Coco woke up on the floor next to her bed. Stupefied, she looked around and found that her apartment was filled with detritus from the previous night: the banner reading “HAPPY 27^th COCO!”, the pastel-pink balloons, the life-size cardboard cutouts of Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Janis Joplin, and, finally, Coco herself. Empty nips of Fireball. A fecal smear of chocolate cake on the hand-knotted rug. Her copy of The Feminine Mystique, face down on the hardwood.

Coco rubbed her eyes. They burned. She blinked. Everything blurred. She’d slept in her contacts again. She crawled to the bathroom, avoiding the glass vase she’d shattered two months ago and never cleaned up. (Instead of vacuuming—she did not own a vacuum—she had surrounded it with a caution tape of sweaters and T-shirts.) She found her phone in the empty tub. The screen was broken, a spider’s web of shattered glass across the black. She unlocked it and was greeted by a barrage of texts from last night:

“I think I stole your pennnn rip”

“venmo req me for whatever damage i did to ur sink omg”

“Thanks for the good time! It was so nice reconnecting. You looked so hot <3”

“Hello I’m with UPS. I’m outside with a delivery of live frogs for Coco Moretti.”

“broooo let me back in! dafuq”

“You ok? You seemed pretty upset tonight. Any time u wanna talk… gotchu babe”

“please tell that girl to stop talking about her abortion lmao she’s obliterating the vibe”

“Are u crying in there???”

“Joey said he’s gonna break down the doooooor he needs to piss”

“Id appreciate if you didn’t blatantly flirt with my ex? Like I’d never do that to you dude”

“do u want ppl to leave? ppl are feeling awkward haha.”

“Hello? I need somebody to sign for the frogs.”

“I love you co! Your like a sister to me xoxox”

“Chicken cutlets,,,,, Jonas brothers ? RESPOND”

Coco was about to begin replying when she noticed the date. It was September first. And it was 11:30 a.m.

She had thirty minutes.

She whipped around and looked at herself in the mirror. She was still in her party dress from last night, a ridiculous white sparkly thing with a thick matching choker. She looked puffy, red, bloodshot, hair flat and greasy, a pink mark slashed across her face from sleeping on the floor. She rubbed her eyes again and yelped in pain. Her contacts.

The first one came out easily. She flicked it into the sink, then went for the other, but found that it had rolled under her lid, a glassy corner peeking out just above her iris. She grasped at it, but it evaded her. She touched her raw eyeball with her index fingernail and winced. She blinked, and the contact was gone. She peeled her lid up and rolled her eye frantically, but it was nowhere to be seen. That was it. It had migrated somewhere terrible, probably deep in the recesses of her brain. She would have to leave it be, hope it would find its way out like a baby turtle crawling toward the sea. Or maybe it would graft onto her frontal lobe. Her third eye. Ha. Ha ha ha! She was still drunk. She vomited into the sink. Oh! Jack Daniels. Chocolate cake.

Fucking hamburger meat? Great job, Coco. Vegetarian of the year. Her face tingled. Her tongue burned. Her hands shook. She massaged a tender spot under her ribs, which sparked a vague memory of sitting in the empty tub last night, weeping so hard she pulled a muscle.

She opened the cabinet, hoping to find mouthwash and saw . . . Could it be . . .? A dime bag of white powder. Aha! Yes! She would sharpen up before brunch with a little nose candy. This, this is how she’d get through this wretched first-of-the-month ritual.

She poured a little bit of powder onto her fingernail. She snorted and instantly realized her mistake. A minty numbness dripped down her throat.

“Is this fucking ketamine??” she cried. “Fuck!”

She grabbed a tissue and tried to blow her nose, but nothing came out. She spit furiously. She scraped her tongue with her fingernails. She could not get high on ket right now. Even if she liked the ketamine high, which she fucking didn’t, she was already jelly-limbed enough from the Jack Daniels and . . . Oh God . . . She sprinted out of the bathroom and the ketamine hit her all at once. The room began to seesaw miserably, the paintings, the furniture, all gliding off their axes. Coco balled her hands into fists. She closed her eyes. Okay, Coco. Breathe . . . Coffee! She staggered to the counter and peeled open the tub of Ethiopian grounds, only to find it empty.

