Dreams under glass by Anca L Szilagyi

Script Audio presents Dreams Under Glass by Ana L. Clogi. Read for you by Kelly Taker. For my family, Chapter 1.

The black car spat Benny out at 53rd and Third. The lawyer she was riding with had lost his casino bankruptcy trial big time and wore a pitiful countenance. She'd almost tried to put him out of his misery with a kiss. Had he noticed it was happening? She replayed it in her mind the way she'd leaned slightly forward toward his sorry face and loosened tie. He could probably tell. Well, that was embarrassing. Mistakes, the price of knowledge. She'd pick up her paycheck and move on with her Friday night.

The sun had already set and she'd made plans while at the new work stop on the Asella to meet her friend Gary for dinner. Romance had not been part of their history, although lately their relationship hummed with a subtle electric charge. They'd weathered several stupid relationships together, like hers with a boy who now squatted in Detroit hoping to be the next Banksy, and his with a girl who aspired to be a diplomat and found Gary's Iraqi Jewish lineage titillating. Now they were, for the first time in their 5-year friendship, both single.

The driver deposited her rolly bag on the sidewalk. The lawyer muttered from inside the car, "See you Monday." Her bag went *thunkk, thunkk* as her clearance rack heels clacked down the sidewalk. Gary waited for her beneath the pink granite pillars at the Lipstick Building. Cheeks rosy from the first chill of fall, fists thrust into charcoal jacket pockets, a black knit cap hiding his brown curls. When he saw Benny, he lifted his head from its natural melancholic tilt and smiled. Still wound up from the trial, the loss, the pitiful lawyer. A harshness balled up in her chest. She said, "You could have waited in the lobby." His dark eyelashes brushed up against his wire-rim glasses. He said, "I've had my daily allotment of recycled air." She softened and they hugged, their usual platonic hips angled away from each other hug. "Want to come up?"

The security guard took Gary's ID. The security arm at the gate buzzed open. Vinnie imagined an art project using robotic arms. Gatekeepers, access, automation, articulated arms moving like octopi. But what did she know about robots? Stick to the basics, honey. On a huge sign by the elevator bank, the law firm Laam and Watkins advertised its presence in the building. But there were countless other mysterious tenants, investment firms and hedge funds and whatnot, celebrity divorce lawyers. Benny had shared the elevator with Uma Thurman once, a story which her father found thrilling. He claimed she looked like her. Hardly, she'd said, "Let's start with how short I am, how frizzy my brittle hair, how frail my bird bones." The firm she worked for, Capra Zimman Baxter or CZB, was nothing fancy compared to Layman and Watkins or Uma Thurman's divorce attorney. A boutique Reed Scrappy firm with three partners, one full-time associate, Benny privately dubbed the zombie, a rotating cast of part-time contract attorneys, and underlings like Benny.

The elevator rocketed upward. Gary and Benny rode in silence, eyes glued to the TV screen. On the news ticker, Layman Brothers was kaput. Its bankruptcy announced that Monday. Sarah Palin, the folksy, self-proclaimed maverick governor of Alaska, performed her hockey mom pitbull with lipstick shtick. And Steven Hawking unveiled something called a corpus clock, a time eater. Before Benny could ask Gary if he remembered that old Robin Williams movie about *Yepy Side*, the doors slid open with a *ding* and her phone buzzed. "Dinner tonight? Mind if Ellen joins us?" Deadpan Gary said, "Sure."

Between the gold plastic gift card Baxter had given her in the car. "Good job," he'd murmured, looking like he wanted to die, and the impending paycheck fattened from overtime. Benny was feeling celebratory. She'd been avoiding Ellen for many reasons, but chiefly because Ellen had no clue how expensive her taste was, and Benny hated it when she offered to pay. Park Slope, ala. Binnie's thumb hesitated over the keys as she expelled a long sigh. "Sure, I got a bonus. My treat." She regretted this immediately, but would stick to it. "Gary's coming, too. Fun."

