Four or five nights later I would find myself shivering on the back patio of a bar in Potrero Hill, soaked through with summer drizzle, huddling under a burner while the few people I knew in town caroused at a nearby table. Two jockish strangers, thinking me drunk and alone, started to hassle me. “What’s up, bro? Having fun?” They tried to drag me out to the street; my friends didn’t notice. “I’m just cold,” I whimpered. But I wasn’t just cold. I was thirty-­three years old, single, a barely published fiction writer starting to suspect that the life of the starving artist wasn’t as glamorous as advertised. Later that night, walking the dog up a steep hill in an unfamiliar neighborhood, I thought about packing the car and heading back to broiling Albany, then groaned at what a sad little fantasy that was.

“I don’t know about this,” I told Jack, crouching to smooth her damp fur. The rain, at least, had stopped. It was very quiet. In the distance I could see a slick of moonlight glimmering on the bay.