She checked her phone. It was 11:36. She had to be on the Upper East Side by noon, or the whole deal was off. Back in June, she’d skipped the meeting because she was in SoHo coming off a boatload of Molly with some poet who had a LaCroix can tattooed to his chest. Her mother had cut her off for a month and stuck to it, despite the weeping and the begging and the unspeakable microwave dinners.

Coco rushed past the celebrity cardboard cutouts and noticed that Janis Joplin had a speech bubble coming out of her mouth: “Welcome to the 27 Club Coco! (Don’t die tho!!!). Coco found a red cable knit sweater draped over a stool. It wasn’t hers. She would never wear that color: Menstrual Blood by Marc Jacobs. But it would have to do. She had no time to scavenge through her closet. She threw it over her party dress, then went to the front entrance, slid on her Birkenstocks, and opened the door, only to find her path blocked by a large box. She squatted down and examined it, but her eyes wouldn’t focus on the label. Oh shit. The fucking frogs. Who was sending her frogs? But it was 11:38 now. There was no time. She shoved the box inside the apartment with her foot. She’d deal with it later.

Being in the hallway only made her intoxication feel more acute. The lights above were horrible—Are they always like this? The bulbs cast a sickly red glow over everything, like what babies likely see when they’re funneling through the cervix. The cervix filter. Now that’s an idea. Somebody get TikTok on the phone!

Coco slapped herself across the face. Focus. She continued down the hallway, past the reproduced Toulouse-Lautrecs and Degases she hated so much; the anorexic ballerina, the shirtless pervert, the sad behatted hag drinking from a glass of green liquid in a mud-colored café.

Coco took the elevator down, then went into the lobby where the doorman with eczema on his cheeks sprinted to open the front door for her.

“There she is!” he cried. “Linda Evangelista!”

Another wave of nausea hit her when she exited onto Astor Place, which was especially grey and miserable today. Its cramped center. That horrifically ugly cube. She felt so dizzy that she had to sit on the sidewalk while she waited for her Uber. A girl with long blonde hair held hands with a fat man who was either her father or her boyfriend. Coco was jabbed in the chest, against her will, by a memory. It was the day she’d moved into this place, August, three years ago, right before her PhD began. The loft had been a gift from her father. “Let’s get you out of Williamsburg,” he’d said. “My girl is too precious for Williamsburg.” He’d bought her a flat screen TV and a lambskin leather jacket from Balenciaga as housewarming gifts. Sometimes, she crawled into bed with the jacket on and fell asleep like that.

The Uber arrived, a black Tesla. The driver was an eager avuncular type wearing a flannel shirt buttoned all the way up to his neck. He asked her about the air conditioning and the radio and whether she wanted to charge her phone. She put her sunglasses on and pretended not to hear him.

Coco squinted at her phone as they began to creep uptown. It was 11:41. Her mother had texted her: Here a bit early. Sitting at the usual spot with a glass of rosé and the new Sally Rooney. Ghastly but fun xx

Her mother. Pandora. British and gangly and chic and obsessed with terrible art. Coco pictured her describing a “brilliant” papier mâché penis she’d seen at Art Basel, and felt like she was going to throw up again. She closed her eyes. She shoved her earbuds in and put on the Rolling Stones album her dad had loved, the one he used to play for her when she was a little girl and couldn’t sleep. “Childhood living,” Mick Jagger crooned, “is easy to do.”

Coco had managed to fall into a sweaty and delirious half-sleep when the driver slammed to a violent halt. She snapped her head up and ripped her earbuds out.

“What’s going on?” she said.

“Freaking kids, man,” he muttered.

