It's a long walk from the ghetto-like neighborhood where Evans rents his room to the busy strip of Queen Street West where he agreed to meet Carrie. During the walk he finds himself pondering the issues that continue to plague him. He even wonders if it's worth while going out to meet Carrie. What is she, after all, but a temporary distraction from his problems? She is like a drug; an anti-loneliness drug that does not cure him.

Loneliness. He ponders the word and the problem it presents. Is he depressed because he is lonely or lonely because his depression makes him push people away? He ponders the word depression. Are you really depressed if you have legitimate problems that are causing you grief? Does he have legitimate problems? Not really, it seems. His main problem seems to be that he is depressed. Depression creates his problems, and his problems make him depressed. He sneers at how pathetic he seems, even to himself.

Carrie is standing on the corner at Queen and Bathurst waiting for him, wearing a tight black jacket, short skirt and stockings. She smiles when she sees him.

"Hey," he says, forcing himself to smile. "You look great."

"Thanks," she says. "You okay? I was worried after hearing you on the phone."

"I'm as good as ever, I guess."

They start walking to the house party, and Evans wonders if he should offer his hand for her to hold. Are they dating? They've slept together a few times. Are they in a 'holding hands' place in their relationship? He doesn't know. She slips her hands into her jacket pockets and he feels a mixture of relief and regret for a lost opportunity for contact.

She talks about her work as they walk. It's always the same thing: Nearly-missed deadlines, telephone interviews with people she hasn't properly researched, not enough time to work on her own art while she pays the bills by writing about other people. He nods, asks questions and offers sympathy without mentioning how he's been spending his time: contemplating the essential worthlessness of his life.

She leads them to an address on a side street. It's a second floor apartment above a bargain store, and after Carrie rings a buzzer they have to wait long minutes before someone comes down and let them in. A big-breasted Asian girl pulls open the heavy door and she and Carrie enthusiastically embrace. Carrie introduces Evans to Suzie, and the three of them climb the long flight of narrow, creaking stairs.

Upstairs is an expansive three bedroom apartment full of people of all shapes and colors, mingling and drinking. The place is lavishly decorated in layers of retro-goodness and kitsch, with tie-dyed wall hangings competing for space with '60s and '70s record sleeves tacked to the wall, proudly displaying the greens and oranges and cheesy images of a design era supposedly lost to the ages.

Carrie moves around, greeting her numerous friends. Evans follows, catching some names but missing others and not caring much either way. They end up in the kitchen and someone gives him a cup of sangria. He sips it, feels his wine buzz return in a not unpleasant way, and relaxes. Carrie stands talking with friends. He touches her elbow and tells her he is going to find somewhere to sit down.

Our man moves through the crowded living room and pokes into the different bedrooms, evaluating the scene in each one and moving on. He eventually makes his way to a small room at the back of the apartment, a kind of laundry space and balcony room with wide windows opened. A few young men and women are there, and since this seems to be the designated smoking space in the apartment, Evans pulls out a rolled cigarette and lights it.

"Got another one of those?" asks the guy beside him. He's a slender guy with scorpion tattoos down his forearms and a bandana covering his head.

"Sure." Evans pulls out his packet and takes out another pre-rolled cigarette, holding it out for the guy.

"Thanks. I love the home-rolls. Is this Drum?"

"Yeah."

"I thought so. I could smell it." He lights the thin cigarette. "So. You in a band?"

Despite his sour mood, Evans grins. "No. Why do you ask?"

"I don't know. It just seems like everyone here is in a band, or an artist, or a writer or something. It's that kind of party, I guess."

"Right. Okay, I guess I'm an artist. Or a writer. Something. I'm not sure what I am."

"Oh." He shrugs. "Well, what do you do?"

"I keep scrapbooks, like illustrated journals. I never really thought they were anything until someone told me they were art."

"That's the opposite of most people," says a girl sitting on top of the washing machine.

