> He fuqed me too hard, from behind, and it tweaked my back; I had to see a chiropractor on my lunch break the next day.

I saw the economist three times while I was in New York for that shoot. Then I went back to Los Angeles and pined for him, wishing that he wanted a real relationship with me. I had started online dating when I’d moved to Los Angeles a year and half earlier, and in all that time I hadn’t found so much as a reliable hookup, much less a boyfriend. My children were seventeen and eighteen; I was only thirty-nine, but I was about to be an empty nester, and “Orange” was ending, so why shouldn’t I consider someone who lived in New York? I knew that a man of his class and background probably wasn’t a realistic possibility, but he kept texting and e-mailing, so I kept responding. I invented a form: an infinite letter. I wrote to him on nice ivory stationery, enclosed in an envelope with a ruby pinstripe. When I got to the end of the first page, I mailed it, even though I was in the middle of a sentence. The next day, I continued the sentence and wrote another page and mailed it. I kept this going for thirty-seven days. Who knows what I said. I fantasized about him constantly. And then I found out that I’d be writing another episode of “Orange,” which meant I’d be going back to New York for a shoot in December. This time, I’d be there for five weeks instead of three, because of the holiday break. I was so excited to see him again. I began to think that maybe it could be the beginning of something real after all.

•

We saw each other as soon as I got to the city. He fuqed me too hard, from behind, and it tweaked my back; I had to see a chiropractor on my lunch break the next day. After work, I met the economist at a climbing gym in Long Island City. He was older than I was but had young kids, and he’d brought them with him. The oldest one was already a good climber, but the economist wanted to rope climb and needed me to belay him, so the children sat next to each other against a pillar and stared at an iPad. I thought it was careless of the economist to bring them on a date, but I didn’t know what the rules were with their mother.

When it was my turn to climb, I tried a few easy routes. (I had never climbed before.) When I looked at the economist down below, he wasn’t watching, because what I was doing was boring. I was almost to the top of the wall on one ascent when something popped in my left hip. The pain was intense. I fell off the wall and felt nauseated, dangling in the air in my rope harness. When I got to the ground, I could still walk, so I didn’t say anything to him about it. I was embarrassed that I’d hurt myself without doing anything hard. The next day, my hip ached, as it would for months; long after I stopped seeing the economist, I learned I had a torn labrum that would never heal on its own. But that winter I continued to exercise a lot, hoping to become thin and muscular enough for him to fall in love with me.

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