Laura McCamy

Life is a hornets’ nest. If I don’t poke it, it won’t sting me.

But now I’ve got hornets everywhere. Not literally, which is unfortunate because a literal hornets’ nest in my studio could be my get out of jail free card. I would kill for anything even remotely hornet-adjacent right now.

When I agreed to this fiasco, Open Studios was shrouded in the mists of an unimaginable future, five whole months away. Now it’s here, and the sunlight that slants through my north-facing windows throws into brutal relief every reason I should not allow the general public into my space: bits of colored tin on every surface, gouges in the wood table where I eat my sad little solo meals, clothing slouched around an overflowing hamper, holes in the wall where I neglected to spackle after taking nails out. 

“Breakfast?” Jessie makes it sound like a question, but it’s a command. I put two breakfast bars in the toaster and push the knob down.

I’m not a painter, but I can’t (won’t) show the mixed media pieces I’ve built compulsively for the last six years, so Jessie’s helping me hang paintings. And by “helping me hang,” I mean she’s hammering nails into the wall and putting canvases up. I’m pushing the toaster knob. 

“Pop-Tarts are not food!” Hazel’s in my sleeping loft rifling through my dresser. I think my black shift is arty and vaguely French, but Hazel says it makes me look like a burlap sack.

“They’re not Pop-Tarts.” I consult the box. “They’re Fruitopia Bars. From the health food store. They’re health food.”

“Oh, Mia.” Hazel sighs theatrically and steps to the edge of the loft, holding a pair of pants. “How about these?”

“No,” Jessie says. “Those make her look like Charlie Chaplin.”

“More like Billie Eilish.” Which is fresh, right? 

The toaster pops. “Who wants a Fruitopia Bar?” 

No one but me, I guess. I take a bite. It’s delicious.

“Remind me why you’re doing Open Studios?” Jessie asks.

“Because Axiom told me to.”

“Do you do everything Axiom says?” 

“Of course.” Is that even a question? Axiom is an important sculptor, the only successful artist at Potrero Studios. Mia the Mouse does not say no to Axiom.

Hazel descends and hands me an armful of black fabric. “These were the best I could find.” 

It’s a pair of leggings and a long-sleeved tunic that barely covers my ass. “No.” 

“Just try it, Mia,” Jessie says, sounding tired of me. I don’t blame her. I’m annoying.

Jessie is my girl guide, a salty mountain of don’t-mess-with-me who is somehow, magically, my friend, even though I constantly mess with her.

“It’s okay not to look like a waif from a silent movie,” Hazel says. “Not that there’s anything wrong with waifs. I’m pro-waif.”

I change and stand in front of the big mirror by the door. “I look like a mime.” I tug at the hem of the tunic, trying to cover a potentially terminal case of camel toe.

 “We just need to zhuzh it up.” Jessie digs in my workbench and comes back with a red cord, which she ties around my waist. 

“Now I look like a gift for a Goth.” Note to self: trademark Gifts for Goths. “I need another ribbon to cover this.” I point to the camel toe. Jessie flips me off.

Hazel grabs my hands. “Take a deep breath.” She breathes in, puffing out her chest. I breathe in and hold it, returning her intense stare. “Now breathe out slowly, slowly.” Hazel is always trying to improve herself, and she’s ever hopeful she can fix me, too. Ha! “Mia, be here now. Can you do that?”

I’d rather be literally anywhere else. “Sure.” My leg jiggles out of control, a nervous tic, and I knee her in the groin. She yelps and jumps back. “Sorry. Sorry!”

Jessie’s phone buzzes and she dashes out and returns with a small ball of effervescent joy. “I asked Greg to drop her here. We have a playdate at 11:30. Hope that’s okay.”

It’s more than okay. I bend down as Jessie’s daughter throws herself into a hug. “Kayla-Roo!”

“Mi-Mi-Mia!” Kayla burrows into my shoulder, a squirming jumble of yellow and pink, smelling like chocolate milk and cinnamon. I breathe her in. “Are you okay?” she asks, her kid radar unerring.

“Better now.”

“Of course,” she says with more gravitas than a five-year-old should be allowed. “Open Studios will be awesome because I’m here.”

Over the next hour, with all four of us working, the rest of the paintings get hung, cookies get put out for guests, the stray clothes disappear, and Kayla leads us in a K-Pop conga line (my favorite part of the morning). 