Behind the reception desk, *namaste* somersaulted languidly across Meline's screen. A whirl of thin neon letters. Benny tiptoed into Beatrice's cubicle, unsure why she felt as if she were sneaking around, trespassing, even though Beatrice had given her specific instructions. She spun the dial on the petty cash box's combination lock and found her check while Gary wandered into the conference room to admire the view. Beneath her check was one of Rick's pay stubs. Rick, the senior paralegal, the red-haired boy her age who wore bow ties to work and lorded his seniority over her. When she'd asked naively why the casino bankruptcy trial was happening in Delaware, he'd said, "Because it's corporate America's wild, wild west," and extended his thumb and pointer finger into the shape of a gun, pointed it at Benny's head, said in a baby voice, "Pew." "Hey," Beatrice had warned, voice lowered to a contralto, "No imaginary shootings in the workplace." "Did you know I'm a card-carrying member of the NRA?" Rick cackled, pulling a card out of his wallet and waggling it in Beatrice's face. "Ew!" Her manicured hands flew up, her summer braids swayed. "Get that thing out of here, you creep."

It was then that the wild, wild Wilmington diorama occurred to Benny. A vast wasteland littered with hundreds of tumbleweed-like balls of crumbled-up credit card offers. Small print pasted in the background like the vintage maps of Florence lining Joseph Cornell's *Medusa* slot machine. Or better yet, the astronomical maps in his *Night Sky* series. Redacting the text with a thick black marker, she'd form clouds and constellations of legal loopholes. Instead of Andromeda or Cassiopeia longing for the star-studded expanse outside the windows of white-shoe box-sized hotel rooms, she'd have a cowboy in the open air wielding a lasso. And yet, of course, the open air would still be inside a box. Freedom still a trap.

Now, Binny goggled at how much Rick made. A pain sunk into her sternum. Did Beatrice leave the stub in there on purpose? Did Rick? Why? The difference was staggering. He made nearly twice as much as she did. Benny was surprised at how much it hurt. Physically pained her, burned her cheeks. How much did Meline make? How much did Beatrice make? How long would it take her to make as much as Rick? How much faster would a salary like his clear a student loan debt like hers? And he was so smug, Rick. Like he knew how to get away with living. Like he was playing the game he'd been trained to play since birth. And she didn't even know which game pieces went where. She just gaped at them like a rube.

At her job interview, silver-haired Capra had asked in his radio broadcaster voice what salary she had in mind. Benny, having diligently studied getthatjob.com, turned it around on him. "What did you have in mind?" Capra narrowed his eyes, a hint of the Bronx peeping out. "I asked you first." Benny gulped. "Based on my research, 30 to 35." He jotted that on her resume. "Pleased. That's very reasonable, Benny. Some people get the wrong idea. Let's have you meet Simon." She'd immediately wondered if she should have asked for more. The only thing Simon wanted to know was how she got a 4.0, but she didn't want to snap that you got an A+ in underwater basket weaving. To her semi-coherent chatter about diligence, he said, "I give up." And the interview was over. Baxter didn't interview Benny at all. Later, she'd assumed they left him out because his tendency toward indecision would have mucked up how speedily they wished to move.

From the threshold of the conference room, Gary asked, "What's wrong?" "What? Nothing." Gary lowered his head to catch Benny's gaze. "Sure." Her palms were sweating. She managed a quasi-genuine grin. "Get a load of this view." The East River glimmered. All of Queens expanded in the night. An endless shimmering evening gown. "Pretty fantastic. You get this view every day." "I guess not much time to take it in." "You know what I have a view of?" "I know. A gray cubicle wall." She glanced outside, but only saw the innards of the office reflected in the window. "Sorry. Try to take a minute out of each day and just look at that." She tried harder to appreciate the view, but an angry little goblet niggled in her ear. An evil Keebler elf reminiscent of Rick. She hadn't been invited to the trial because she was competent. She had been invited because she was cheap. She pressed her forehead to the cold glass until the prickly feeling subsided. "What do you care? This is just a day job, not art."

