“SO WHAT HAPPENED?” I asked Toby on the phone. I’d loved the Nahid story—this prisoner trying to gain freedom for herself through the random secret fucking of men in her apartment. It was like a dirty fairy tale.

“She just wasn’t who I thought she was,” he said.

“What was she?”

“She was just regular.”

I was heading into the city. My train was about to go into the tunnel. “I have to go,” I told him.

“Okay, talk later.”

“Have you ever considered that you’re kind of an asshole?”