A girl perched on the dryer with dreads in her hair and a tie-dyed dress laughs. "Yeah, some people think they're working on this great art and it's actually nothing. Or worse."

"Yeah, exactly," says the first girl.

"So how do you tell the difference?" Evans asks.

"You can tell," she says. She has brown hair colored with streaks of purple swept behind her ears and a tight green t-shirt exposing the Celtic knot tattoos on her upper arms. "Most people are just kidding themselves when they think their shit is art. Like Carla," she says, nudging her friend on the dryer. "Her stuff is crap, but she can talk forever about her big, big ideas. Total overcompensation. Deep down she knows she's really just a bad artist."

"Totally," says the girl on the dryer.

"So," says Evans, swirling the pieces of fruit around in his cup of sangria, "if an artist is really depressed, they can use their art to figure out their problems, right? Like catharsis, right, expressing their problems and figuring them out. That works, doesn't it?"

"I would say so," says the guy with the bandana. "I'm not an artist, like a painter or anything like that, but I'm a musician. Playing music helps me work out frustration and things like that. I usually feel better after playing."

"Right," says the girl with purple streaks, "but that's just being frustrated. Are you talking about serious, like, clinical depression?"

Evans shrugs nonchalantly. "Sure. For argument's sake."

"I don't think you can solve serious depression by making art," says the girl on the dryer. "Look at Van Gogh. He painted and painted, but he just got crazier and crazier."

"Or if you want to take musicians," says the purple streaks girl, "you could look at Cobain. He wrote a pile of songs, but they didn't help him get over his problems."

"Now there's a guy that needed a serious dosage of antidepressants," adds the girl on the dryer.

"Yeah, maybe" says the guy in the bandana. "But I bet if you gave him a bunch of anti-depressants we wouldn't have gotten all those songs."

"Why not?" asks Evans.

"Because he used his depression and frustration as inspiration, man. Listen to his lyrics and you can see. Even listen to the way he sings. He can hear how he's just forcing it out, ripping all this stuff right out of his soul. If you took away his angst, he wouldn't have made all that stuff."

"Maybe not," says purple streaks girl, "but he might be alive today."

"There's a time machine question," says dryer girl. "Would you go back in time and give Kurt Cobain a prescription for antidepressants, knowing that it might save his life but prevent him from writing all those songs?"

"That's tricky," says bandana guy, "because without him writing those songs, no one would care one way or the other about him. Who would give a shit if whether or not he killed himself if he never wrote 'Teen Spirit'?"

"That's cold," says Evans.

"Maybe," he says. "But seriously, right now, some kid somewhere is committing suicide. And here we are, having a good time. If you told us some kid in Seattle just killed himself, we would say, 'Oh, too bad.' Someone might even make a joke about it. But tell us someone who wrote a bunch of good songs died, we'd freak out, stay in the park all night lighting candles, and then buy a bunch of t-shirts about it."

"So just strictly out of compassion, would you trade your enjoyment of those songs for a human life?"

"Maybe." Bandana guy looks around. "I don't know. I sure wish he had lived, anyway, depressed or not."

Suzie, the girl who greeted Carrie and Evans at the door of the apartment steps into the little room.

"Hey Suzie," says the girl on the dryer. "Time machine question: would you go back in time and give Beethoven antidepressants if it meant he would never compose the Ninth Symphony?"

"Sure," Suzie says.

"Really?" Evans asks. "You'd trade the Ode to Joy?"

Suzie shrugs. "Sure. To fix a guy's life, yeah. It's just music, right? And besides, why would antidepressants prevent him from writing the Ode to Joy? That doesn't make sense."

Purple streaks girl on the washing machine answers. "Well, I think we're saying that like, if you take away a person's angst, they might not be able to create as well. And I think some different drugs affect your creativity, don't they? I was on Trazinopan for a while and I felt really flat emotionally. I couldn't make art, so I stopped taking it."

"Oh," says Suzie. "I'm on Centrofinal right now and it didn't do anything like that for me."

"What's it do?" asks Evans.

