was the right thing to do, she thought, to stay where she was for the moment. Never let them take you to a second location, she’d remind herself.
Of course, six months later, all of Claire’s savings were gone and she’d started charging anything she could on her credit cards—groceries, subway cards, taxi rides, the electric bill. It was easy to live in New York on credit.
At least ten times a day, she signed on to her bank accounts to look at the numbers, trying to make sense of them, trying to make them add up differently. She studied the numbers, like if she looked at them long enough, more money would appear in her bank account. But that never happened. After staring at it for about an hour, she’d begin to get a panicky feeling, and she’d have to sign out quickly, clicking the button at the top, like closing the screen was going to make the problem go away.
Sometimes at night, Claire dreamt about that crazy blond lady on TV, the one who tried to fix the financially irresponsible, adding up their bills, telling them, firmly, that they needed to change their habits. In her dreams, Claire saw this woman walking up to her in a no-nonsense suit, accentuating every word as she said, You cannot live like this. You have got to take responsibility. You have got to live within your means or you are going to end up—Broke. Without. A. Penny. To. Your. Name. Or. A. Place. To. Live.
In the dreams, Claire would try to run away from her. When she woke up, she’d always think, Even my dreams have money problems. Then she’d try to tell herself it wasn’t that bad.
This past month, she’d realized that she was totally screwed, that she probably wouldn’t even be able to pay her full rent next month. She wondered about this in a sort of abstract way, as if the apartment were so absolutely hers that the landlord wouldn’t be able to kick her out. But she knew that wasn’t the truth. She knew her borrowed time was almost up.
EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE, Claire went to craigslist to look at apartment listings. She scrolled through them, clicking on the pictures of the tiny studios, usually in Brooklyn, or else so far up and so far east on the island, she wasn’t even sure it could be considered Manhattan anymore. She looked at the pictures of the empty rooms, clicking through the bathroom photo that showed a bare toilet, naked and exposed in the empty white space. She’d click, click, click along, each one uglier than the one before, until she felt like she was going to throw up.
Even scarier were the apartment shares. She’d gone as far as e-mailing with one guy who was renting out a bedroom in a three-bedroom walk-up at York and Seventy-sixth. Claire set up a time to meet with him, got to the building, and then kept walking. She just couldn’t face it. She knew what she’d find: a tiny place with thin walls, where she’d be able to hear everything her roommates did and said, would have to run into them in the kitchen while eating cereal, and wait her turn for the shower in the morning.
No. Sharing a place with randoms was out of the question. She was too old for that. Maybe a few years ago, it wouldn’t have seemed so bad. But she was twenty-nine and she didn’t want to have to negotiate refrigerator space with strangers.
What she wanted was to stay where she was. It wasn’t fair that she had to leave. She hadn’t done anything wrong. She’d always had a job, had worked hard, had been responsible. Why was she the only one being punished? None of her other friends had to deal with this. Even the dumb girls she’d known in high school seemed to be capable of living as adults. How had they all ended up fine and she’d ended up like this?
Claire loved the apartment that she and Doug had shared. It was a teeny bit run-down, but it was clean and in a beautiful old building. It wasn’t big, but it was certainly the biggest place she’d ever lived in New York—a proper one-bedroom, with a kitchen that opened up into the living room with a counter and stools. What more could you want? Sure, she couldn’t afford it, but maybe something would happen, maybe her circumstances would change.
CLAIRE’S PHONE HAD BEEN RINGING