The meat grinder, a floor-to-ceiling subway turnstile with peeling black paint, whined as they passed through. Beneath rolly bag, awkward in the mix. On the crowded train, their bodies swayed together, hugging the same pole. "Aren't you exhausted? Wired?" She forced a smile. "Hungry. I learned a new trick at work today. You know how they've got me calling ladies in Tennessee hawking makeup kits? I'm putting on a draw. 'Ma'am, this will go great with your beautiful blue eyes.' Wait, but how do you know their eye color?" "Doesn't matter. Works like magic." "You're a sales genius."

At the summer internship where they met, Gary had sold record numbers of *Samba Fever* to a school district in Oregon when his boss was in Hawaii for a week. Pure luck, he'd said, ever humble. His boss gave him a free copy of *Samba Fever Disco Remix* and kept the commission. Technically, the place was a nonprofit. They got MetroCards, $10 a day for lunch, and experience. Gary hadn't planned on working in a call center again after graduation, but he graduated in 2003 in a job market of nothing. And like Benny, he was deeply in debt, more so because he'd funded all four years of his education entirely with loans. His first job out of school was cold-call fundraising to cure a rare and horrible degenerative disease. It paid $8.50 per hour, and his voice cracked and frazzled over stories of children atrophying in their beds. Selling wine and cosmetics kept him above water, more or less, and the content of his spiel no longer crushed him.

"So where are we going again?" Benny grimaced. "Ala, my treat." Mama Warbucks. Leaning toward Gary on the subway pole, she said, "I think we'll be spared Ellen's lover." Mr. Where can I find the next Rothko? The same. Ellen had a place on the Upper West Side, but lately she'd been living with a guy who'd strolled into the West Chelsea Art Gallery where she worked, seeking an investment opportunity. A bold color field, perhaps in hues of saffron or cobalt, to make the white bricks of his refurbished Prospect Heights brownstone pop. When Vinnie met him, he wore his sunglasses behind his head. She'd been surprised Ellen was okay with this fashion choice. But he'd played rugby in college, Ellen said, and his thick-necked vitality evened things out for her.

The hostess offered to take Benny's suitcase, but she refused, worried she'd forget it, and wound through the restaurant behind Gary, the wheels catching against chair legs. "Sorry," she said to annoy diners, hating herself. The blue glow of Ellen's smartphone mixed with candlelight rendered her skin luminous like a Renoir painting. Her expression suggested faint amusement as she calmly tapped away at an epic text message. She'd always embodied composure. She always synced with her surroundings. In college, Benny had always been passed over for the awards which professors mysteriously bestowed upon certain anointed peers. Maybe Ellen's inborn knowledge of societal expectations. "No one really works 9 to 5. Schmoozing takes charm, class, quick thinking, and knowing how to make an exit," was part of what keyed her into the opportunities that appeared before her on a silver platter. Maybe it didn't hurt that a room in the library where Benny had worked was named after Ellen's grandma. Ellen brightened at Benny and Gary's arrival, and she hugged them each in that way she had, where Benny could never tell if it was genuine. A strong hug, but a bit too long, like it wasn't really about the affection, but the performance of it. The dark-eyed sommelier and Ellen shared a knowing twinkle. She ordered a red wine from the foothills of Vesuvius. He slowed and retreated. Ellen balanced her chin on interlaced fingers and smiled at Benny. "You now have my full attention." She projected warmth, an eagerness to listen carefully that had over the years drawn Benny out of her shell. "So, how was the trial? You must have made a [ __ ] ton in overtime." "[ __ ] ton" was new to Ellen's vocabulary. Binnie guessed it was the boyfriend's edition. The condescension made Vinnie frown. "Define [ __ ] ton." The sommelier presented the volcanic wine to Ellen, popped the cork. "You'll appreciate the fig and spice," he said. Ellen swirled, sniffed, sipped, nodded. As the sommelier faded into the scenery, Gary said, "Better watch out. You're going to get used to all that money." He'd said this before, a painful reminder of what she had intended to do, but so far was failing at. Save money, get ready for the day when she could focus more intently on making art. She bristled, but then he cocked his head to the side in that gentle way that made Benny want to hug him. He'd been the first person she told about the paralegal job. She didn't want to give anyone else the satisfaction of hearing that she had, in a way, given up her wacky pursuit of art in an attempt to make an actual living, though it was a living that wasn't grandiose enough to make anyone jealous. "It's not really that much," said Benny.

