Molly Morse

1. Story Statement. Half sisters must reunite in order to conquer private traumas and survive internet conspiracies. The text is versatile. It may be told in traditional linear fashion as a single novel, starting with Lilith. It may also be told in two interchangeable parts, each narrated by one of the sisters. The complete text is 90,000 words. Individual volumes are around 45,000 each. There is room for expansion. 2. Antagonist. Dr Blake and the Plum both reckon with loneliness and romantic rejection. While the women in the story direct the pain of their core wounds towards themselves, the antagonists contort it into violence directed outwards. Both men seek to avenge their private griefs through sometimes violent possession of Isla Bradley. 3. Title Lilith & The Rib Drink & Fast 4. Comps My book would appeal to readers who enjoy the pacing, theme, and dialogue of Sally Rooney's novels but would like to see a plot that engages with post-college age women. Claire Keegan's novels balance engaging plot with an incisive understanding of characters' interior lives. Their slim size may furthermore appeal to people who regained their reading habit during the pandemic and wish to continue engaging with quality books as their lives have become busier. This aspect of the comp is particularly apt if Lilith and The Rib and are marketed as separate volumes. Additional possibilities: Lauren Groff's Matrix, Rebecca Makkai's I Have Some Questions For You, Emma Cline's The Guest 5. Conflict. Isla Bradley is trying to escape an unstable marriage to her former therapist. When she suffers a violent and highly publicized betrayal, she must resurrect the psychological bond she shares with her half sister in order to survive the online backlash that results. 6. Two more layers of conflict Internal wounds: At the end of Lilith, Isla left a gun in the Plum's apartment after his attempted assault, although she was fully aware of his volatile emotional state. This is the weapon that the Plum used to commit suicide. In The Rib, Isla struggles to understand whether or not she should bear guilt for his death. This internal conflict is a major motivating factor. Situation: Isla's cousin has asked whether she's guilty of the Plum's murder, as the internet alleges. Isla responds with the truth. “I don’t know,” I say. “What do you mean?” “Whether I did it or not.” “Explain yourself.” “After – the incident, he was crying. I drank a quick cup of whiskey. I don’t drink much, so it hit me. He was panicking. I saw the state he was in. He was coming unhinged. It made me so angry. Because what right did he have! What right did that man have to suffer! And so loudly. I was furious. So I grabbed my purse and took a single credit card and some cash out of my wallet. Then I put the wallet back. And why do you think?” “So that it would still seem like a mistake. Like you left the purse behind by accident.” “I put the purse on the counter, right where he’d see it. I even unzippered it a little bit.” “So that he’d realize what was inside. And what was inside?” I left the silence speak for itself. “I see. Not an unreasonable precaution for a woman serving her husband with divorce papers that morning.” “Exactly right. An unstable husband, remember.” “So it was on purpose. That’s what you’re saying? You knew what you were doing.” “I even smiled about it. Once I’d left.” Aleks nods. Their eyes trace the outline of the bar’s ceiling before returning, almost audibly, to look straight at my face. “And now? When you think about it now. Do you still smile?” Secondary Conflicts: The instigating event for the story is Isla's unstable marriage to her former therapist. The arc of this relationship is charted in The Rib. Both Isla and Dr Blake rationalized their affair in opposing ways, which come into increasing conflict as they embark on married life. Situation: Isla and Dr Blake argue, and the true core of the more superficial conflict is shown to be their opposing understandings of their relationship's origins. The scene also touches on Dr Blake's core wound, i.e. an infatuation he had with a patient early in his career. At dinner on another night I asked him, “Aren’t you ever bored?” He bent one eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. He didn’t suffer me any words in response. “I mean, we never do anything.” “Do you think life is just happy hours and hook-ups?” The words took me aback. “No,” I said. “No! Of course not! Where did that even come from? Is that the impression you got from me? When we were in