I had just turned thirty-nine. One of my birthday gifts was membership on a website that uses a personality test to match you with a farmer who grows kale in a manner compatible with your values, and I hosted a dinner party the night my first bushels arrived. At first, everything was great. Guests mingled. Cheese breathed. A tattoo of an old-timey boxer bumped up against a tattoo of a seventeenth century Dutch frigate. My friend Zander joked about his wife’s quirks to her ex-girlfriend, who sells crocheted zombies at street fairs.