In the fall of 2005, Sheila Heti spent a day in a diner in Toronto observing the enormous EUCAN electrified garbage can at the corner of College and Bathurst. The EUCAN cans, known to detractors as Monster Bins, carry advertising and have been condemned by citizens’ groups as environmentally unsound.

Rick laughed. I walked away. I was irritated at Henry, at Lee for getting stoned and being paranoid and leaving without saying goodbye, at Rick, at everyone. A few days earlier, we had all been walking together in a field of mud, after driving to King City to trespass through a field to see a Richard Serra sculpture that had been built there years ago. It had been a cold, cloudy day. My boots got all muddy. We had been fucking happy then.

A tall man sits on the back porch of his Las Vegas home. It is in a gated community, which is also a country club, which was built seven years ago, and it is almost the only thing in the desert. A red mountain of sand can be seen in the distance, and another gated community is being built—it’s still just the bare wood frames of the houses. The tall man has made more money in the past three weeks than in his whole life.