session?” “Oh, you know sessions. They all blend together.” “Do they?” An edge in my voice that I didn’t seek to soften. “Yes of course. What’s the matter?” “They didn’t with Bella.” A pause. Anybody who only knew Dr Blake from sessions or situations like a church service would have been shocked to realize all of the heat that simmered beneath the serenity of his passive eyes. How quickly it could spike to a boil. “You don’t know anything about that.” “Of course I do. You told me yourself! How you couldn’t help becoming – I think the word you used was smitten –” “Infatuated, more likely.” Thin-voiced, straight lips. His hands were folded. “Infatuated with her when she sat there and told you all about her life. About losing her mother when she was a child. Substance abuse in college. All of that.” “Don’t talk about things you can’t understand. That was different.” “How! Wasn’t it the same with me?” He didn’t answer. Rage and fear held hands and surrounded me. “Wasn’t it the same with me!” “For Christ’s sake, Isla!” “You know. Sometimes I think you’re kind of a weirdo.” “Stop it, Isla.” “I mean with this woman. You never even saw her outside of your office. You never even knew her!” “I knew her.” “And you’ve been obsessed with her for years.” “Goddamn it Isla!” He smacked the table and stood up. He walked over to me and put his hands on my shoulders. A sheer sheet of ice might have held more warmth than Dr Blake’s face in that moment, but I wasn’t afraid. I said, “Was it different with me? How? Tell me.” 7. Setting The sisters’ childhood home in Boone, North Carolina comprises the nostalgic core of both stories. The motivating force of nostalgia is a primary theme. The natural environment of the Blue Ridge Mountains is a fundamental part of both sisters' psyche. Lilith focuses on such sweeping settings as the Blue Ridge Mountains and extensive flashbacks to St. Petersburg, Russia. Example: St Petersburg: Shore of the Finnish Gulf --> Dumskaya Street Isla would sit there for hours watching the polar dusk that darkens the midafternoon. Sheltered by the decaying shadow of the dreaded and dead Soviet Union, she lounged with a bottle of vodka or cheap champagne and she watched the lights from so many ships that she imagined to be military as they floated in the Gulf and glittered like earthbound constellations. The unfamiliar horizon darkened. It teetered on the extreme edge of things, and the wind’s chill has an edge and it was a stirring edge that plumbed Isla's heart as it raked the concrete in the dimming light. Even when she was a little girl, my sister was always the happiest when everything inside of her was astir and her imagination revved itself into a fever so that reality got all tangled up in her own mysticisms. Existence or it’s illusion prostrated itself at her feet, like a tableau. Night would come to Primorskaya. The violet darknesses would settle themselves thickly among the brutal shapes of a thousand Stalinist apartment complexes. Isla pulled her purse onto her shoulder and threw away her trash. Almost every evening she’d trust her safety to a gypsy cab and head joyfully towards Dumskaya Street... ...The bar that she’d been sitting in up until a few minutes ago was called Fidel’s. It was a very narrow venue, with no more than six feet of space between the bar and the wall which was painted black and strung up with twinkly lights that glittered while American punk music blared through the speakers. The place was so packed on a Tuesday night that there was barely any room to move. Despite which, a resilient group of Danes forged on against the odds in their quest to successfully operate the extremely sticky foosball table lodged in the corner and they kept yelling and beating their chest as if their subpar ability to operate a rusted toy after several shots of vodka plus some beers made them roughly as sexually attractive as a footballer from FIFA. The Rib focuses on the fractured intimacy of small, strange spaces. Example: The basement apartment in Philadelphia where Isla isolates herself after her story goes viral. Numberless are the happy hours! That I’ve spent imagining the life of the glittering soul who lived here before me. Because only a superstar of considerable wattage could have aspired to turn this rotting dump of a basement crawl-space into something so absurd and magical. And glittery? Oh yes, very. Unwilling to allow ugliness lie fallow and fester, this fabulous stranger sought to resurrect it into beauty. They failed, of course, and the attempt ended up