Content Warning: The stories in this book contain explicit descriptions of sex work, drug use, thoughts of suicide, mental health conditions, and interpersonal violence.

Ms. Mooney teaches on the first floor of the Ukrainian Catholic School in New York City. She is frequently hungover in the mornings, and drinks at a nearby Indian restaurant on her lunch break. Her classroom is the school’s old library, a disheveled, noisy space filled with out-of-date textbooks and hidden stashes of pornography. Mooney is not an effective teacher, and fabricates her students’ standardized test scores when she knows they will fail. She often shares inappropriate information about her life—including her sex life—with her students.

Mooney’s addiction to alcohol defines her life away from work. She buys two or three 40-ounce bottles of beer on her way home, and then more in the evening. At 10:00pm she moves from beer to vodka. Feeling guilty, she tries to “better herself” by reading or listening to music, “as though God were checking up on [her]” (6). Occasionally, she’ll go to a bar and order drinks she doesn’t like in an attempt to force herself to drink more slowly.

As a result of her addiction, Mooney has very few meaningful relationships. Mooney has an unnamed boyfriend, who is still in college and comes to visit her on weekends, and an ex-husband, living in Chicago, whom she calls when drunk. Her only adult friend is a woman named Jessica Hornstein, who lives on Long Island and visits to experience nightlife in New York City. These visits usually end with Jessica going home with a stranger and Mooney drinking alone.

The climax of the story comes when Mooney’s ex-husband visits and asks to have dinner with her. She spends several days preparing for his arrival: She stops drinking, starts exercising, cleans her apartment, and buys new clothes, sheets, and towels. On the day of the dinner, Mooney arrives early and begins drinking. By the time her ex-husband arrives, she is drunk, and when he offers her an undisclosed sum of money to stop contacting him, she agrees. She drafts a resignation letter and admits to fabricating exam results.

After a few days of drinking and cocaine use, Mooney decides to hand-deliver the resignation letter to the Ukrainian Catholic School. She imagines the priests comforting her and thinks about the moving scenes she saw last time she attended church. When she finally arrives at the church, however, she finds it closed. She sits on the steps briefly before going to a nearby bar, ordering a bowl of pickled onions, and ripping up the resignation letter.