If Playgirl bought my story and ninety-nine more, I could afford a ritzy condo. My point is that people measure stuff—money, strength, time, weight—in very personal ways. A city isn’t so many miles from another city, it’s so many songs on the radio. Two hundred pounds isn’t two hundred pounds, it’s that dumbbell at the gym that no one touched and that seemed like a sword-in-the-stone joke until the day a stranger took it off the rack and started doing single-arm rows with it.