as nothing but dirty chintz. But the attempt was there. Sanctity hovers around all attempts at beautification and creation and perhaps especially around those that are doomed on account of societal tragedies beyond the artist’s control. “What color would you call these walls,” Ainsley asked. “Turquoise. Definitely.” “Hm.” She stalked across the linoleum floor in stiletto heels. Her button nose wrinkled primly against its scent. “What’s with all the Japanese dressing screens?” Ainsley asked. The scenes painted on each of the several large screens was tastefully pornographic in nature. “Did you...bring those here yourself?” “No. No no. They were left here by the previous tenant. Apparently they come with the space.” Ainsley didn’t say anything about the trim of wallpaper along the ceiling that depicted topless mermaids in a variety of poses. Nor did she suffer to comment on the thin patina of silver glitter that overlaid the white cabinets in the kitchenette. “You already signed the lease? Without even fucking running it by me.” I shrugged with a sheepish but affirming smile. “It’d be nice if there were at least a ceiling.” We looked over our heads at the unfinished morass of wires and copper pipes. “To be fair, it isn’t like we photograph the ceiling.”

Introduces narrator and main protagonist/antagonist. Introduces one of several settings. Introduces thematic elements. Alludes to forthcoming plot points and reveals "Act Zero" setup. Includes dialogue. Chapter I: Clotho. It’ll be mid-morning in my clapboard piece-of-crap house in God’s own Blue Ridge mountains and I’ll have a hangover that could kill a cat, and not even just a regular cat but a bobcat maybe or whatever an ocelot is. It may occur to me (as so frequently it does) that I am for all intents and purposes out of food, which dilemma has been caused not by insufficient funds but by a general lack of gumption to get off my gangly bum and go to the grocery store. This laziness is in turn precipitated by my ever-increasing tendencies towards partaking of certain pleasant substances. And so when my day of reckoning finally comes, I will be in a state of supreme irritation. I will be sick and starving and mad. I’ll drag my clicking bones to the windowsill, and what will I see outside? Such a pretty day in April. With the lilacs and blue clouds and all of the fixings. And I’ll know it for sure. I’ll see it from a million miles off. There’s no excuse. Not that there’s ever been much of an excuse to begin with. Not since the cloudy day in March with the wet snow and the misery when my half-sister was arrested from my very doorstep. One thing you’d better understand is that no sister of mine, half or otherwise, is about to get arrested on some petty bullshit. The charge filed was absolutely homicide. Of dubious degree, admittedly. Or at least to me. I have assured myself many times that everything is alright. I did ask her once whether she was traumatized and she said no she was not. And furthermore she was released on her own recognizance (a word whose definition nobody truly knows) on the very day of her arrest and barely forty-eight hours after that the charges were dropped altogether due to insufficient evidence. At which point she blabbed about the incident to the entire internet. This part is not ideal. But at least she isn’t in prison. I do suspect that freedom is still preferable even when it’s being constantly surveilled and investigated by every social media platform including the mainstream ones but especially the creepy ones with their baroquely alternate realities that warp lonely or scared individuals into radical cyberspace toads who mistake their own paranoias for super-intelligence. Then again, who am I to say? I’ve never been imprisoned. Nor have I gone viral. Honest to god, I haven’t had very many experiences at all that are worth discussing. The place where I live alone with my canines is very quiet. And to answer your question, I have no idea whether she actually did it or not. Nor am I entirely convinced that it matters. —- What I’m about to do is take you on a trip. The rules governing both international travel and substance abuse maintain that you should never go on a trip with a stranger and so I’ll tell you right off the bat that my name is Hecate. Its pronounced like hellcat but with all of the l’s erased and with the a flattened into sounding like an e. I received this screwball name from the same charmingly psychotic grandfather who gifted me my alcoholism. I do love it. Despite which there are people