Severance

by Ling Ma

I had never been to Lane’s apartment before, on the fifth floor of a loft building. We consoled ourselves with the fact that Lane came from wealth—her father dealt high-end Miami real estate or something—and thus augmented her Spectra salary with her trust fund. We had gone from room to room, Lane flipping on the lights to expose an explosion of exposed brick and midcentury furnishings, beautiful in an obvious way, tits and ass, marble countertops and chrome fixtures. The loft was only a few blocks away, she pointed out, not with insignificant pride, from the building where Heath Ledger had died. The living room, with its high ceilings, was furnished with Eames chairs and a white shag rug, dirtied with kitty litter tracked around by a cat that was nowhere to be seen.