She looked around. A swarm of bodies surrounded the car. They were young. They were mad. A woman in a black romper held a sign that read “Hands Off My Uterus.” What? Coco remembered something on the news yesterday afternoon about abortion. Some law. Something had happened. Some woman had died getting one, maybe? Or not getting one? A girl with dyed silver hair hit the hood of the car with her fist. She yelled something inaudible.

“Get your hands off my car!” shouted the driver. He leaned on the horn. The girl gave him the finger. Coco’s stomach seized with another swell of nausea. It was 11:50. Her mother had texted her again: You close? I think I’ve had it with the Rooney. What a whinger! x

“Is there any other route you can take?” asked Coco. “I have to be at brunch in ten minutes.”

“I don’t know,” the driver replied. “Why don’t you tell your friends to get out of the street?”

“My friends? I don’t know these people.”

“You freaking kids,” he muttered. “You entitled freaking kids.”

The driver looked at Coco in the rearview mirror. He smiled. His teeth were brown. She opened the car door and got out into the middle of the protest. She felt completely outside her body, like she was watching the top of her head from above as she pushed through hordes of shouting women. How she longed for the delusional clarity of cocaine. The numb cocoon of an Espresso Martini. Even the tingly paranoia of an edible was better than this dislocating Hell. She tripped over her Birkenstocks and fell into a girl wearing a hoodie with Joan Didion’s face on it.

“Excuse me,” said the girl.

Coco didn’t respond. She plunged ahead.

“Fucking rude!” the girl shouted after her.

Coco spun around. “Sorry,” she snapped, “did I inconvenience you? While you were blocking traffic?”

“Oh! I apologize for standing up for your rights!” the girl shouted back. “Just don’t be surprised when they come for you, you fucking bitch.”

“Right!” said Coco. “First they came for the Barnard girls with nipple piercings, and I said nothing.”

“Fucking ignorant cunt. Read the news! Pick up a book!”

“Pick up a book?” Coco cried. “I have half a PhD in gender studies!”

Coco turned to avoid the girl’s response. She was met with an elbow to her eye. “Ow!!”

She spun around to face the culprit, a tall man with a long, black beard. “I am so sorry,” he said. “I did not see you. Are you okay? Wait. Coco?”

Coco squinted. Was that . . . Oh shit. Her advisor at Columbia. Tom. Nervous eyes. Self-deprecating laugh. Drank mushroom coffee. Liked to watch Married at First Sight from an anthropological perspective. The beard was new, but it was still undeniably him. She had ghosted him right before Christmas break during the second year of her PhD. She’d never told him her reason for taking time off, for not coming back. He had sent her an email at 11:49 p.m. on New Year’s Eve that year, saying he was a little tipsy, but he hoped she could find a way to see the world from above.

“Coco,” he said. “I’ve been worried about you.”

“Yeah,” she said. “I’m sorry. Yeah.”

“Well, no, don’t be sorry. It’s good you’re here. It’s good you’re getting involved in stuff. How are you?”

“I’m good,” she said. “I’m living in Bushwick now. In a co-op. Putting together a zine about feminism and vegetarianism. Volunteering with the local DV shelter.”

“That’s great, really,” he said. “I always loved your work. Your essay on epigenetic trauma and national identity was . . . well, you know how I felt about it. What’s the name of—”

Somebody shouted “Cops!” and a foghorn blared, and people began to sprint. Coco followed the wave, her head pulsing brilliantly. She looked around at the spectacular blur of faces. As quickly as she had found him, she lost Tom. She imagined what she would name her feminist, vegetarian zine: The Rutabaga Monologues. Cauliflower Under a Marxist Lens. Her mind wandered to Bushwick. Why did I tell him I lived there? She’d been there twice, both times ending up in some basement where guys with shaved heads wearing tiny glasses played music about their pet rats and their nitrous addictions. She hated it there. She had promised herself after a night of taking too many mushrooms and crying until she threw up that she would never go back.