who insist on calling me Cate, and believe me – I resent each and every one of them. And so ecce femina, ladies and gentlemen. I’ll be your omniscient narrator for the duration of our journey together. Am I making claims to some kind of second sight? Perhaps you’re unaware that the original Hecate was none other than an ancient witch goddess, but don’t be frightened. There’s time to explain all of that later. Right now, let’s get on with things. I own six dogs. Do you honestly think that they’re small ones? Because no. They certainly are not. Perhaps not giant enough to guard the gates of hell but confidently huge enough to mistake a human toddler for a snack. And goddamn are they loyal to me! Of course I prefer the company of these gorgeous monsters to that of nearly any human person on the planet. And to confirm what you have likely surmised already, I am most definitely single. Without a speck of interest in altering that status. Almost everything else about my life as it exists now is irrelevant. Do you honestly care where I work? For what it’s worth, it’s a bar. If that isn’t self-evident already then it probably will be soon. Truly when you get right down to it, all you really need to know about me besides the number of dogs I own (six, if you forget) is that my half-sister and I grew up together in Boone, North Carolina. With a dead mother and two grandparents, one of whom was a drunk and the other was a fake, and the whole cosmos overtop of our childhoods was the color of white sunlight dappled by lime-hued leaves. Until night came and the violet darknesses settled thickly into the brittle branches of a thousand blackened conifers. We grew up in that wild country as a couple of beasts blessed by the sunlight. Since we were raised by grandparents too old fashioned not to trust us to range freely and safely through the sanctified hills, we wandered infinitely. We climbed through the secret places deep in the hills that teemed with animals whose habits we learned and mimicked. The whole landscape was littered with lakes where we swam without clothes in the sky’s reflection. We made splashes and laughs until we emerged into the scratches of the thicket and had picnics in the woods with treats that our fake grandmother called Val made lovingly for us that morning. I am writing this weird history purely out of resentment. Because time has to move. That’s the single way in which all human beings are slaves without hope for escape because there is no arguing or compromising or negotiating with time’s unjust dictatorship and with the bloodless cruelty of beautiful moments passing into oblivion underneath our eyeballs and fingertips. If I could have made time stop or even killed it altogether while my sister and I were young and happy monsters exchanging private whispers underneath the cathedral of trees with their stained-glass leaves and owl-cluttered steeples — while we snuggled ever deeper and more securely within our mutual mythologies — while we were warmed by the sun and by all of the love that we shared back then but squandered later — Then the universe would be paradise indeed. I would never sneak another solo drink. I would never smoke another weed. But there is no freedom for us here. And so time passed. So by the time I write this tome my sister will have isolated herself in a basement in Philadelphia. And I will smoke. And I drink and drink whatever I can get. (skipping 560 words to reach a more dialogue-heavy scene) III. ““Do I smell alcohol?” says Dr Blake. Isla doesn’t answer him. She’s dressed in a black dress and there’s no makeup strong enough to conceal the long and preternaturally straight gash of a cut that glows burgundy below her right eye. In her lap, my half sister grips her purse. It belonged to our mother. And how many years ago? So many. Isla never questioned that this purse was the specific purse that she needed for today. Its slouchy shape is old-fashioned, but the pliability of the leather allows Isla to feel its contents. She caresses the thing inside. “It would almost be a relief,” says Dr Blake, his eyes still on the road, as he references the grim pleasure that my half sister has been taking in her recent abstention from the boozes. “But nine in the morning is perhaps too bold a move in the opposite direction.” “That’s an odd thing about you, isn’t it?” Dr Blake says, “What’s odd?” “How you’re sober but always trying to ply everybody around you with booze.” “I’m not sober.” “Aren’t you?” “Didn’t we meet at a bar?” “Meet?” says Isla. The bafflement