It didn’t get more enjoyable, but it did get more lucrative. I was promoted for the second time on my twenty-eighth birthday, my salary increased to well over six figures, and I was patted on the back by those of my ilk. By age thirty I was a senior financial analyst, labeled a fast-riser and a future star, destined for an executive title and corner office, and completely miserable.

Megan wasn’t, though. She loved it, all of it, and was for the most part oblivious to my complete lack of contentment. I suppose I knew that was what she always wanted—financial security, a husband with a reputable job, elite social status—but I thought she’d at least consider my happiness. I tried to tell her on a few occasions. I gave pointed hints after particularly long days at the office. She ignored me and looked back at her magazines. She was busy making plans.

Megan and I married after graduation. She had been as excited as I had been to move to New York City. She took the lead in apartment hunting, making sure it was the perfect space in the perfect area of town, and generally dismissed the idea that something might be a little more expensive than we could afford. Credit cards. I kept making more money and we kept spending it, on a redecoration or fancy dinners out. She bought us both new Mercedes’ even though we hardly drove.

I did love her still, but something had changed. She no longer had the goals or dreams or that bright look behind her eyes that she had in college. Meg was an English major. She was going to be a novelist. And it seemed like a good plan initially; I’d work and she would write. She could chase her dream while I brought in money. But more than five years in, she had just one partially finished manuscript somewhere on her laptop hard drive. Far fewer words on a page, far more new pairs of shoes and sunglasses and iced coffees. She was still pleasant to be around, but I never expected her to be affected so much by the money. I found it hard to respect her.

One day she was done with New York. It was time to get out of the congestion of the city, she said, and find a quieter place. I didn’t love living in Manhattan either, but the thought of a long commute every day on top of everything else made me want to slit my throat. Connecticut, she said. Find a nice little white house with dark window shutters and decorate again. Join a country club and enter social circles and generally dick around while I rode the train for two hours every day and pored over numbers for another twelve.

Her mother visited from time to time, and the two of them would look at properties online and giggle and disregard price tags. They would plan how they’d arrange each room, and call real estate agents for more information on the properties. Numerous times I mentioned that maybe it would be a good idea to wait a year or two. That it was okay to just look, but we might want to hold off until we had a better idea of where my job was going. Neither heard me. They weren’t just looking.

In each potential house, in every master plan between Megan and her mother, there was one room dedicated to being a nursery. They giggled every time they said it.

“The city isn’t a suitable place to raise children,” her mother would say, with Megan nodding in agreement.

Neither ever asked if I wanted kids.

One day I woke up and admitted to myself things were out of control. I’d lost any grip I’d ever had on my own life, and the only thing that was going well was my job, which was the one thing I couldn’t stand. It was a predicament. I tried throwing myself into work even more, putting in extra hours above the usual twelve or thirteen, hoping to find some sort of purpose there. I told Megan we were slammed. Work was the one thing I knew I was good at, so I thought by spending more time there I’d develop a fulfillment from my skills, or something. Of course, I didn’t. I just hated it more.

I was exhausted, and the exhaustion is what triggered it. Too many days of waking up at five and getting home at midnight, and I could hardly open my eyes when the alarm went off. I was a zombie at the office, staggering around with an empty face and downing pots of coffee that did nothing. Megan was asleep when I left in the morning and when I got home at night. I told myself I just had to push through. Just keep going, a few more days or a week, and something good would happen. A breakthrough, or something. It’s what I made myself believe.

And something did happen.

The alarm went off at 5:03 a.m. as usual. The radio kicked on with the familiar click of a switch flipping, the volume loud because I needed it loud. I stayed unmoved from my fetal position and tried to will the noise to go away, the clock to roll back a few hours. This was how things went. Usually I lay there for a minute or two, trying to rouse my muscles from their hibernation, until Megan rolled over from her side of our king bed and hit me. But today, I didn’t.

Once my brain woke enough to transform the noises coming from the radio from blunt, unintelligible sounds into actual voices and music, I realized this morning was different. On the radio was not the voices of over-caffeinated morning show hosts squawking about celebrity gossip, or a commercial for auto parts, or an overplayed Top 40 track, but something I’d seldom heard. It was a song; a real, actual song, but more than that. A skillful acoustic guitar came from that small speaker, with a steady rhythm that flowed like a river. There were deep, heavy drums, and a gravelly voice that forced my eyes open. And as he sang, I sat up in bed.

Can I come home for the summer?

I could slow down for a little while

Get back to loving each other

Leave all those long and lonesome miles behind

It hit me. I don’t know why, but it hit me. It was some blend of bluegrass and Americana, but neither of those things, really. There was faithful sincerity in that song, too much sincerity for the radio.

“Meg,” I said, sitting up in bed with open eyes.

She grunted, her back turned to me.

“Meg, who sings this song?”

She grunted again.

I reached over and turned the radio up.

I am tired

I am tired

Can I come home for the summer?

I could slow down for a little while

I fell in love with it, all of it, as I sat there in bed and listened. It was the opposite of the usual shit I listened to. All the synthesizers and overdubs and digital vocal corrections, stuff I didn’t really like but listened to anyway because it was there. This was raw, unadulterated beauty. And I had to have it.

I didn’t even know what it was, but I had to have it. I didn’t know what the words meant, but they sounded so good. They sounded right, like the secret answer to a secret question. They were the way out.

The song ended, and after a second of dead air the radio went straight into a station promo. No explanation, or indication of who that might’ve been, or why they decided to play that particular song instead of the usual garbage. Just like that, time moved on, like it never happened. The promo played loudly with its sound effects and fast-talking voiceover, and Megan mumbled something and rolled over. I turned off the radio and got up.

I walked toward the shower and my feet were light. My hands tingled. My brain was alive, and a voice filled my head. It was strong, and it was clear, and it repeated one thing.

Go, it said.

Go. Go.

I stopped where I was, and looked down at my bare feet on the hardwood floor. I glanced around the room, at the TV on the far wall, at the matching nightstands, at the minimalist, black, angular decor.

Go, it said.

I looked at my briefcase sitting on the floor, papers spilling out. I thought of the other stacks of papers that would be waiting on my desk when I got to work.