A girl with colorful tattoos on her calves got dragged away by a redhaired policeman. Coco’s heart pounded. She ran faster. It was in moments like these that she imagined her father was with her, present and sturdy and surefooted and alive in all his Italian American confidence, his bigness and his crassness that her mother had adored at first, then came to resent: his love of spacious cars and hair metal, the way he preferred canned green beans to fresh green beans and read Tom Clancy and idolized Bill Clinton and always had a smelly, slobbery dog sitting next to him. The way he was unashamed of the things he loved: beautiful women, making money, selling brownstones and high-rises all over Manhattan. The most beautiful views in the world. In her fantasy, Coco’s father took her arm and led her through the crowd.

“Let’s get you out of this mess,” he’d say. “My girl is too precious for messes like this.”

* * *

Coco’s standing brunch spot with her mother was called Café Ciboulette. It was the kind of place that considered itself pre-opera and called everything by its pseudo-French name. Le hamburger. Le pommes. Le femmes miserables. Coco launched through the door at 12:07. She saw her mother at their normal corner table, a glass of rosé before her. She wore a grey cashmere turtleneck and big tortoiseshell glasses. She stood and they hugged.

“You look ghastly,” said Pandora.

“Thanks.”

“Oh, Coco. Try not to take offense at every little thing I say.” 

They sat. Pandora’s rosé wobbled. Coco wobbled with it.

“I thought you weren’t going to make it,” said Pandora. “I felt quite stood up.”

“It’s only seven minutes,” Coco replied.

“It’s not that difficult to arrive on time, darling,” said Pandora. “Here I was, bored to tears by this horrible drivel everybody seems to love.” She motioned to the Sally Rooney book, which was splayed open on the tablecloth. “Oh, to be brown-haired and thin and smoke cigarettes,” Pandora said. “The misery of it all! Nobody’s had it worse, surely.”

“The protest outside,” said Coco. “I’m sorry.”

“Ah, yes. Such commotion, for what? When I was that age, we just got on with things.”

Coco touched the growing welt on her eyebrow.

“Are you all right?” asked Pandora, taking her glasses off and sitting them cross-legged on the table.

My old advisor hit me in the face and I’m accidentally high off my ass on Le Ketamine, thought Coco.

“Fine,” she managed.

“Well. Happy late birthday, sweetheart. I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t get you a proper present. I figured the regular thing would be fine.”

“Of course.”

The waiter came by, smug with his chin strap and bow tie and unbearable spiel about the specials. We have lobster bisque. We have a squash tartine with a blackberry compote. We we we. Coco ordered a black coffee.

“Have you given any thought to Bodhi’s offer, darling?” Pandora asked. “I think you’d be very good at advertising, actually. You can be quite wicked.”

Bodhi. Pandora’s new husband. Harem pants and opium and goat milk and licking poisonous newts in Costa Rica. Morning meditations and a “Dharma Book Club” he hosted on Instagram Live. Advertising whiz-kid from Canada. His given name was Tyler.

“Getting right down to it, are we?” said Coco.

“Well, I’m sorry, but I feel I’ve got to squeeze every bit of information out of you that I can. I barely know any of the details anymore. Besides the fact you wear pink undergarments.”

“I already apologized for that, Mummy.”

“I’m kidding you, darling. It’s water under the bridge. Really. You added some needed excitement to the gallery launch.”

“Too much wine on an empty stomach.”

“Too much of something else, it seemed,” Pandora said, tapping the side of her nose.

“I told you, Mummy. I don’t do any of that stuff. Cocaine is for models and old men.”

“I’ve never seen somebody take their dress off at their mother’s workplace because of a little too much Pinot Gris before.”

“Mummy.”

“Anyway. Bodhi would love for you to join his team. Do some writing. Granted you behave.”

“I dunno,” said Coco. “I’m actually thinking of trying for another PhD. For real this time.”

Pandora made the exact face Coco had imagined she’d make. Coco shifted in her seat.

The old man at the table next to them used his teeth to scrape an oyster out of its shell. He looked like somebody who was wearing old person makeup. His scalp was too smooth, his teeth too white, the lines on his cheek too perfect, like they’d been drawn on.