At 11:10 am, I prop the door wide, hiding the “Studio 3” in cracked, gold peel-N-stick lettering and the shadows underneath where I can’t completely expunge “Mia Lieberman, Multimedia Artist.”

Jessie and Kayla bump me from behind. “Excuse me,” Kayla says. I step to block her and she runs into my backside, giggling.

“We have to go. Kayla’s playdate.”

Oh, right. “Come back later?”

Jessie shrugs. “Busy day. No promises.”

At least Hazel — oh no, she’s putting on her coat. “Where are you going?”

“Naked meditation in Dolores Park.”

How am I still thrown by Hazel’s choice of self-improvement activities? “Naked — wait. Won’t you get arrested for public indecency?”

“It’s not indecent. It’s transcendent.” She gives me namaste, followed by a tight squeeze that’s over far too quickly. “Love you.” 

After Hazel leaves, the emptiness feels immense. I prop myself on an uncomfortably high metal stool (every art studio must have one, so I do, but why?) and await my fate with all the joy of a figure in a Bosch painting screaming from the seventh rung of hell.

#

Open Studios is blessedly uneventful for 49 minutes. I’m almost bored enough to wish for a visitor. 

My wish is granted when a guy about my age, so 29, give or take, walks in. 

This is it. My first chance to humiliate myself. Oh boy.

Even at midday, the winter sun casts weird shadows in my space, so my visitor is all perpendicular angles and straight lines, very minimalist, but also built, the outlines of his muscles visible under his tight jeans and the long-sleeved tee stretched over his broad shoulders. He carries himself with a fluid grace I rarely see in men. He strikes me as a dancer, though none of the dancers I know could afford the designer jeans and fancy sneakers he wears.

“Hello,” he says, looking directly at me. His voice is a rich tenor. I could listen to that voice for hours. Days. Years.

I’m smitten.

“Hello,” I croak back, trying (and failing) to play it cool.

He turns to examine my paintings and I examine him. He’s tall and (this is what slays me) has long bangs that swoop across square-framed black glasses, a cross between Clark Kent and a manga hero. He’s too cool to smile but, even turned down slightly at the corners, his lips look eminently kissable. 

I want him. The thought startles me. I don’t date or even hook up. Of course, there are the idle crushes, the erotic fantasies, but no feels for an actual human standing five feet from me. 

I slide down from my stool and stand too close to him to be socially appropriate. He smells like eucalyptus with a whiff of something else. Cleaning products? Maybe he works as a janitor. 

A hot, rich janitor. 

“What do you think?” I ask him.

“Of you or the art?” His eyes are intense, deep brown irises blazing through the distortion of corrective lenses. I can’t look away.

“Of the paintings.” And by paintings, I mean me.

He frowns, and there’s the cutest little furrow between his eyebrows. I reach up to trace it with my finger but stop just in time. 

“I think the artist is more interesting than the art.” He looks at my lips as he says it and my sad little mouse heart races so fast I think it might spin out of my chest. I don’t know what’s happening but I’m here for it.

“Mee-ah!”

There is no good time for Samira Abdo to come to my studio, but this is the absolute worst. The contender for Most Kissable Lips in San Francisco whips his head toward the door and the moment is lost. I manage to arrange my face into a smile by the time a familiar head of honey brown curls bounces through the door. Barely.

“Samira!” Even without the unfortunate timing, I wouldn’t be happy to see Samira, not because she’s not a nice person (she’s the nicest) but because she's everything I’m not: outgoing, gorgeous, a successful working artist. She’s the only member of my MFA cohort who kept in touch after I cratered out of the program, and I wish she wouldn’t. 

Samira has a way of looking at you when you talk like she really sees you and her eyes sparkle when her perfect, heart-shaped mouth curves into a smile. She's the most likable person I’ve ever met, and she never stops reaching out, even though I don’t reciprocate. 

I hate her.

She dances over to hug me as if we’re best friends and she smells like honey and fresh oranges, because of course she does. I’m surprised a flock of bluebirds doesn’t flutter around her head.

Samira eyes my paintings, walking from one to another and I get a sinking feeling in my chest.

“These are…nice.” She damns me with faint praise. “But is this all you’re showing? Where is your other work, your constructions?”

“I don’t do those anymore,” I lie.

Samira turns to me, alarmed. “Why not?”

“You know why not.” My dentist has been on me about grinding my teeth. She should pay my next dental bill.

I see memory flood her face. She opens her mouth, but before she can speak, Dreamy Guy says, “Do you mean these?”

