My landlord put a sign on my door Sunday morning. 14 days notice to pay up or I'd get evicted.

What did they expect me to do? I was a freelance art writer.

Each gig paid OK. The going rate for a press release or artist statement was anywhere from $200 to $800. I was good. I could get out an entire gallery show press release or show review in a couple hours. Effectively that should have been $100 per hour. At a full-time rate that would have been more than six figures a year. That's a lot of money.

The problem was I could only land a couple jobs per month. I loved writing. I wished I could sit down and write all day and get paid for it.

My client network was good, but not great. I knew a lot of clients, and they liked me. That was good. Except my clients knew a lot of freelancers. They'd reach out to their entire freelance list to see who was available, and then whichever one of us replied first got the job. Not great.

I had a really good rent deal. $1500 for a 150 square foot studio in greenpoint. Did the landlord add an extra zero and decide that would be the rent? It should have been at least $2000. Whenever people heard how low my rent was they got really jealous.

Last winter there just weren't any jobs. That's when I got a couple months behind on rent. Since then I'd been paying rent for each new month, but you only have to be behind on rent for 5 months and then they can give you 14 days notice and evict you.

I knew I had to be ready to get the next gig that came in. I made sure I had push notifications on for emails, and got ready to move fast.

Tuesday morning while I was watching videos of a jump rope influencer, it finally happened. An email came in from a gallery asking if I was available to write a press release for a video art group show at the Samsung gallery. It paid $400, half up front half net 30. Forty-five seconds later I pressed Send on "I would love to work on this. Please let me know when we can connect for more information. Best," and waited for a response.

The jump rope footwork video was still paused on my laptop mid-jump–one knee up at a ninety degree angle toe pointed, the other leg straight out toe flexed, the influencer's deltoids and neck muscles popping out.

I needed this job.

I needed the money.

I needed to pay rent.

I needed a home.

I needed to do whatever it took to get this job.

I needed to do anything it took to get the money to pay rent and keep my home.

The email came back that afternoon. They said they loved my stuff but someone else got back to them sooner and they'd be in touch about any future projects.

So close. One other person got back to them faster than I did.

One other person between me and my goal.

I closed my eyes.

Do whatever it takes. I knew what I had to do.

I immediately texted my friend Lara and asked if she'd heard who got this press release gig. Lara is a freelance writer too, one of the only good ones. We'd always share job leads, and proof-read each other's stuff. It was important to have someone on your side. Lara was my best friend.

Lara replied back right away. "I got that email too. It was already 20 min old when I saw it so no point replying" then "Alex posted about a new gig" and "Maybe he got this one"

Shit. I knew Alex. I actually hated Alex. He lived a few blocks away from me. I'd been over there before. Alex always refused to share Ubers back to our neighborhood if we were leaving a party at the same time. Like what the hell, we wouldn't have to talk or anything. I'd obviously pay half.

Alex wasn't even a good writer. Plus he had a job at a bookstore so I didn't even see why he needed the freelance money.

I checked online. Alex's bookstore closed at 8pm. At 8:30pm I left my apartment. A streetlight cast a dark shadow behind the bony leafless tree across the street from Alex's building. I leaned against the far side of the tree and waited.

At 8:53pm Alex showed up. I recognized the ugly New Yorker tote bag he always has on one shoulder.

At that moment I thought maybe I wouldn't do it. This was a bad idea. This was crazy. Who was I? Maybe I didn't need the money that bad. I could figure something out. I could stay with Lara a bit. Maybe I could get a job at a bookstore myself.

It took forever for Alex to get from the street corner to his building.

At the top of the stoop Alex unlocked the front door, and it slammed shut behind him.

I lost my chance.

I hated myself.

I felt sick.

I heard a buzzing in my ears.

What was I going to do. How was I going to make rent? I couldn't stay with Lara. That wouldn't fix anything. It would just make her hate me.

The door reopened. Alex came back outside with a trash bag in one hand. He disappeared under the stoop to where the garbage cans must be. I was already crossing the street. The buzzing in my ears disappeared.

Alex was trying to open a bungee-corded trash can lid with his free hand when I rotated through my hips and rammed the longest skinniest knife from my kitchen into his head. The knife tip went perfectly through his ear and into his skull. Beginner's luck.

I flinched away from a hot burning in my eyes. The knife handle slipped from my hand, warm and wet in the dark.

