Fantasies of walking out of one’s life are always alluring, not least because in reality, they seem at once improbably unrealistic, somewhat shamefully naive and, at bottom, terrifying. We nurture these ideas of stepping out of ourselves in private, aware that they also suggest a certain narcissism; and that they are usually available to those who can choose displacement rather than have it thrust upon them.
For Dylan, the 38-year-old Englishwoman who calls time on the New York existence she has built for herself by abruptly quitting her job in advertising, subletting her apartment and seizing on a three-month shift as a house-sitter, the fantasy appears to pay almost immediate dividends, at least symbolically. She wants to become a writer; the apartment she moves to is in Alphabet City. Her relationship with her West Coast boyfriend is bloodless to the point of anaemia; enter, via the fire escape, a handsome and charismatic man in a state of near-perpetual sexual readiness. Even the cat she has promised to feed in return for free bed and board is undemanding. A new life awaits.