in her face is earnest. “We knew each other for months and months before that night.” “In one sense, yes. But then again in another –” “Anyway. It’s not like I’m the one driving.” “Thank god.” The decision to buy the Tesla was a difficult one for Dr Blake. He doesn’t consider himself to be a man who indulges in gauche displays of excessive income. But in this case, well of course he was able to convince himself that since the car was electric he wasn’t shelling out for himself but rather for the sake of the planet. Certainly he wasn’t buying the car because it’s attractive and fashionable! The sole factor in his decision making process – of course, of course – was the geopolitical damage caused by our national dependence on gasoline, in addition to climate change. It goes without saying. Only an ass resists the demands of noblesse oblige. And so, with the beneficent smile of sainthood illuminating the unusually sharp contours of his middle-aged features, Dr Blake bought himself an expensive car and thus fulfilled his duties as an environmentally conscious man of means. It is out of character, then, for him to jerk the Tesla so suddenly to the side of the road. “What are you doing?” my half-sister says. Dr Blake puts his head in his hands. “Is everything alright? Are you sick?” "I did this to you.” Plaintively she says, “Please John." There’s a way that Dr Blake’s eyes go distant when he’s upset. Something else wells up there too. When she first knew him, Isla mistook it for a gentle sensitivity. Too late did she realize that it was only loneliness in disguise, and corrosive regret. She touches his shoulder, tentatively. “I chose it all myself.” "You think the choice was yours?" The cars whizz by. “Anyway. You’re right,” says Isla. “For what it’s worth. And I’m sorry. There was a bottle already opened from last night –” “-- from when I was in the basement.” “Sure. Is that alright?” There are tears in Dr Blake's eyes now. This is not what Isla wants. It is distinctly counter-productive. “So yes. I did sneak half a glass this morning.” “But why? After all these months. That’s what I don’t understand. What made last night different? And this morning, especially?” “It hasn’t been months. What about Tuesday.” “Please. Isla. Don’t. Don’t talk about Tuesday.” “Ok. Sure. So I snuck a few sips this morning when you were taking your shower. And then again. When you were back in the basement. I said I was sorry.” “Yes, ok. But why?” “I don’t know why! Does there have to be a reason? It is a holiday, after all!” Dr Blake guffaws through his streaming tears. “What? You mean Good Friday?” “Of course!” “What were you raised? Lutheran?" "Something like that." "So what? Is that the custom among the Calvinists? Day-drinking through the crucifixion?” “Well you know,” Isla shrugs in a way that would be cute if the circumstances were radically different. She spreads her fingers in the air. “The misery of it and all.”

1. Story Statement. Half sisters must reunite in order to conquer private traumas and survive internet conspiracies. The text is versatile. It may be told in traditional linear fashion as a single novel, starting with Lilith. It may also be told in two interchangeable parts, each narrated by one of the sisters. The complete text is 90,000 words. Individual volumes are around 45k each. There is room for expansion. 2. Antagonist. Dr Blake and the Plum both reckon with loneliness and romantic rejection. While the women in the story direct the pain of their core wounds towards themselves, the antagonists contort it into violence directed outwards. Both men seek to avenge their private griefs through sometimes violent possession of Isla Bradley. Nuanced attention is paid to these men's characters. They are not meant to be stereotypical male villains, but sensitively drawn humans who react to their own core wounds. Although the outcome of their actions is consistently negative, their motives are clear. Their faults are balanced with sympathetic qualities, which underscore the tragic elements of their arcs. 3. Title Lilith & The Garden Drink & Fast Ouroboros 4. Comps My book would appeal to readers who enjoy the pacing, theme, and dialogue of Sally Rooney's novels but would like to see a plot that engages with post-college age women. Claire Keegan's novels balance dynamic plot with an incisive understanding of characters' interior lives. Their slim size may furthermore appeal to people who regained their reading habit during the pandemic and wish to continue engaging with quality books as their lives have become busier. This aspect of the comp is particularly apt if Lilith and The Rib and are marketed as separate volumes. Additional possibilities: Lauren Groff's Matrix, Rebecca Makkai's I Have Some Questions For You, Emma Cline's The Guest 5. Conflict. Isla Bradley is trying to escape an unstable marriage to her former therapist. When she suffers a violent and highly publicized betrayal, she must resurrect the psychological bond she shares with her half sister in order to survive the online backlash that results. 