The Bay Outside the Window

Before I moved to the Bay Area, I thought I was rich.

You can't blame me. Back in grad school on the East Coast, my classmates went off to consulting and investment banks, and I landed a big-tech offer on the West Coast with a base salary trailed by a very long string of zeros. I screenshotted the offer letter to my mom. She went silent on WeChat for so long I thought the connection had dropped, then replied with three words: "Don't get cocky. 🙂"

I didn't get to be cocky for long.

Because once I moved, I discovered that everyone here has a long string of zeros — and the rent has the longest string of all. I split a two-bedroom with Vivi, at a monthly rate best described as ransom: the hostage was my own life. Vivi — English name Esther, from Guangzhou, a coworker — we met at an offline meetup for a "Bay Area Women in Tech" WeChat group, talked for half an hour, discovered we worked at the same company, were sworn sisters within three months, and living under one roof within six. She'd landed two years before me and had already mastered that Bay-Area-specific art of not flinching at obscene numbers. Her signature line: "In the Bay, you're not rich, la — you're just not bankrupt yet."

It was ten p.m. when I got home that night. The Uber wound through the hills, the driver playing a radio station in a language I didn't know, and outside the window, house after house glowed warm yellow. Behind every one of those windows, presumably, sat someone exactly like me — twelve hours down, rewarding themselves with delivery. We are all very expensive. We are all very tired 😮‍💨

Vivi was cross-legged on the couch in a sheet mask, the TV playing some European travel show — she calls this "spiritual OOO."

"Welcome home, bankrupt person." She didn't look up.

I dropped my backpack. The work laptop inside made a dull thunk. I didn't check on it. I hadn't closed that thing before ten p.m. in seven months.

On the screen, a blond Dutch host was cycling through a field I'd seen in my dreams. I sat down on the other end of the couch and heard myself start talking.

"Vivi," I said. "I've always low-key loved the Netherlands."

"Who doesn't, lo," she said through the mask. "Tulips, windmills, legal weed."

"Not that." Though honestly I couldn't have said what, exactly. All I knew was that ever since China, ever since the first time I opened that book of Dutch Golden Age paintings in a library, that country had occupied a room in my head. I loved the paintings. I loved the history. I loved their entire logic of commerce and ocean and how money moves between people. And I'd read somewhere that the Netherlands ranks among the happiest countries on earth.

"I just want to know," I heard myself say, "what exactly makes them so happy."

Vivi finally turned her face to me, a wicked grin under the sheet mask. "What makes them happy? An average height of one-ninety and streets full of tall handsome men, la. My advice: fly over and do some field research."

I didn't take the bait.

But that night, after Vivi went to bed, I sat alone in the dark living room and opened my laptop — mine, not the work one. Incognito window, like a thief. I searched a round-trip to Amsterdam.

When the price came up, I froze.

Not because it was expensive. The opposite — on my salary, that ticket was cheap in a way that felt almost insulting. I could afford it. I could completely afford it.

I stared at the orange BOOK NOW button for a long time. Then I closed the window.

Turns out I could afford the ticket. What I couldn't yet afford was the version of me who would press the button.

Couldn't yet.

Note the word: yet.