The body thudded down between the plastic trash cans. I wiped the burn away from my eyes, my sleeve came away smeared black with blood.

That was all much quieter than I would have thought. Above me the front windows of the first floor apartment glowed with gentle light. I could hear a children's tv show playing.

That was much easier than I expected.

I couldn't get my phone's flashlight to turn on. My hands were too wet.

I felt around on the ground to get the knife back. The blade pulled out of Alex's ruined ear without a sound.

I stomped my foot down, imagining the pool of blood growing around Alex's head, imagining dead red blood splattering onto the sides of the trash cans and dripping down in perfect straight dark lines. I imagined gripping the knife until my clenched fist shook, stretching my arms straight out to the sides as far as they could go, looking up at the night sky and unleashing great howls of execration.

The world was silent. The children's tv show faded back into my awareness.

I wiped my wet hands off on the trunk of a tree.

I didn't see a single person on my way home.

Back in my apartment, my wet clothes thudded to the floor of the shower. I left the knife in a tray of bleach to soak overnight, got in bed, and slept for 9.5 hours.

The birds woke me up. I loved their cheerful twittering.

I did throw up a couple times that morning. Leftover adrenaline.

Overall I felt such a sense of relief. Life was good. I was going to be OK.

I brewed a pot of hibiscus tea and started researching the artist I'd need to write a press release for. I finished my outline at 1pm.

The gallery emailed at 3pm, saying they would love to offer me the job after all. I told them I had already jotted down some notes from when they first sent out the proposal, and sent my outline to them immediately. Forty minutes later I attached the final draft to an email, and scheduled it to be sent at 11:37pm.

I rode the train to soho. It wasn't even 4pm yet. The world looked bright and clear. The sun rays were beautiful. Sunlight isn't even white, it's just perfect transparent illumination flooding the world. I normally don't leave my apartment before 7pm since I'd be online waiting for jobs.

I dropped my bloodstained clothes in a trashcan at Prince and Crosby and then went into Uniqlo.

Van Gogh was in the public domain now. I bought a Starry Night t-shirt. I wondered what it would be like if art entered the public domain as soon as the artist died.

Ten hours of sleep later and the next morning I was chopping ginger to make a curry when a gig email came in. I had already drafted a reply stating I'd love to take the job, and copied to my clipboard with cmd+C. I kept my laptop open next to the cutting board. All I had to do was wipe off my hands, open an email reply, press cmd+V, and then click Send. That took 12 seconds.

I re-read the job email. This time it was for creating a few versions of an artist profile for Olivia van Kuiken. They wanted three versions: something comprehensive and formal to use for grant applications, something comprehensive and funny to put on their website, and something short to use in group shows. $800.

The email came back a couple hours later this time. They said two people had replied before me. Fuck.

I reached out to Lara. We scoured the IG stories of every NY writer we knew, and searched Twitter for the artist name, or any other post related to landing a new gig posted by anyone we followed or that people-we-followed followed.

It didn't take long. Someone we'd never heard of, Caleb, had landed the gig. And Erik, a writer that Lara knew from grad school, had made a frustration post about missing out on it by a few seconds.

It was easy to find Caleb online. I kept their Twitter feed open and refreshed it every five minutes for the rest of the day. That night they made their last mistake. Caleb tweeted about seeing Megan Fox at the Drift launch party. I took the train over, waited outside for Caleb to leave, and pushed them in front of a train on their way home. Dumbass. Easy.

I had met Erik a few times over the years. He kind of sucked. Lara bought an eighth from Erik once, but when Lara got home and measured it the bag was light. You can't do that to people.

A little after midnight I found Erik at Mood Ring. I followed him into the bathroom, locked the door, and strangled him with the shoelace from one of my hiking boots.

Strangling someone was not that hard. The guy did thrash around a bit, but the side of his head bumped the sink and then after that it was easy to get him face down on the floor and pull up on the shoestring wrapped around each hand and count to one thousand.

The next day the news reported that the body showed up two blocks away from Mood Ring. Weird.

This time it took three days to get the gig. When they finally reached out to me I already had the artist profiles drafts finished. They put me in touch with the artist Olivia. She loved them and I only had to change a couple words.

I was sleeping really well.

I still threw up in the morning most days. When I needed to pour tea I started putting a towel down under the cup in case my hands shook. Sometimes my whole body would start shaking. The only way to make it stop was lying in bed with a blanket wrapped around me and focusing on my breathing.

