1. The timeline of the thoughts/events/activities depicted has been compressed. This probably didn’t all happen in two days.
2. The 17th floor studio wasn’t actually in Roxbury—it was in South End, at the very edge of Roxbury. I didn’t want readers to get confused between “South End” and “Southie”—completely different neighborhoods. And I didn’t actually reside in the 17th floor studio. I had my own apartment in Fenway. But I did leave for work from there on more than one occasion.
3. My fiance never pulled the New Year’s Eve shift because he was always able to swap it out for Christmas, us being Jewish and all. But there were plenty of times that were like this, and the isolation seemed important to the narrative.
4. There was no rat in the pet store. It was all birds. But I didn’t have a picture of a parrot to work with. My fixation with rats grew entirely out of Piratecat's game, but it seemed too much of a distraction to go there.
5. We didn’t attend a Bharat Natyam performance. It was capoeira. But I didn’t have a picture of that, either.
All things considered, I thought the changes to reality were minor. But just for accuracy, I wanted to make note of them.