I moved to Chicago late last summer and spent my first evening alone scrubbing and rescrubbing an old dresser I had found in the basement of my new apartment. It was plastered in dust and cobwebs, and dotted with some small dried-out things that were probably once eggs. Underneath, it was beautiful—maybe a hundred years old, a deep cherry color with intricate metal handles. I cleaned it and stapled fabric to the bottoms of the drawers, which still catch sometimes and deposit small slivers of wood on my T-shirts. Still, it works well enough.

I loved the apartment when I moved in. It has big windows and a back sunroom nestled in tree branches. Lake Michigan is just down the block. In the first couple weeks I lived here I would call my friends in other cities and tell them about my lake house, as I called it. It was a warm September, and I spent my days drifting back and forth down the street in my swimsuit. A neighbor told me that some people call Chicago in the summer Chiami.