Ellen focused intently on the menu. Benny swirled her wine, picturing glowing lava flows, succulent black grapes fertilized with ash. She told herself the job was a temporary measure, the unpredictability of working for Gerta had become intolerable, and that she'd return imminently to her art. But in a fit of rage the night before the trip to Delaware, she'd swept all the dusty materials from her worktable into the trash. A rubber octopus, a shellacked clump of strawberry Nerds, a spigot, a ballet shoe. She'd arranged and rearranged again and again, had struggled with this assemblage for weeks. And for what? It signified nothing. Ellen and Gary had never actually seen Benny's work. They only knew that their friend was toiling away at something artsy. The last person she'd shown her work to was Professor Lewis, her favorite art history professor in college. A stout woman who slicked her hair back into a severe bun, but whom Harry Carrey glasses rendered approachable. Professor Lewis taught mid-century American art, had been the one to introduce Benny to Joseph Cornell, the first artist that made Benny think, "You can do that." Toward the end of her last semester, after the public exhibition of senior projects, which Benny had found mortifying, she had taken a last-minute risk, botched the work, and skipped the party. Never asked Ellen if she'd gone, if she'd seen her stuff. She sheepishly brought a Cornell-inspired assemblage to Professor Lewis during office hours. It was not part of her senior project, but something she viewed as private. It was supposed to be a moonscape, a kind of terrarium filled with gray dirt and faintly glimmering white pebbles and a sprinkling of red star-shaped glitter. Professor Lewis pursed her lips at it, expressed puzzlement, cooed as if Benny were a four-year-old presenting her first scribbles smeared in feces on the wall. The professor had barely remembered her to begin with, despite the college being small, and this would be her lasting impression. After that, Benny abstained from showing her work to most people. She wanted to give it time to mature, perhaps 5 to 10 years. But developing a forceful vision had been impossible on a diet of canned tuna and Pringles oyster crackers. Benny was terrified of Ellen's keen critical eye. Ellen viewed life in New York as some kind of extension of an honor seminar, a place to spout opinions, knowledge, and political tracts with supreme confidence and in a loud voice, always ready to follow up with emphatic disagreement. It didn't matter what anyone said. The point was to find an angle and disagree.

Benny stared at the stem of her glass. Behind it, through the window, the other Fifth Avenue, that of gentrified Brooklyn, and not the calcified aristocracy of Manhattan, blurred. "You [ __ ] [ __ ] What are you doing with your life making copies?" She sipped her wine, a tiny sour sip. "Wait," said Ellen. "A toast." Three globular glasses clinked, the burgundy-colored wine glinting against the table's tea lights. Ellen swirled hers again, more dramatically now, sniffed at it lengthily, and slurped. Benny snorted. Ellen. A toothy smile flashed across her friend's face. "Really though, how are you liking the job?" "It's fine." Benny set her glass down. "You going to come into the gallery sometime soon? I can get you started on your own baby collection. I'll point you to the up-and-coming muse." Benny broke a breadstick and chucked the blunt end at Ellen's chest, surprising herself with the impulsive gesture. Crumbs bounced off Ellen's raw silk charmeuse. Benny had meant to be playful, but the throw was a tad more violent than she'd intended. She glanced around the genteel restaurant, feeling childish. "Oh, behave." Benny tittered. "Ladies, ladies, please. I know you both want me, but you have to coexist." Ellen said, "Ha." Benny asked about an email forwarded to her from the gallery while she toiled late one night in the Wilmington hotel room, editing video clips of depositions for the trial. "What's with this booze, Bubbles, Bosle, Babies thing?" "Alexis will be in an inquisitive mood. You should come mention your work." "Oh, jeez," said Benny, gulping at wine. "Right. I'll help you sharpen your pitch," Gary said. A plate of grilled octopus and calamari, peppered with tiny olives, glistening in a fine sheen of olive oil, infused with fresh herbs, floated to their table, mercifully halting the conversation. The tiny arms curled around olives, grasping how little they resembled the cartoonish red rubber octopus, still sitting at the bottom of Benny's waste basket. Stabbing one of the tentacle pieces with her fork, she tasted a hint of vinegar and chewed and chewed and chewed on its forbidden flesh.