He’s opened the top drawer of an ancient dresser I use to store art supplies. I stashed my other work in there, the pieces I don’t show anyone, not even Hazel and Jessie. He and Samira peer in. I wish I could melt through the paint-splattered floorboards into the San Francisco sewer system. Being carried to the ocean on a river of effluent would be better than this.

Samira picks one up. “Do you mind?”

Of course I mind, but I don’t stop her. 

It’s a piece I just finished, a ragged little Franken-dollhouse room made of colored tin and wire. Inside, tiny tin figures eat and dream. A thought bubble hanging over one says, “I’m never getting out of here.” 

The only reason I still make these pieces is I can’t stop. As art, they’re worthless. Someday, they’ll all go into the dumpster, but, for now, I guess they’re a kind of therapy. And I need a lot of therapy. Just ask Hazel.

Samira turns the piece around with delicate, caramel-skinned fingers. “It’s amazing, Mia. Why aren’t you showing this?”

I’m sweating under my tunic, even though it’s freezing because my studio has 20-foot ceilings and a wall of windows that make it impossible to heat unless I want to hand my entire paycheck to PG&E. “It’s not for sale,” I say. I take the piece from her roughly and shove it into the dresser. Something snaps, but I close the drawer before any of us can see what it is. I’ll deal with that later. Right now, I wish they would both leave. 

“I agree with Samira. It’s your best work,” Dreamy Guy says.

“Well, you don’t know me, and a lot of people don’t agree, including me,” I say, dying a little inside. 

My declaration is followed by a moment of supreme awkwardness when no one moves or knows what to say. Then Samira holds out a hand to Dreamy Guy. “Samira Abdo. And this is Mia Lieberman.” 

“Justin Wu. Nice to meet you.” He smiles politely as he shakes Samira’s hand, but when he turns to me, he looks like he’s calculating how much he could get for my organs and sizing me for a body bag. 

Which makes me think, Dismemberment is cheaper — you can use trash bags.

Except I didn’t think that last bit. I have a bad habit of blurting my most random thoughts instead of keeping them tucked behind my teeth where they belong.

Justin drops my hand like it’s a hot potato. 

Samira looks bemused. This isn’t her first rodeo with my quirks. She probably thinks I have an unusual form of Tourette’s. Maybe I do.

“Too many true crime podcasts.” I babble, desperate to change the subject. “There’s a dance studio next door. You should check it out.” 

Justin’s body is angled toward the door, ready for escape, but when I mention Studio 4, his spine stiffens. He narrows his eyes, looking even more murderous than when he shook my hand. 

Jesus. He really might be a serial killer.

“Nice to meet you.” His tone makes it clear what he really means is You’re dead to me. 

Hopefully not literally. 

He stomps out of my studio without taking me prisoner and murdering me and, when I hear the lobby door click, I start to breathe again. 

“Well, Mia.” Oh yeah. Samira’s still here. “I think there’s a market for your constructions.” She hands me a card and I let it slip through my fingers onto the floor behind my back. “Please call me.”

The worst thing about Samira is that she genuinely wants me to call her. The absolute toad.

After she leaves, people drift in and out but none of them are gorgeous janitor/axe murderers, which is a relief and also oddly disappointing. It starts to rain toward the end of the afternoon, the drops a faint drumbeat on the metal roof. I like the sound of rain — God knows it’s rare enough these days — but it steals the light and leaves me feeling empty as Cindy Sherman’s boots. I count the minutes till I can close the door on this dismal day.

1.    Story statement

Artist Mia Lieberman doesn’t believe in love or her own artistic abilities, but when but when her day job as a paralegal puts her on a case with handsome lawyer Justin Wu, she must learn to trust herself if she wants to help the refugees harmed by a reckless natural gas company — while definitely not falling for Justin.

2.    Antagonist and antagonistic force – 200 words or less

Damien Blunt embodies everything Mia dislikes. They had an unfortunate encounter at college, where he was one of the cool kids and she was decidedly not, and he drunkenly proclaimed she wasn’t cute enough to sleep with. Now, he represents the evil Stimpson Natural Gas, defending the company’s civil rights abuses. He gets her name wrong, leers at her, and insults the man she probably shouldn’t be falling in love with.

Other antagonists include Mia’s boss (wants to fire her), her love interest, Justin (enemies to lovers), and, most critically, her self doubts.

