I finally did it, I got the keys and moved into the place on 4th and Main, the one with the floor-to-ceiling windows and the stupidly expensive marble in the kitchen. I spent thirty-five years climbing that corporate ladder, hitting every metric, sitting through a thousand performance reviews that made me want to scream, and now I’m supposedly "retired" but still taking these high-end freelance design gigs because I like the work, you know? But I’m sitting here looking at the guest list for this housewarming thing on Saturday and I feel like a total fraud. Is that weird? To feel like you’re rubbing your success in people’s faces just by existing in a room with central air? Most of my friends, the ones I’ve known since we were twenty and broke and eating cold beans out of a can, they’re still... well, they’re struggling. And not the "I can't find a good vintage rug" kind of struggle, but the "my landlord just hiked the rent another five hundred bucks" kind. We’re all in our late sixties or early seventies, like, we should be past this. But the city just ate them up while I somehow managed to stay ahead of the curve. I look at my new backsplash—which cost more than some of them pay in rent for six months—and I just want to cover it with a towel before they walk in. Does everyone feel this? I saw Elena last week for coffee. She’s a brilliant illustrator, truly, but she’s living in this walk-up where the radiator clanks like a dying engine and the hallway always smells like boiled cabbage. She was telling me about her new "roommate"—who is twenty-four and plays techno at 3 AM—just so she can keep her studio space. And I’m sitting there, nodding, and all I can think about is my heated bathroom floors and the fact that I don't have to share a kitchen with anyone. I didn’t mention the move. I couldn't. I just felt like this huge, bloated gargoyle of capitalism sitting across from her. It’s gross, right? So the party is in two days. I’ve got the catering coming—tiny little crab cakes and that wine that comes in the heavy bottles—and I’m literally pacing the hardwood floors wondering if I should hide the fancy espresso machine. Like, if I put a toaster over it, will they notice? It’s pathetic. I worked for this. I did the seventy-hour weeks. I played the office politics games until I was blue in the face and dealt with bosses who didn't know a serif from a hole in the ground. I earned the right to have a view of the harbor, right? Fight me on that, honestly. But then I think about Joe. Joe worked just as hard but got laid off three times in ten years because his firm "restructured," and now he’s looking at moving two hours away just to survive because his building is going condo. It’s the eyes, you know? When they walk in on Saturday, they’re going to do that thing where they look around and their eyes get wide for a split second, and then they get that polite, tight smile. "Oh, this is lovely, you’ve done so well!" And underneath it, I’ll hear the math. I’ll hear them calculating the square footage and comparing it to their cramped kitchens with the peeling linoleum. I remember this one meeting back in ‘98, my boss—this guy who wore sweater vests even in July—told me I had "high potential" but needed to be more "competitive." I took it to heart. I climbed. I pushed. I won. And now I’m at the top of my little mountain and it’s... it’s lonely as hell. I want to celebrate. I want to show off the way the light hits the living room at 4 PM. It’s beautiful, it really is. But every time I think about pouring a glass of champagne, I just feel like I’m rubbing salt in a wound that won’t heal for them. Is that just my ego talking? Why does it feel like a crime to be comfortable? I’m seventy-two years old and I’m scared to have my friends over for a drink because I have a guest bedroom and they have a pull-out couch from the eighties. I almost called the whole thing off this morning. I told myself I had a cold, or the pipes were leaking, or something...