“All right,” said Pandora. “Another PhD. What this time? Astrophysics?”

“I don’t want to tell you.”

“Coco, for goodness’ sake. If you’re going to be all stroppy, we might as well leave.”

Coco swallowed. “Religious studies.”

“Oh, darling, you’re not becoming religious, are you? I tried so hard to keep you out of all of that. Your father with his horrid Roman Catholicism.”

“Studies, Mummy. You don’t have to be religious to study it. In fact, it’s probably better if you’re not. I’m really interested in it this time. It’s not like the gender studies. I feel like it’s what I’m meant to be doing. I want to learn more about death. Judaism has interesting ideas. The Orthodox believe in reincarnation, actually. And in Islam . . .”

“Oh, Coco, Islam? You’re not going to become one of these ISIS wives, are you?”

“Mummy! That is such an offensive thing to say.”

“It’s only offensive if you take offense, Coco.”

With a flick of her finger, Pandora motioned to the waiter for another glass of rosé. He nodded, eager, dog-like.

“Come on, Mummy,” said Coco with a smile. “You must be a little happy that I’m pivoting away from gender studies.”

“Don’t be like that, Coco,” Pandora replied. “I’m as feminist as it gets, and you know it.”

“If they didn’t want to get molested,” said Coco in her best imitation of her mother’s voice, “they shouldn’t have gone to that hotel room.”

“Well, for goodness’ sake. I don’t think it’s very feminist to treat women like a bunch of dithering idiots who can’t tell the difference between a hotel room and a conference room. Do you? People use what they have to their advantage. It’s not abuse if you win an Oscar.”

The waiter returned. He set down Pandora’s rosé and Coco’s creamless, sugarless coffee, which stunk like rotting wood. It was time to order. We had decided what we wanted. Pandora got what she always did: a pointless salad with endives. Balsamic on the side. Coco ordered an almond croissant.

“No oysters for you today, darling?” asked Pandora.

“I’m a vegetarian now.”

“Oh, Coco. I daresay bivalves don’t have feelings.”

They talked for a while about Bodhi and his guitar collection, about Coco’s older brother who was living in Vietnam, searching for the meaning of life (or something). They talked about Pandora’s art gallery and its latest exhibit detailing the horror of female circumcision through found objects: butchered clitorises made of paperclips and buttons. They reminisced about a girl Coco had hated in middle school, about Pandora’s old cat who was afraid of books, about that one Halloween, when Coco was only six and her father thought it would be funny to dress her and her brother as Carmela and Tony Soprano for trick-or-treating. Once their food had arrived, Pandora took the envelope out of her bag.

“Here it is,” she said. “Five thou.”

Coco reached across the table to take the money, but Pandora held it back, pinching her lips together.

“Listen, darling,” she said, “I hate to attach strings. You know I do. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to this month.”

“Oh? Am I finally getting married, Mama?”

“Ha ha. Listen. I know it’s delicate, but . . . in order for me to give you your monthly sum, I’d like . . . I need you to go to rehab.”

Coco felt as though a fist inside her stomach was closing.

“I’m concerned about you,” Pandora continued. “I want you to shake out of this.”

“Shake out of what, exactly?”

“Don’t get all defensive. You know what I’m talking about. This grief thing. It’s unhealthy.”

“I’m sorry that my reaction to my father’s very recent death feels inappropriate to you.”

“But it’s not that recent anymore, darling, is it? Eighteen months? Parents die. My father died when I was eight. You didn’t see me running around the Lower East Side like a chicken without a head, snorting cocaine and God knows what.”

“When you were eight? I’d hope not.”

“Don’t take everything I say so literally, Coco,” said Pandora. “Listen. I’ve found a place. It’s a good place. It’s not for drug addicts. Well, it is, but you know what I mean. It’s called Paix. It’s in the Catskills, of all places, but, listen, it does look quite lovely. I’m sure you’ll meet all sorts of types there. Little doctor’s daughters who tear out their own eyelashes and all that. Housewives who snort heroin so they don’t vomit when their husbands touch them. There’s horseback riding and sound baths. That kind of place. I think it will be good for you. And it’s paid for, of course.”