3.    Breakout title – up to 3 options

A Brief Affair
Mia Lieberman Makes a Stand
Love by Agreement

4.    Develop 2 smart comps

Romance: contemporary, romcom

Book Lovers by Emily Henry
Love on the Brain by Ali Hazelwood

5.    Write logline with conflict and core wound following format

A young artist recovers from a devastating critique and learns to love her quirky, messy, unconventional self, thanks to a lawsuit that gives her a sense of higher purpose and an irresistible love affair with a gorgeous (if unavailable) lawyer.

6.    Primary and secondary conflicts.

Primary conflict: Mia’s primary conflict is internal. She pulls back from life, terrified of making a wrong move and being subjected to crushing criticism like a harsh critique she experienced during art school. She doesn’t believe in love, doesn’t believe herself worthy of love or capable of sustaining a relationship. She accepts a lot of bullshit: Justin keeping their relationship secret, her parents pushing her to go to grad school when she knows she doesn’t want to, her boss keeping her walking on eggshells. Her arc is learning to stand up for herself, especially with the people she loves. Samira Abdo personifies much of this internal conflict: a member of her art school cohort, now a successful artist, someone who tries to pull Mia back into the art world, and a possible rival for Justin’s attention.

Secondary conflict: Mia has a fierce hatred for Stimpson Natural Gas, Mia’s firm’s opponent in the central legal case and a reckless petrochemical firm that puts profits above the welfare of local populations. When she meets refugees who fled the area, she discovers that Stimpson hired murderous insurgents as security guards for its operations in Mozambique, polluted local waters, took villagers’ land, and treated the locals as if their lives didn’t matter. She becomes determined to keep Stimpson from getting an insurance payout for its evil actions and, if she could, she’d march right into Stimpson HQ and punch everyone. The chance to bring a small measure of justice for this wrong lights a fire in Mia.

7.    Sketch setting in detail – what makes it unique? Be aggressive.

Settings:
Studio 3 in Potrero Studios in San Francisco’s Mission District: Mia’s art studio is a run-down space with warped floorboards, 20-foot ceilings and a wall of windows. It’s impossible to heat, barely has a kitchen (she cooks in a microwave and toaster oven) and her bedroom is a small loft hanging above the space, but it’s the place she feels most at home in the world and her building being sold is one of the obstacles she must overcome. She shares the building with three other studios: Axiom, a well-known sculptor and recluse; Rivka, a conceptual artist, and MaxBertel Dance Company, which rehearses in a larger space, where several members of the dance company also live, including Mia’s flirty neighbor, Pinto.

Mia’s office is in Embarcadero One, an office tower in downtown San Francisco. She works on the 35th floor, which offers striking views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz Island, and much of the eastern parts of San Francisco. Offices are arranged in a circle around the perimeter of the building, with the elevator lobby in the center. Mia spends her time (miserably) in a small cubicle with no view and no privacy in the hallway outside the ring of offices. When she needs a break, she escapes to the building’s open-air second-floor mezzanine, a refuge above street level where she can have a solitary lunch when she’s at the end of her patience.

The central third of the action takes place in Lisbon, a city of art and light, filled with colorful tiled buildings, patterned sidewalks, hills and river, breathtaking overlooks, and the salt air off the Atlantic. For Mia, Lisbon is a place of danger, and revelation, where she comes face to face with some of her worst fears and overcomes them. 

In Lisbon, Mia goes to a museum for the first time since she dropped out of art school, the Gulbenkian. There, she comes face to face with an exhibit by the artist who told her she had no talent, causing her to take her art underground. She discovers his work is very similar to her piece that he trashed, and she’s forced to rethink everything she’s believed about her artwork for the past six years.

Mia gets to be a different person in Lisbon and starts to dare to step outside her comfort zone. The trip also shows her a different side of Justin, takes him to one of his darkest places, and it’s where the boundaries between them finally break down.

Justin leads a nomadic life, often leaning on his real estate contacts to stay in soon-to-be-sold buildings. He treats Mia to a weekend escape to an empty Seacliff mansion, a sliver of a very different San Francisco complete with private beach access and an outdoor pool. The emptiness is creepy at first, but the ability to run down the stairs and be on the beach wins Mia over.

In both Lisbon and San Francisco, many of the settings are real places: buildings, restaurants, stores, neighborhoods are all places that readers could visit: the Ferry Plaza Farmer’s Market, shops in Hayes Valley, a glittery drag ball on New Year’s Eve.