Every check I wrote confirmed their view of me rather than changing it — see, he pays, that’s what he’s good for.

Grover, who had never earned a dollar he kept, looked down on me precisely because I earned dollars and gave them away to him.

The logic is grotesque, but it is real, and I lived inside it for a decade before I understood it.

“What’s so funny?” I asked.

Roxanne flipped the paper face-down.

“Nothing that concerns you, Camilo.” I walked past her, picked it up, and turned it over.