Buenos Aires was an impulsive choice, but as the bus hurtles toward the city, I feel sure it was a good one. I’m thousands of miles from anyone who knows me or knows of me. The last time I was here was the last time all my dreams for myself—along with any hopes of resolution, of a happy or normal life—felt possible. I can recognize how irrational it is to think there might be some sort of key here, some clue I’ve left for myself, some portal through which I might travel and obliterate what’s happened in between, but it doesn’t stop me from longing for it. I gaze out the window, trying to connect to what I’m seeing, to spark some nostalgia. But the urban sprawl outside the window gives me nothing. I’d forgotten how vast the city is, how one neighborhood tumbles into the next in a web that seems to go on forever. The city center, where the bus leaves off, is crowded with high-rises and clutches of palm trees sprouting between buildings to form little oases.

According to his bio on Airbnb, the owner of the apartment where I’ll be staying is a fiftyish American expat who moved to the city a decade before with his partner. From the central bus station I take the green line to the Scalabrini Ortiz stop in Palermo as instructed. All the way there I study my map, trying and failing to remain inconspicuous; my height and my blondness attract attention everywhere other than the Nordic countries. But people are just gawking; they don’t recognize me. I suppose I’m uniquely attuned to the difference.

I try to make sense of the steady stream of Spanish around me, but it washes over me. Everyone looks cheerful; they’re laughing, or maybe it’s simply that these are the only people I’m seeing clearly—my fellow miserables fading to gray in the background. I emerge in what feels like a completely different city, and at last I feel a stirring of familiarity. The afternoon sun is coming through the trees that canopy the wide cobblestone streets, and I pass stylish modern buildings with Spanish-style villas crammed in between. I couldn’t be anywhere in the United States.

“Welcome! Bienvenidos!” Tom, my host, leans in and kisses me on the cheek. “This is the place.” I find myself instinctively searching for signs that he knows—the startled look, the flash of horror—after all he has my real name and my credit card. But if he does recognize me, he betrays nothing. I chastise myself; the world doesn’t revolve around what happened to us.

“The building is gorgeous,” I say. There’s a pool in the courtyard, and the gates that protect the building are heavy, fortified. Though the other neighborhood streets are teeming, Tom’s apartment is on a quiet, posh-looking block.