Coco felt her face getting hot. She looked down at her croissant which appeared small, shrunken, like a creature that was going to crawl away. Her mother looked at her expectantly. Coco had no interest in fighting, or even talking, or doing anything other than lying on the cold restaurant tiles and going to sleep.

“I don’t want to,” Coco said quietly.

“Darling, please,” said Pandora, “can’t we skip the theatrics? Surely you don’t want to live like this.”

“I like my life.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m serious. I needed this time off. I’m finally getting in touch with how I feel.”

“Oh, here we go. And I’m gaslighting you, is that it?”

“That’s not how you use that word, Mummy.”

“Well, excuse me. I’m sorry if I don’t speak fluent American.”

Coco could feel heat boiling in her veins. She didn’t want to fight. Really, she didn’t. But her hands were trembling. She knew it was already too late to stop it.

“Why did you move here,” she said, “if you hate Americans so much? Seriously. Why would you raise your kids in America if you were just gonna resent the fact we don’t prescribe to your stiff upper lip bullshit? You hate that I don’t keep things bottled up. You hate that I’m in therapy.”

“Of course I hate that you’re in therapy!” Pandora replied. “You spend an hour a week talking to some silly woman who seems to have made you more nuts than you already were!”

“Oh, so I’m nuts now. Thanks.”

“No need to take everything I say out of context, Coco.”

“You think I’m nuts because I’m sad that my dad died.”

“I think all this navel-gazing is unhealthy. If I thought about myself for a fraction of the time you do, I’d never get out of bed.”

“Don’t you think that’s sad?”

“I don’t think about it.”

“It doesn’t depress you, to think that you’ve repressed . . .”

“The thing that depresses me is seeing that my daughter has developed this horrible victim complex. Really, darling. You’re right. I do hate that you’re American sometimes. I should never have agreed to move here when you were a baby. I should never have given into your father with his Cheez Wiz and his Bruce Springsteen and his participation trophies.”

Coco shifted in her seat. The muscle below her rib burned.

“You’re jealous,” Coco said. “You’re jealous that I’m sad about Dad. You can’t comprehend anyone being this sad about him.”

Pandora looked around, then leaned across the table. “You’re being very nasty right now, Coco,” she said in a low voice. “Perhaps you can talk to your therapist about how to be nicer to me. If she were here, she’d be on my side. Although I’m sure she thinks I’m some monster, the way you skew things.”

“I just tell her what you say to me,” Coco replied. “I let her judge for herself.”

“But I always mean well, Coco. You can tell her the things I say, but if she doesn’t know what kind of person I am, she can make any kind of judgement she wants. It’s ridiculous. It’s a waste of money and time.”

“You were really horrible to Dad. I’m not imagining that.”

“I was married to him for more years than you’ve been alive. Just because we had disagreements . . . that’s how normal relationships are, sweetheart.”

“He would never treat me like this.”

“Because he was afraid of you! It was like you were his little doll. His doll that would break if he didn’t buy you a new pair of ghastly Louis Vuitton sunglasses every week or pay for you to go to bloody Portugal whenever you fancied. Everything you wanted it was Yes, Coco, right away, Coco. You lost your passport? Don’t worry, Coco. We’ll fix it. You don’t like your nose? We’ll fix that, too! You don’t like your new nose? We’ll just get you another one. We’ll get you as many noses as you want, until your nose no longer resembles its original form, no matter that you inherited your nose from your mother, no matter how she might feel about you butchering it a hundred times over . . .”

“I’ve only had two nose jobs.”

“You want to play at academia, darling Coco? Let me call my friend at Columbia. No matter if you’re actually equipped to handle it. And now he’s gone, and I’m left to deal with this mess.”

“Well, I’m sorry I’m such a burden to you, Mummy.”