"It's a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor," she says. "You know, like, your body creates serotonin, which is your body's natural happy drug, right? The drug prevents your body from reabsorbing it too fast, so it stays in your system longer."

Bandana guy laughs. "It's like shutting off your liver so you stay drunk longer."

Suzie screws up her face. "Well, not really. Anyway, I think the idea that you can't work unless you're depressed is bullshit. You can get way more done if you don't have all this negativity sucking you down. Maybe if Beethoven had meds he could have written twenty symphonies instead of just nine."

"Okay," says bandana guy, "but our earlier example was Cobain. You can't say he would have written all of his music if he hadn't been so messed up."

"Maybe," Suzie responds, "but who's to say he wouldn't have written something even better?"

"Hmph," snorts bandana guy. "Impossible."

"I guess I'm just over the Romantic notion of the tortured artist," Suzie says. "I'd rather be happy and productive than some depressed cliche."

"Makes sense to me," Evans says. "There's nothing cool about feeling like shit all the time."

The girl on the washer turns to Evans. "Are you depressed?"

"I don't know," he says. "I'm not a doctor. Maybe my life just sucks, you know? How are you supposed to tell?"

"I had more anxiety problems than actual depression," Suzie says, "but I think this is a good test: imagine yourself in your ideal dream situation, achieving all of your goals and, you know, doing all the things you ever wanted to do. Do you imagine yourself being happy, or still unhappy?"

Evans thinks about it, but he can't imagine the situation that she's talking about. Somehow his dreams and goals have been washed away by years of doubt, lost interest and sacrifice of identity. So our man imagines a default dream, sitting at poolside in the sun, relaxing at some resort with no worries, no pressing issues, no problems. Does he imagine himself being happy or unhappy?

"Unhappy," he says. "Still unhappy."

"Then you're probably depressed," says the girl on the washer.

"Yeah, that's what I figured," says Evans.

Our man takes his empty cup of sangria back into the apartment. Carrie is not in the living room. He goes to the kitchen and refills his cup from the punchbowl on the counter, then sets out looking for Carrie.

He finds her in one of the bedrooms. There are half a dozen people in the room, with four of them sitting or sprawled across the bed. Carrie is standing, talking to a tall fellow with a shaved head and tight blue t-shirt. Evans thinks he looks like a young Christian Bale.

"Hey Carrie," Evans says.

"Hey. Where have you been?"

"Out on the balcony. Doing some research."

"Um, okay. Evans, this is Doug. Doug, this is Evans."

The two men shake hands and Doug tries a bone-crusher handshake. Evans makes sure not to show any sign of noticing. There is an awkward moment after that, until Carrie announces that she needs to use the bathroom and steps out.

"So, how did you meet Carrie?" Doug asks.

"She picked me up in a bar," Evans says. "How about you?"

"We met at school. We went out for about a year."

"Oh."

"So what do you do, Evans?" Doug asks.

"Nothing."

"Nothing? School? Job? You don't do anything?"

Evans shrugs and grins. "Not really. I mean, what for, right? What do those things really mean? It's all just bullshit anyway, isn't it?"

"Okay... but what do you actually do all day?"

"I stare at the wall, smoke a couple cigarettes and then go back to bed. What about you? What do you do all day?" Doug smiles. "I'm busy all the time. I work for a production company building sets for TV. And I paint. I'm in some different artist groups. I'm in one with Carrie."

"That's good. You must be very fulfilled."

They stand uncomfortably until Carrie returns. "I'm going to go," Evans tells her.

"But we just got here."

"I know, but I'm not feeling very well. You can stay if you like."

"Doing all that nothing wears you out, does it?" asks Doug.

"You know, Doug," says Evans, "I may not be a painter, but I can tell an asshole like that." He snaps his fingers. "I'll call you tomorrow," he says to Carrie.

She follows him to the bottom of the stairs and kisses him on the lips. There's a worried look on her face. "I'll talk to you soon," he says, before turning and walking off into the night.