This is good; this is easy. He wants to talk. He has the untroubled grin and bright blurred gaze of someone who likes working in tech, who genuinely believes in the mission and, of course, the money. She used to live a diminished version of that life, performing remote data entry for a company that would eat photos of your apartment and spit out your scientifically optimized aesthetics, your exquisite objets, your precious self. Her task had been to re-tag products sent in from their secret corporate partners, since the A.I. tagger was only right 68 percent of the time. Nope, this one is actually a wingback; this is a papasan; this is a chaise lounge. It was good, it was easy. She would wake early. She would dress and eat an orange. She would pad through the beating grey light to her computer and click for ten hours. A finger on the cursor, a set of eyes, a brain. Disembodied parts strung together by flesh and electricity, her mind leaping blindly from one corrected metadata tag to the next while her body sank into the chair and rotted.

It’s the worst thing that ever happened to him. It’s the worst thing that could ever happen to him, besides possibly being hit by a bus, which is unlikely but not impossible, and therefore not magical. His wife left him for an ex, an old flame. As though it had suddenly flamed up in her—I am not with the right man, I am not where I am supposed to be, I am not in my right life no matter how comfortable— and her flame sparked the flame of her old flame, and they burned together. In the old days they would have been considered the worst sort of sinners.

She tells him about the old furniture-tagging startup, and her current work, which is whatever she can find. More mechanical Turking but less well-paid: dog-walking apps, homework assistance, personal shopping, middleman food delivery. Last week she was robbed in Queens for a burger. She was just standing outside a duplex at midnight, waiting for the person who’d ordered the burger, but she’d been there ten minutes already and was about to leave when a rat-tailed man whipped around the side of the building and hissed at her to stand still. He had a gun. He held her up at gunpoint for a burger, which wasn’t even her burger. The burger place she was delivering from was just okay. It wasn’t even that good of a burger.

He laughs, but uncomfortably. She’d hoped he would feel strong in the story—oh if I had been there I would have, etc. etc., grabbed the gun, badassedly. I would have protected you. And he seems to feel that a bit, but he’s also bothered; it’s too close to reality, to a real thing that happens to people. People not like himself. The wrong approach, she realizes belatedly. Most men she’s dated seem to want a woman around for contrast, and self-definition. So they can be the shaggy golden man-half, the eloquent speaker, the mighty hunter. Or else they just want to assuage their nostalgic adolescent loneliness. But this man, with a child, doesn’t need to be a child anymore and he doesn’t need something else fragile to protect. He’s eager to settle down with someone, of course, but he needs a wife. His profile should have been a job listing. Must be able to fold laundry, give great head, and pick up the kid after school. Room and board included. Must love me and my stock options enough to never leave.

Outside TAROT he suddenly grabs her shoulders and shoves his mouth at hers. It’s meant to be fierce, romantic. It’s not. Wet and bumpy and unpleasant: a toad’s kiss. She’s turned by it into something small and mean.

“We’ll do this again,” he says, decisively.

“I don’t know if I can,” she says.

He lets go of her shoulders. He’s absolutely stunned. It’s impossible, which means it must be magic. Only some kind of curse could make a lonely, lovely, desperate girl reject him. Only a curse could explain why women keep walking away from him—him! With his stock options! He stalks away, furious.