They parted ways, Ellen to her lover's abode, Gary to the three-bedroom walk-up he shared with five roommates above a toy store on 7th Avenue. Benny hopped on the R to Court Street to the unicorn that was her late aunt Ruby's rent-controlled apartment. Despite the short ride, she fell asleep on the train, her head bobbing toward the annoyed woman beside her, who scooted away with her toddler. What was that kid doing up so late? The dark bags under the woman's eyes were a fright. To stay awake, Benny calculated the evening's expenses. $16 for the octopus entrée, $20 for Gary's squid ink spaghetti, $30 for Ellen's braised rabbit, and because she intentionally ordered last, $12 for her own beef ricotta ravioli. Plus the $30 Lacrima Christi, a $12 pistachio semifreddo that Ellen proclaimed "better than heroin." Not that she'd know. Tax tip. She wanted to cry. Mama Warbucks. She was an idiot.

She read all the subway ads. Divorce, Bankruptcy, Personal Injury Lawyers, Captain Morgan Spiced Rum, a public service announcement on how to be a good father, 1-800-ENGLISH, lose or gain 40 lbs in 40 days, Dr. Zismore's proclamation against eczema, acne, psoriasis, a clinic promising relief of hemorrhoids, fibroids, erectile dysfunction, and hammer toes, all in the same place. The train lurched, stopped. The engine hissed. Benny popped awake. "This is it," she thought. "This train's dead. This old tunnel's collapsing." She looked up as if to read an explanation in the loudspeaker. Simultaneously, the lights cut. A static, garbled announcement said, "Maggots up ahead." "No, traffic, Benny. Traffic." A man on the other end of the car said, "Stupid ass motherfuckers." "Got that right," thought Benny. She leaned forward, elbows to knees, cricked her neck. As the seconds wore on, she thought perhaps that the conductor had lied. There was no traffic, and she would die underground, sweaty and alone. This was a thought she'd had many times in the seven years since 9/11, whenever stalled in a train tunnel. If a bridge collapsed with her on it, she might be in a car with someone she knew or close enough to a cabbie to hold his hand as they fell into the water. He'd peer deep into her eyes, and their palms would squeeze together just before impact. Down in the subway tunnel, it seemed less appropriate to edge closer to a stranger if doom seemed imminent, especially the stranger she'd fallen asleep on. At least imminent death meant not returning to work. Haha. The toddler shrieked. His mother hushed him. The train rolled backwards, then forward. Soon they slid into her station. With a sigh, Benny hoisted herself from the seat. The doors *beep-booped* behind her.

The walk home reawakened her, made her punchy. How easy everyone else at the office had it, she thought. Baxter drove in from Chappaqua in an Escalade with heated leather seats. Capra and Zimon strolled into work on foot from well-appointed digs with views of the East River. Beatrice and Rick had quick and easy commutes along the 45. Beatrice to East Harlem. Rick to the Lower East Side while Benny clunked along to Brooklyn, dragging a suitcase. Her heels ground into the pavement among slick red leaves illuminated by yellow street lamps. Home. She kicked off her shoes, peeled off her office clothes. Her stomach rumbled. She stood before the open fridge in her underwear. It was a howling wasteland. A half-eaten cup of yogurt and a half-eaten can of tuna, both protected by tiny squares of Saran wrap. The yogurt dotted with blue and the tuna crusty. In Aunt Ruby's final days, when her mother finally learned how far gone she was, the fridge had been taped shut, full of spoiled lunch meats and whipped cream jell-o molds. A pot roast turned gray-green. Benny slammed the door shut.

