“I wanna be a billionaire, so freaking bad…” Yaritza hummed the catchy tune to herself while scrolling through the WikiHow page “How to Embezzle Money” on her middle-class 11.6″ MacBook Air while sitting in her middle-class 448 square-feet studio in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, across the Central Park and a few subway stops to the Wall Street in the Financial District. She hated the small laptop, her tiny apartment, and her middle-class life. She had always wanted to be rich. All things considered, she just knew in her heart that embezzling money was the only sure way for her to afford a lavish life. A sumptuous surrealism kind of life.

When they asked me to say a few words at Gary’s retirement party, I was nervous. I’m not much of a public speaker. But when I started to think of what I’d say, I got nostalgic. Gary and I go way back. We started together at the County in the Payroll Division 26 years ago. We were young men then, in our early thirties. Both of us had left the private sector to take our first government jobs. This was back when government work was still considered honorable, ha, ha. We were itching to show everyone what we knew. We had full heads of hair back then, too, believe it or not. We learned the ropes together

It had not been a good Christmas Eve for the Nyhus family. It started off all wrong when Eric arrived late donning a new girl on his arm, a woman the family had no idea even existed, let alone would be joining them for the evening. Her name was Eden, and while friendly enough, she wore so many fake gold bangles on her arm that it caused a racket while taking communion at First Lutheran that night.

Mr. Stevenson must have had a first name, but, if so, his teachers didn’t know it. “Is that so, Stevenson?” they inquired. “Speak up, Stevenson, so that the whole class can hear you.” Mr. Stevenson’s parents probably knew his first name at one point, but may have forgotten. His friends didn’t know it, for the same reason that unicorns don’t know the capital of North Dakota.

We sat, seven of us, in a room with surgical white walls, and for the first time since arriving I felt discomfited. Being an addict is one thing, but being addicted to… to the thing that each of us present were addicted to, well, it was just plain embarrassing. Alcohol, drugs, sex, all were preferable addictions. The sooner this madness was over with, the better.