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The father and child began to speak in another language I couldn't make out. Then the man turned, suddenly, catching me in my stare. I dropped my gaze, feeling my ears redden.

There were the regular café sounds: the low rumble of milk being steamed, the crinkling of paper bags when pastries were slid in. A man in his fifties, a Wall Street type, ate a cookie noisily and peered at his pager.

I returned to the register to order the coffee I brought to my boss every day. It was a dark roast stirred with two pink packets of Sweet'N Low, made paler with half-and-half, until it was "the color of Halle Berry," he'd instructed proudly on my first day, as if that wasn't a terrible thing to say.

On the four blocks to the office I dodged tourists wearing backpacks and bucket hats, holding red bags from the discount designer store. They moved slowly, their faces stupid with awe. I walked fast, with purpose, gripping the cup of coffee, which burned through its cardboard sleeve, proud to be inured to a cityscape that instilled marvel in everyone else. When I entered the immense glass building, I did so with a sense of importance and authority: I 'worked' here. I was an unpaid intern, but still.

Our building was new, a futuristic marvel of glass and steel that curved slightly upward. The elevator was a point of pride. It took me to the twentieth floor within minutes, where I handed Jerry his coffee, which he accepted in his sausagey pink fingers without a word. The flesh on his ring finger bulged around his wedding ring, the way trees grew around old signs or objects. I remembered a photo from the magazine, from somewhere in the Pacific Northwest—a tree growing bark over a boy's bicycle, as though swallowing it. The boy who'd owned the bicycle was an old man by now. Jerry nodded, to indicate the coffee was to his liking.

I spent the next four hours brightening images. When Jerry left early, as he did every evening, I opened Usenet. I had never posted before, so I created a username: 'TimelessinNY'. I typed out my question: 'Does anyone ever feel like time gets stuck? I have these moments when time won't move. A minute lasts forever.' Awaiting responses, I searched for "jobs for art history major." Curator, docent, teacher. It was difficult to picture myself as any of those things. I would be graduating in the spring, and what I wished for was some clear way forward—some passion, like my parents had, that would give my life meaning. I had not inherited their gift for science or, sometimes it seemed, for anything at all.

Before I left for the day, I checked the message board for replies.

There were none.

At the company's holiday party, the tree was false and towering. The Santa was Latino, his red velvet suit emblazoned with the company's logo. A boy band's Christmas album played too loudly. Our larger parent company had rented out a floor of a hotel in Chelsea, lined with windows, giving us a 360-degree view of Manhattan. With money they weren't paying me, I thought. Before leaving for the party, I'd noticed a run in my only pair of black stockings. I drew a line on my calf in Sharpie, a trick my freshman-year dorm-mate had taught me, to make the stocking appear intact.

I picked up a triangle of toast, black beads of caviar clumped on it. The city offered wealth to us in glimpses: Even a college student could eat caviar, or drink wine from crystal. We'd be reminded that we weren't—rich, that is—the moment we returned to our minuscule apartments, where we slept in loft beds and shared closet-sized bathrooms. Even the put-together people—the people who dressed exquisitely, expensively—I had come to learn, didn't necessarily inhabit livable places. Often they dug their elegant clothing from piles on chairs that were their only furniture.

I'd have to be vigilant if I wanted more caviar. Media employees mobbed the stressed young server holding the silver tray. I wondered what this party was doing for their morale. It was obvious who worked in fashion, food, celebrity gossip. My own coworkers wore skin-baring dresses—we'd seen little skin all winter—and ladled punch out of a fountain that frothed uncontrollably.

My fellow interns lingered as a pack by the hors d'oeuvres, finding strength in numbers. Seeing me, they waved, beckoning me over. Most, like me, went to NYU; a few went to Columbia or SUNY. All of them were drinking the alcoholic punch, though many were underage. This went uncommented on, because it was implicit: This was our salary. The other interns were uniformly blond, round breasted, affable. It was plain to see that Jerry, who had done the hiring, had a type. I was the anomaly.

I picked up a shrimp and swiped it through cocktail sauce. It was cold and tasted only faintly of the sea. Shrimp cocktail involved a disorienting amount of chewing, and there was always a moment, eating it, when I thought, 'Too much flesh.' But I had this amnesia about the shrimp-cocktail-eating experience: I forgot how I felt until I was in the act of eating my next one.

I scanned the room for a trash can, not noticing Jerry approach. I'd have preferred to avoid him tonight, but now it was too late. Beside him stood a man, tall and golden haired, who looked to be in his twenties.

"Lily, this is my nephew," Jerry announced, with some pride.

Jerry had cocktail sauce at the edge of his mouth, crusted like blood.

"And this is Lily," he said to the nephew.

He slapped the nephew on his back. I held up the shrimp tail and shrugged at the nephew, like, 'Sorry, wish I could, but I can't shake your' 'hand at the moment'.

"She's Korean," my boss added.