In the living room, she stared at her worktable. The reason for her existence. The reason she was now at this crappy job where no one knew a thing about her or cared. But she didn't have time to think about her art. Her trashed assemblage remained in the waste basket. The rubber octopus's googly eye wide with despair. In a low and plotting Eeyore voice, the counterfeit sea creature said, "Please, Benny, don't forsake me." She thought of Ruby checking under the bed for monsters. And shuddered. "Sorry, guy. Murder your darlings." At the corner of the ravaged worktable, one object remained. Ruby's cut-glass perfume bottle, circa 1949. Benny circled the room once to calm herself before even touching it. Flinging open a window, she inhaled the autumnal night air wafting in from the yards of houses behind her apartment building. Ginko, oak, locust trees shedding their leaves. She poked the mosquito screen. Faint black dust which drifted in from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway smeared onto her finger pad. She sighed, absently, wiped the dirt on her pale thigh. Back of the table, she cradled the glass notches of the perfume bottle, breathed, sniffed at the relic from a more glamorous time. Rose, jasmine, cedar, musk. The satiny pink tassel tickled her nose. She locked the window and burrowed into bed, pulling the covers over her face.

Stripes of sunshine shot through the fire escape, warming Benny's face. She hauled herself awake, glanced guiltily at her worktable, empty but for Ruby's perfume bottle. Light refracted through its cut glass. Eyelids heavy. She dragged herself to the kitchen, numbly prepared a pot of coffee, shuffled back to the table, and sank to the floor as if kneeling before an altar. Under the table was a box of materials. She dumped it on the parquet. Maple and ginko leaves, old boxes of stale fruit candy, dried peonies, warped copies of *National Geographic*, and crumpled wrapping paper, cutouts of Glenda the Good Witch, Maria Callas, Groucho Marx, Vladimir Putin, the Marlboro Man, and Bella Lugosi. A green glass electrical conduit, a burgundy Christmas ornament, a crystal ball, a dismantled *Swan Lake* music box, a Victorian skeleton key, magnifying glass, scissors, tweezers, shellac, laundry clips, an array of clues. She tried to make sense of the heap, sipped coffee, and stared in the dead silence of the morning, and shivered. The silence didn't feel pregnant. It felt unnervingly sterile. A crackling jazz record didn't help. She switched on NPR, so quiet that the anchors only murmured warm sounds. No good. The soothing noise poorly covered the void. She was a fool for even considering Ellen's idea. Already exhausted, she flopped on the sofa.

At one point in college, before she found out she would inherit Aunt Ruby's lease, she'd imagined her adult life in New York would involve finding roommates to share a loft in East Bushwick and then making weird little dioramas that would catch the eyes of someone influential. Who? Someone kind of like a starlet in her soda shop, but different. She'd be discovered by someone who would find her art unforgettable. Over time, her art would get better and better until it fetched enough money to live on. She'd mentioned finding a place in Bushwick to her mother, who'd frowned and said, "Aren't there roving packs of wild dogs there?" A 1970s story she'd heard from a friend. And now Benny lay on Ruby's floral brocade sofa, the kind you would expect to see a plastic slipcover on. She closed her eyes and wished for a television. Maybe she would go to Target one of these days and just get one. But then she'd have to pay for cable, too. Lightly she slapped herself six times on the cheeks. Do not get used to money. Pigeons fluttered on and off her window sill. Her flip phone glowed red. And buzzed. She let it buzz a few more times before finally picking up.