Overall I felt great though. Being so close to paying back that rent took a huge weight off my mind.

I went ahead and Venmo'd my landlord $500 with a message that I'd landed a new gig and the rest was on the way. That night my landlord stopped by with coconut lemon bars. "I didn't think you'd make it. I'm happy that you've really turned things around with your career."

The coconut lemon bars were good. My landlord got the texture so smooth with a CuisineArt. I ate the lemon bars for breakfast the next two days. That saved me about $14 by not getting a canned coffee and Kind Bar from the corner store.

Another email came in. A big review in Artforum. I was third in line. Again. I did have push notifications on my phone for emails, but so did everyone else.

On Twitter my search turned up some account I'd never heard of posting that they'd just missed out. That wasn't a big deal. I found them and did the train thing again. The train thing is super easy. It's good they don't have any barriers up between the waiting platform and the tracks.

The other freelancer ahead of me–the one who had my gig–was Lara.

Whatever it takes.

I texted Lara "congrats on landing that review of miho hatori's 47 canal performance video. that's sick"

She replied "thanks b. I'll def namedrop you with your line about how the title medium 98.6 can read as the singular of social media"

I wrote back "haha not necessary" then "hey want to cowork tomorrow? Your place?"

"Ya perf. I need help concentrating to get this review done"

I typed "^_^" and "1pm?"

"Yay"

Lara and I coworked together a lot. We'd set a 30 minute timer, sit next to each other so we could see each other's laptop screens, and force ourselves to sit there with a word processor up and not talk and not touch our phones. I would keep notes at the bottom of the doc of thoughts I needed to share with Lara when we were allowed to talk again. When the timer went off, we'd have 5 minutes to talk about anything, then do 30 minutes of work again.

We'd sometimes do this five times in a row, then make some tea and sit around with our phones and catch up on social media together.

When I got to Lara's the next day, she was cleaning up lunch. I dried the wet dishes with a hand towel and put them away in the cupboards.

When we sat down and pressed start on the timer I asked Lara "Would you do something for me?"

Lara replied "Don't you want to start working?"

"Can you do this for me?"

Lara was really smart. She figured it out. She knew what I had been doing. "You know I love you, right? You need this more than me." Lara's eyes looked wet. "I really think I'm done here. I don't even know how many times I've thought about ending things. This has been such a hard year for me." Lara laughed. "I mean, like, such a hard life. It's been like this a lot longer than a year." Lara slipped off her shoes and lay down on the couch, staring up at the ceiling. She pushed the sofa's back cushion up over and onto the floor to make room for me and patted the empty space next to her for me to join her. "I'm ready."

I stepped over Lara into the deep part of the couch and lay next to her. The couch was pretty wide.

Lara ran a finger through my hair, snagged on a tangle, and said again "I'm ready."

I got up onto one knee, then straddled Lara and put my hands on her neck

She coughed. "Squeeze more from the sides so I pass out first. It hurts when you put weight on the front of my windpipe like that."

I repositioned my weight.

Lara nodded. Her face was getting red. It looked like she could only keep her eyes halfway open. "Hey don't forget to mention how Miho Hatori performed at that plant store recently. You can compare the human audience's experience of being surrounded by plants to being surrounded by paintings in the gallery, and make that connection to what is organic or inorganic."

"OK."

Lara's lips went up in a smile. Her eyes closed. Her eyes stayed closed.

The timer went off.

Later I found out that MOMA acquired the light sculpture from Miho Hatori's performance for its permanent collection. The MOMA curator had read my review. The client said it couldn't have happened without me.

I missed Lara. I never made a new best friend. Plus Lara had been better than me at finding the other freelancers on social.

Over time I started to land more and more gigs without doing anything special. I still kept push notifications on, and kept a reply ready on my clipboard to get my responses out as fast as possible.

People were saying there was a shortage of good freelance writers. I even got to raise my rates.

Every year there were more and more new writers. Winter and spring were the best seasons for me, before a fresh batch of students popped out of their degree programs each summer.

Eventually I couldn't keep up. It was too much.

I applied for some regular jobs and got one as an office manager at a startup. I made $60k a year plus health insurance. I went to the doctor for the first time in four years.

I still know a few freelancers. I see their IG stories about openings and gallery dinners. I don't get invited anymore. That's OK. I'm tired almost all the time anyway. I don't sleep well these days.