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[...] It had started at a dinner party in Gordon’s house, a memory Ellen hoarded, allowing it to open only rarely, at special times, like a music box whose tune fades imperceptibly with each playing: herself standing by a windowsill crowded with African violets, looking out at the yard. Gordon touc…

I flicked on the lights, and my apartment ambushed me. I can sell the apartment, I thought. I can sell the sectional couch. I could sell the expensive necklaces and bracelets and earrings I’d been given over the years by rich, insolent playboys. I could sell my kitchen appliances. My towels, my…

Back on Broome Street, I walked without knowing where I went. I stared through boutique windows at couches, at vases of blown glass, letting the cold air clear my head. It’s over, I told myself repeatedly, not knowing quite what this meant. I turned up West Broadway, a lunchtime murmur roiling behi…

And that was basically that, although it took several more years before I was truly a catalogue girl with no prestige whatsoever. Just how many years I wasn’t sure, exactly, because at that point, the point at which my acceleration began to reverse, time started running together—there was no more a…

“I’m happy,” I said, moving to the music as much as possible while holding my face still for Ellis. And I was; happiness leaned against me from inside. I reached for my purse, took out two Merits and offered one to Ellis, who lit them both with a malachite lighter. Then he stood back and gazed at m…