“For goodness’ sake, Coco. I never said you were a burden. I said you were a mess. You couldn’t even pull it together to come to his funeral.”

“I had a migraine.”

“You were hungover. And your father would have said, That’s all right, darling, angel, but I won’t say that to you. It is not all right. Not at all. You should have been there.”

Coco was crying, suddenly, violently. She looked down at her palm. Her contact had come out. It lay in her hand like a little pool of light.

“You can’t be happy like this,” said Pandora.

“It’s not about me,” said Coco. “It’s about you. I embarrass you.”

Pandora let out a sharp breath. “You’re right,” she said. “Honestly, you’re right. You do embarrass me. And you should be more concerned about that. You should be more concerned about the effect your behavior has on others. Because you don’t live in a vacuum, as much as I know you’d like to. People look at me, and I know how they’re judging me. My little girl in an ivory tower. Couldn’t even handle graduate school.”

“I took a leave of absence,” Coco said.

“You never went back.”

“My father was dying. Of bowel cancer.”

“Darling. Please don’t say bowel.”

Coco stood. She tossed her napkin on the table, then hurried through the restaurant without turning back. Her head hurt. Her ribs ached.

Once outside, Coco walked two blocks until she arrived at Central Park. She found a bench on the outskirts and sat. Her heart beat so fast she could feel it in her thighs, her ankles. She went to call an Uber, then put her phone away. No. No more Ubers. No more luxury. She was going to take the train home. She was going to show her mother that she didn’t need her. She wasn’t a little doll. She was a serious, academic person. She could fend for herself. She got up and headed for the nearest stop.

When she’d drunkenly confessed to a boyfriend one night last year that she had never in her life taken the subway, he had responded: “But surely you’ve gotten on the subway with other people? Like, going to a party? All together?” But the truth was, Coco never went anywhere with other people. She arrived alone. People came to her.

She entered the station. She went to a sticky ticket machine and inserted her debit card, which had what was left of last month’s money on it. Soon, that would run out. And it wouldn’t replenish. The machine spit out a thin single-use card. It felt light and wonderful in her hand.

The 6 train arrived, billowing hot air around it. She got on and sat in a seat across from a woman with a brindle pit bull. The pit bull ate raw beef from a Tupperware. The woman stroked its neck and sang to it. Coco recognized the song. Her father used to listen to it. It was by Tom Waits. She and Pandora would make fun of him whenever he played it. “This is horrible!” Pandora would say. “Turn it off!” “Tell him to clear his throat!” Coco would say, and they would all laugh. The woman sang the same line over and over to her dog: “I don’t want you catching your death of cold, out walking in the rain.”

Coco checked her phone. Pandora had texted her: You are choosing to be cross with me. You are choosing to be upset. I want what’s best for you, and if you can’t see that, then I don’t know how to convince you otherwise xx. Coco ignored the text. She put her head back and closed her eyes. She thought about everything that would soon be different. Her mother would try to get her to change her mind, but she would not give in. She would have to sell the apartment. She could never afford the service charges. So she would find a new place, somewhere with roommates and laundry in the basement and old-fashioned mousetraps in every room. Maybe in Bushwick, a place she would learn to love. She would come home every evening, tired, shoulder aching from carrying her books around in a tote bag, and she would smoke cigarettes on the fire escape with the girls she lived with; a vegan activist, a woman who worked with migrants, a girl who played drums in a metal band. Their oven would keep breaking, and they’d all fix it together, sitting on the floor, holding bolts and screws in their palms. She would write a brilliant application essay and get into grad school again, and she would go to class and work on her dissertation on political theology or queerness in Hinduism or women in Catholicism. She would make do by eating instant noodles and bagels for dinner and she would study the Qur’an under a lamp at the library and go to student mixers and take the train. If she wanted to stop doing blow or stop drinking, she would do it without rehab. Her roommates would bring her cups of tea and buy six packs of O’Doul’s to keep in the fridge in solidarity. She would get a job on the side to make ends meet, selling books or doughnuts or bubble tea. She would adopt a cat from a shelter. It would have an infected eye, and she would put drops in it until it was better. She would learn how to make an omelette. She would wash her dishes by hand. She would start from the beginning.

