Wisconsin was arbitrary. I applied to apartments all over the country—Michigan, Idaho, Nevada—letting the landlords of America decide my fate. The quickest reply came from Wisconsin: a studio apartment at the base of Capitol Hill.

In the video walkthrough, the ceiling appeared sloped on all sides. It wasn’t clear whether one could stand anywhere but the center of the room. The carpet was low-pile in a corporate non-color; the stovetop was electric; the fridge mini and sheltered beneath a laminate countertop; the toilet beige; the tub streaked with orange rust. I signed the lease online and received the keys in the mail.

The backseat of my sedan was taken up by Susan’s crate, so I could only pack the essentials. I said a rushed goodbye to Ross and tried not to perceive his expression. My plan was to complete the drive in one straight shot, 15 hours door to door, but once I hit the road I kept having to pull over for Susan to pee. She was a fussy dog, hard to please, and would only pee if she found the location agreeable. Otherwise, she would sniff around then lead me back to the car. I generally tried not to indulge this behavior, but since she was freshly spayed so I figured she deserved special treatment, at least until the incision healed.

At midnight, we pulled into a Travelodge parking lot. It wasn’t clear whether dogs were allowed, but I brought Susan in anyway. I lay down on the synthetic coverlet and prayed that Susan wouldn’t pee. She was indifferent to rules and consequences even when in perfect health. Now she was pacing anxiously around the room. “Up up,” I said, patting the mattress, but she kept moving, sniffing along the baseboards, looking for an explanation, or an exit

It was still dark when I gave up on sleep and checked out of the motel, $80 poorer and too tired to employ my special dog-voice. “Please pee,” I said at the first rest stop, as Susan pawed experimentally at a pile of woodchips. Was it possible that she missed Ross? No, it was too soon for that.

The last stretch of the drive was slow, the highway packed with people commuting to the capital. Susan whimpered in the backseat. “Almost there,” I said in an encouraging tone, which she seemed to interpret as an invitation. In one desperate leap, she scrambled onto my lap. She was not a small dog and I was not a good driver. Her legs shook, her nails dug into my thighs, and I drove the last few exits awaiting the sudden movement that would send us off the road.

Susan’s stomach was in the center of my field of vision, leaving only a thin strip of windshield above it. I took an exit and stopped hard at a red light, causing her to fall onto the steering wheel. The horn blared, the other drivers watched me curiously, and there was no gesture I could make to explain the situation.

I drove slowly on icy roads, thinking, This is where I live. It could have been any city. The snow anonymized its architecture and natural features. The people were bundled up except for their noses. Everything was enshrouded, enclosed. It was difficult to see a way in. When we reached the apartment complex, Susan didn’t want to pee. She was still holding out for the perfect patch of lawn. I sympathized with this quality even as it ruined my life.

I’d been 21 and entitled when I first met Ross. Not entitled to material things but to experience. When the experience came, I was not surprised. I took it for granted that my life would have a plot. If the events of that summer were to happen today, I would recognize their value, their rarity. But Ross was my first. He let me think life would be one long summer solstice: bike locked outside, iced coffee sweating fat beads, café closing with the sun still high and hot. I gave him my number then walked home alone. I fell asleep on the living room couch even though it was light out and I hadn’t eaten dinner. I slept like I was fitting in one last rest before it all began.

That first month, we picked strawberries. We fed goats from our palms. We sat at a picnic table and drew the sunset in colored pencil. We rented a beach house and had sex on the floor. We snuck into the planetarium where he worked and, after hours, watched a private history of the cosmos play out on the dome above us. Afterward we went outside and lay in the grass and looked up at the real thing.

Who’s to say I didn’t appreciate all this as it happened? What evidence do I have of my own ingratitude? That I allowed time to pass?

There was no bed in my Wisconsin apartment. Of course there was no bed: I was the new tenant, the only tenant. I’d always lived with other people before, inserting myself into their narratives, spreading my sheets over their stains.

So that was the first thing I noticed: the emptiness. The second was the mildew smell. The third was the bleach smell. The fourth was the cigarette smell. The last thing I noticed was that it didn’t matter: my nostrils had already adjusted. Now all I had to worry about was everything else.