6. Two more layers of conflict Internal wounds: At the end of Lilith, Isla left a gun in the Plum's apartment after his attempted assault, although she was fully aware of his volatile emotional state. This is the weapon that the Plum used to commit suicide. In The Garden, Isla struggles to understand whether or not she should bear guilt for his death. This internal conflict is a major motivating factor. Situation: Isla's cousin has asked whether she's guilty of the Plum's murder, as the internet alleges. Isla responds with the truth. “I don’t know,” I say. “What do you mean?” “Whether I did it or not.” “Explain yourself.” “After – the incident, he was crying. I drank a quick cup of whiskey. I don’t drink much, so it hit me. He was panicking. I saw the state he was in. He was coming unhinged. It made me so angry. Because what right did he have! What right did that man have to suffer! And so loudly. I was furious. So I grabbed my purse and took a single credit card and some cash out of my wallet. Then I put the wallet back. And why do you think?” “So that it would still seem like a mistake. Like you left the purse behind by accident.” “I put the purse on the counter, right where he’d see it. I even unzippered it a little bit.” “So that he’d realize what was inside. And what was inside?” I left the silence speak for itself. “I see. Not an unreasonable precaution for a woman serving her husband with divorce papers that morning.” “Exactly right. An unstable husband, remember.” “So it was on purpose. That’s what you’re saying? You knew what you were doing.” “I even smiled about it. Once I’d left.” Aleks nods. Their eyes trace the outline of the bar’s ceiling before returning, almost audibly, to look straight at my face. “And now? When you think about it now. Do you still smile?” Secondary Conflicts: The instigating event for the story is Isla's unstable marriage to her former therapist. The arc of this relationship is charted in The Garden. Both Isla and Dr Blake rationalized their affair in opposing ways, which come into increasing conflict as they embark on married life. Situation: Isla and Dr Blake argue, and the true core of the more superficial conflict is shown to be their opposing understandings of their relationship's origins. The scene also touches on Dr Blake's core wound, i.e. an infatuation he had with a patient early in his career. At dinner on another night I asked him, “Aren’t you ever bored?” He bent one eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. He didn’t deign offer me any words in response. “I mean, we never do anything.” “Do you think life is just happy hours and hook-ups?” The words took me aback. “No,” I said. “No! Of course not! Where did that even come from? Is that the impression you got from me? When we were in session?” “Oh, you know sessions. They all blend together.” “Do they?” An edge in my voice that I didn’t seek to soften. “Yes of course. What’s the matter?” “They didn’t with Bella.” A pause. Anybody who only knew Dr Blake professionally or from situations like a church service would have been shocked to realize all of the heat that simmered beneath the serenity of his passive eyes. How quickly it could spike to a boil. “You don’t know anything about that," he said and his voice was a low seethe. “Of course I do. You told me yourself! How you couldn’t help becoming – I think the word you used was smitten –” “Infatuated, more likely.” Thin-voiced, straight lips. His hands were folded. “Infatuated with her when she sat there and told you all about her life. About losing her mother when she was a child. Substance abuse in college. All of that.” “Don’t talk about things you can’t understand. That was different.” “How! Wasn’t it the same with me?” He didn’t answer. Rage and fear held hands and surrounded me. “Wasn’t it the same with me!” “For Christ’s sake, Isla!” “You know. Sometimes I think you’re kind of a weirdo.” “Stop it, Isla.” “I mean with this woman. You never even saw her outside of your office. You never even knew