewer pucker at the potential bite of its tart juice. Yes, I would like that.

I woke up with a gob of cheese stuck to my face. I’d fallen asleep on my pizza. My computer battery was dead, and—I glanced at the clock—I was late. Later than late. I should be walking into the office right now!

My phone was on my nightstand, and I picked it up and glared at it. Why hadn’t the alarm gone off? Oh, the betrayal! I ran into the bathroom. One glance in the mirror, and I screamed. My hair was a rat’s nest, I had a pimple sprouting on my forehead, and I kept burping pepperoni.

I combed out my hair and twisted it into a topknot. I washed my face and brushed my teeth. I dashed to my suitcases, which I had tossed into the closet, where they remained unpacked as I hadn’t had the motivation to deal with them yet.