* * *

When Coco woke up, the train was stopped. “This is Pelham Bay Park,” the voice over the intercom said. “This is the last stop on this train.” Coco looked around. She was the only one left in the car.

She got off the train and went out onto the platform. A Black man wearing a tweed jacket sat on a bench, reading a paperback.

“Excuse me?” said Coco.

The man looked up at her. He had blue eyes. “Where am I?” she asked.

“You’re in the Bronx,” the man said.

“Oh,” she replied. “I was trying to get to Astor Place. I came from the Upper East Side.”

He put his book face-down on his lap. It was called Darwin’s Radio. The “o” in “Radio” cradled a fetus.

“You got on the wrong train, honey,” he said. “You have to go downtown. You went up. You have to go down.”

She thanked him and turned to face the downtown trains. An old woman stood beside her. She wore angel wings on her back. She smoked a cigarette. She turned to Coco.

“You’re covered in flies,” she said. “Doesn’t that worry you?”

The train came. Coco got on.

* * *

The sun was beginning to go down when Coco finally returned to her apartment. The first thing she saw upon entering was the box from earlier. She crouched over it and managed to read the label this time. It was from her brother, who she hadn’t seen in over a year. She’d drunkenly texted him last month: Figured out the meaning of life yet? He’d responded with a thumbs up.

She grabbed a steak knife from the drawer by her sink and carved the box open. On top of the packing peanuts, a note: Happy bday sis. In case you need a friend. She reached through the peanuts and took out a clear Tupperware. She opened it. Two brown frogs lay at the bottom. She poked them with her pinky fingernail. Their wet, jellied bodies were limp against her touch. She dumped them out onto the floor. They lay on their backs. They were dead.

Coco threw the box and the dead frogs down the garbage chute. She went to the fridge, making sure to avoid the broken glass on the floor, and found a bottle of champagne on the bottom shelf. She popped the cork with her thumb, and it ricocheted off Kurt Cobain’s impassive cardboard face. She sat on the floor, leaned back against the fridge, and drank from the bottle.

She looked around at her apartment: the red baroque couch she’d had sent in from Vienna and the rug a man in San Francisco had woven just for her. The folk art she’d bought in Marfa: two thousand dollars for an oil painting of a cowgirl pressing her tits together. The velvet blackout curtains. The microwave that was so modern it looked like a bank safe. The crystal wine decanter she never used but liked to look at when the sun came through it. The silver bar-cart her father had given her for her twenty-fourth birthday, grand and tiered like a wedding cake. When her father had moved her in here, they had sat on the baroque couch together and shared some clear grappa. “You’re a princess,” he’d said to her, his cheeks pink. “Whatever happens, Coco, you’re a princess. Remember.” She thought about the instant noodles and the mouse traps and shivered suddenly. She finished the bottle of champagne, then picked up her phone and called her mother. It rang four times before she answered.

“Coco?”

“Mummy. I’m sorry. I’ll go to rehab. I’ll go.”

“All right, darling. We’ll get you sorted, won’t we?”

“Okay, Mummy.”

“Darling?”

“Yes?”

“When you get out, I’d like you to give the advertising a go with Bodhi. You don’t want to do a PhD. I mean, really, darling. Academia is beneath you. Faculty meetings with jam doughnuts and batty old women fighting over whether Shakespeare was actually a woman. It’s all a bit horrid, isn’t it?”

Coco squeezed the neck of the empty champagne bottle. “Yes, Mummy,” she said.

They talked logistics. Cars to pick her up and bags to pack. After she hung up, Coco lay on her side and gazed at the mountain of broken glass by her bed, thick shards covered in a membrane of dust. She decided she would finally clean it up. Tomorrow morning, she would call somebody to come in and take care of it.