You’re in line at the hipster sandwich place on a funereal block in the hills, and you don’t want to build your own. You could choose from one of the featured selections, but each is fattening. Pastrami is the polar opposite of Los Angeles.

You had wanted to make something yourself, avocado toast for example, in your gleaming kitchen overlooking the Pacific. But you were out of avocadoes and there was only a quarter stick of butter left, which meant you couldn’t yield anything toothsome. You could have had someone bring butter by, but that would have made you feel spoiled and flabby. And even though you would have wanted Kerrygold, you would have probably said Organic Valley or whatever, just no Land O’ Lakes. And the gofer would have texted no less than twice. All they have is Breakstone’s or Horizon?

And you would have sat looking at the waves thawing on your rocky bandage of beach in abject misery, waiting no less than three minutes so that the light-brown-haired girl who was younger and smaller and poorer than you would have had to tarry there, in the refrigerated section, wearing a sleeveless shirt on a gorgeous beach day, for you to reply, Salted. Sometimes, the most you could do to make yourself happy was control another being. In the end, of course, it would never work out for you. You would always, for one, be fatter than you wanted to be. Controlling other people adds about five hundred calories. A delicious tropical drink at the bar next to Nobu on the PCH has one hundred more calories, if you’re trying to make your assistant pay for the fact that you are on a bad date, by texting her while she is on a good one.

In line you open a bag of Caesar Twice-Baked Croutons. If you only eat half the bag, it will be 170 calories. There is a fly, large and slowed by the greatness of late summer, coasting low. A couple in front of you is playful. Leaning in, the young man inhales the mid-section of the girl’s hair. She turns to meet his eyes, smiling. They don’t hear the fly, which is buzzing loud at ear height. When the love-making gaze breaks the boy turns and notices you. At first he barely registers you, because you are not hot and his girlfriend is. And then he recognizes you. He punches his girl in the arm.

—Hey! he says. Hey! It’s— You’re Ari the Ghost Lover! Right?

You feel dizzy, a crouton in your mouth the size of a nightmare. You try to chew it quietly, but there is no quiet, fast way to get rid of a crouton. There is only slow disintegration.

The girlfriend widens her eyes, in apparent recognition. The fly whirs past. Behind you the sooty screen door opens and shuts, and you take the opportunity to turn your head in its direction and chomp the crouton.

—Oh my god, says the girl, it’s you!