The first morning I woke up in the penthouse I lay still for exactly four seconds before I knew where I was.
The ceiling was the same. The particular quality of the morning light through glass that faced a specific angle of the city, the texture of high thread count sheets, the almost imperceptible hum of climate control that maintained the building’s interior at exactly the temperature someone had decided was optimal and that no one had ever asked me about. Four seconds. Then the seven years collapsed and I was here again, except I was not the woman who had been here before and the room knew it and I knew it and the four seconds were simply the gap between sleep and the recalibration of understanding which version of the story I was currently inside.
I got up. I made coffee in the kitch