her!” “I knew her.” “And you’ve been obsessed with her for years.” “Goddamn it Isla!” He smacked the table and stood up. He walked over to me and put his hands on my shoulders. I wasn’t afraid. I said, “Was it different with me? How? Tell me.” 7. Setting The sisters’ childhood home in Boone, North Carolina comprises the nostalgic core of both stories. The motivating force of nostalgia is a primary theme. The natural environment of the Blue Ridge Mountains is a fundamental part of both sisters' psyche. Lilith focuses on such sweeping settings as the Blue Ridge Mountains and extensive flashbacks to St. Petersburg, Russia. Example: St Petersburg: Shore of the Finnish Gulf --> Dumskaya Street Isla would sit there for hours watching the polar dusk that darkens the midafternoon. Sheltered by the decaying shadow of the dreaded and dead Soviet Union, she lounged with a bottle of vodka or cheap champagne and she watched the lights from so many ships that she imagined to be military as they floated in the Gulf and glittered like earthbound constellations. The unfamiliar horizon darkened. It teetered on the extreme edge of things, and the wind’s chill wielded an edge and it was a stirring edge that plumbed Isla's heart as it raked the concrete in the dimming light. Even when she was a little girl, my sister was always the happiest when everything inside of her was astir and her imagination revved itself into a fever so that reality got all tangled up within her own mysticisms. Existence or it’s illusion prostrated itself at her feet, like a tableau. Night would come to Primorskaya. The violet darknesses would settle themselves thickly among the brutal shapes of a thousand Stalinist apartment complexes. Isla pulled her purse onto her shoulder and threw away her trash. Almost every evening she’d trust her safety to a gypsy cab and head joyfully towards Dumskaya Street... ...The bar that she’d been sitting in up until a few minutes ago was called Fidel’s. It was a very narrow venue, with no more than six feet of space between the bar and the wall which was painted black and strung up with twinkly lights that glittered while American punk music blared through the speakers. The place was so packed on a Tuesday night that there was barely any room to move. Despite which, a resilient group of Danes forged on against the odds in their quest to successfully operate the extremely sticky foosball table lodged in the corner and they kept yelling and beating their chest as if their subpar ability to operate a rusted toy after several shots of vodka plus some beers made them roughly as sexually attractive as a footballer from FIFA. The Garden focuses on the fractured intimacy of small, strange spaces. Example: The basement apartment in Philadelphia where Isla isolates herself after her story goes viral. Numberless are the happy hours! That I’ve spent imagining the life of the glittering soul who lived here before me. Because only a superstar of considerable wattage could have aspired to turn this rotting dump of a basement crawl-space into something so absurd and magical. And glittery? Oh yes, very. Unwilling to allow ugliness to lie fallow and fester, this fabulous stranger sought to resurrect it into beauty. They failed, of course, and the attempt ended up as nothing but dingy chintz. But the attempt was there. Sanctity hovers around all attempts at beautification and creation and perhaps especially around those that are doomed on account of societal tragedies beyond the artist’s control. “What color would you call these walls,” Ainsley asked. “Turquoise. Definitely.” “Hm.” She stalked across the linoleum floor in stiletto heels. Her button nose wrinkled primly against its scent. “What’s with all the Japanese dressing screens?” Ainsley asked. The scenes painted on each of the several large screens were tastefully pornographic in nature. “Did you...bring those here yourself?” “No. No no. They were left here by the previous tenant. Apparently they come with the space.” Ainsley didn’t say anything about the trim of wallpaper along the ceiling that depicted topless mermaids in a variety of poses. Nor did she suffer to comment on the thin patina of silver glitter that overlaid the white cabinets in the kitchenette. “You already signed the lease? Without even fucking running it by me.” I shrugged with a sheepish but affirming smile. “It’d be nice if there were at least a ceiling.” We looked over our heads at the unfinished morass of wires and copper pipes. “To be fair, it isn’t like we photograph the ceiling.”