The next morning I awoke on the floor, my cheek textured with carpet, white light blazing through the blindless windows. Susan was curled in a tight, defensive coil by the front door. “Go peeps?” I said, watching as one of her ears stuck up. “Peeps?” The ear swiveled, as though my voice were now coming from a new direction. I stood and put on my coat. Susan remained coiled.

“What’s wrong?” I said, kneeling beside her. I patted her ribs and she let out a yelp so quick, it was like it happened between seconds. I rolled her over gently to look at the incision. It was pinker than before, with a fuzzy frame of inflammation around it. I wondered if the frame would keep expanding until it consumed her completely. But I wouldn’t know if it did: her fur was dark, and the vet had only shaved her stomach.

I texted Ross: “Call?” He was bad with his phone, always forgetting it in the bed or the glove compartment. Also I had abandoned him and taken the dog and moved to Wisconsin. I prepared myself for a long wait.

When I first met Ross, I was living at my sister’s house, an old Victorian in the part of our hometown where the grad student and professors lived. The house’s original features had been preserved—carved medallions on the banister, stained glass in the bathrooms—and the siding had been painted a pleasing pistachio. The interior was gloomy in a refined, academic way, with dark-stained wood and dim lamps and heavily-curtained windows to block out the heat and cold. There was no beer in the fridge, just cereal and take-out containers and lactose-free milk. My sister worked long hours and liked to spend the evening in front of the TV watching America’s Got Talent, resting her feet on the giant white labradoodle she’d bought after the divorce.

Pixie came from a boutique breeder and was by design the friendliest, easiest dog in the world. She never barked. She walked well on a leash. Her breath had no odor. She enjoyed being scratched but did not demand it; she took herself out to pee through the doggie door. She was almost eerily well-behaved, like a small child who sits silently through an adult dinner. I was always waiting for her to drop the act and lose her mind, chew up a shoe or take a shit on the carpet. But she wasn’t that kind of dog, and this wasn’t that kind of house.

My sister had installed a complicated alarm system that made announcements as I moved through the house. “Basement door breech,” it called in a robot voice as I hauled my laundry downstairs. The system never made use of its knowledge. Still, it wanted me to know it knew.

When I arrived for the summer, my sister showed me how to enable and disable the alarm: the numbers to press in a certain sequence. But I was too nervous to put my skills to the test. I couldn’t risk setting off the alarm while my sister rested to perform the job that funded my air conditioning, my baths, my midday TV sessions, my machine-crushed ice cubes. I wasn’t paying enough rent to disturb her sleep. I wasn’t paying rent.

Susan descended the stairs slowly that first morning in Wisconsin. It wasn’t clear whether her infection would get better or worse. It wasn’t clear whether I was to blame. She sniffed fruitlessly at the snow and I felt a buzz in my pocket. It wasn’t Ross; it was his mother. This was odd: how had she gotten my number? The message was a list of local resources for mental illness. I put the phone back in my pocket. My eyes filled, my cheeks grew warm, and I cursed quietly. Then I laughed. Susan looked up at me, confused, because nothing real had happened. There was no plot. We were just two animals on a frozen lawn.

The first time Ross walked me home, it was well past midnight. “You have a key?” he asked when we reached my sister’s house.

“Yeah,” I said, “But there’s an alarm.”

We walked around to the backyard. It was the hottest week of the year and the plants were buzzing with sun and growth and bugs. Even in the dark, I could feel their leaves reaching out to me, leaning close to brush my arms and ankles as I passed. I stopped in front of the back door and rehearsed the alarm code in my mind. Ross came up behind me and put his hands on my waist. It wasn’t clear whose sweat sealed us together. I thought my whole life would be like this. Or I didn’t think about my whole life. I was just trying to open a door.

Suddenly Pixie emerged from the dog flap. I flinched and fell backward onto Ross’s chest. We watched as the dog ran to the far end of the yard, squatted efficiently, then ran back into the house.

“Watch,” I said, dropping to all fours. I stuck my head through the flap and saw the living room from a new angle: the couch, the coffee table, the ottoman, everything loomed above me. Everything had legs.

I pulled my head out and turned back to Ross, who was standing right where I’d left him. “Goodnight,” I said. He smiled like he didn’t think I would do it.