"Benny, honey," said her mother, "we haven't seen you in a month. How are you doing?" "Clickety-click." Benny imagined her mother fiddling with those clip-on turquoise earrings she loved. "Sorry, Mom. I've been busy and tired. Will you come over for dinner tonight if it's not too much for you? Your father would love to see you." It seemed silly to ask if it would be too much. Her parents didn't live out of town. They lived in Kensington. It was one transfer on the subway. Although one transfer could really make a 30-minute trip an expedition. "Your father would love to see you." In a flat voice, Benny said, "It's not too much trouble. Sorry, I've been quiet. I was just in Delaware for 2 weeks and there was all the trial prep." "Of course, honey. We know you're busy. I bet they're working you to the bone. So, you'll come and have a bite and we'll hear all about it." "Yeah, I'll be there. 6." "Sure, whatever you like, sweetie. Just as long as we're done eating in time for *Mystery*."

On the way to the subway, Benny stopped at the florist and bought her mother an autumnal bouquet, slender branches dotted with smooth red berries. She never bought her mother flowers, which made her feel like a bad daughter, but it was because her mother said she was allergic. These berries were probably okay. Aunt Ruby used to bring snapdragons or gladiolas whenever she came over for dinner, which was a long time ago, and her mother would always mutter, "Oh dear," and try not to cry at the dinner table. Up the four flights to their Ocean Parkway co-op, the smells alternated between cabbage soup and sauerkraut and something else. The strange scent of caraway seeds and the solid, homey aroma of boiled potato. Binnie's mother greeted her with familial enthusiasm, usually only seen at major holidays, kissing her cheeks and beaming at the bouquet of buried branches before pulling her inside where it smelled of burnt beans and baked yams. "Sorry," her father said. "I let your mother cook." Arlene's smile faded. "You're a little pale. Are you eating enough? How are those lawyers treating you?" "Fine, Mom. Let me nuke those tuna steaks we got in the freezer." Her father said the girl needs protein. Her mother clucked her tongue and shook her head. "We weren't planning on fish tonight, but your father's right. Just a few minutes in the nuker, then I'll sear them real nice. How's that? And what are you doing wearing heels on a Sunday? What is this, church? You'll ruin your feet. Not to mention varicose veins." Benny slipped off her heels. "I'm trying to get used to wearing them more often. I don't want to look like a kid playing dress-up." She could solder them onto her feet. She thought turn into a seder. Arlene stroked Benny's cheek with her thumb. The imagined seder deflated. The air zipped right out of it. Albert chuckled and patted into the kitchen in his slippers. It had been late. Arlene's hair cropped short, shown silvery gray. Her father sported a round bald head. In a way, they seemed more and more like grandparents. Benny was beginning to feel protective of them.

At the circular wooden table that had been in the small family her whole life, they ate microwaved and seared tuna and burnt navy beans and toast and tap water. "So, what's with this trial?" asked Albert. "I probably can't talk about it." She didn't want to talk about the 14-hour days, the abject greed of both sides, clients and attorneys alike, the pointlessness, the fact that the judge and jury had used their precious brain power on this litigation, the disgust she felt in herself for feeling disappointed that they lost. "Top secret, eh?" He smiled a dreamy smile, eyes half closed. Benny leaned in and nodded. If she could be assured invincibility, he probably would have loved for Benny to be in the CIA or the MI5. Paralegaling seemed like a semi-thrilling second choice for him, as long as she cut out the boring details. The art he didn't get. The few pieces she'd shown him when he'd come over to fix a leak the super had ignored were interesting except for the cannibalized book ones. Then he'd said, "I don't care for it personally." "Well, everyone's so glad you're in a stable situation," said Arlene. Vinnie cringed. "Do you like it?" "I guess I like it enough. Maybe you'll read that Elsat's book I gave you." "Um, maybe. You know, you can do art on the side. Everyone has hobbies." Her face tightened. Sometimes she wondered if part of her motivation to keep pursuing art might be spite.

"That's it. Arlene had said on the phone the middle of Benny's sophomore year before pulling her financial support. There had been the silence. Then, *click*. "I declared my major," she'd said at the beginning of that fateful conversation. The snow outside bright. "Oh, really? Do tell," said Albert, also on the line. "Well, art." "Odd." Arlene sounded skeptical. "Like odd history?" "No." Her finger traced a groove in the cinder block dorm wall. "Like making art." "She's joking, El." "Right. I'm not getting the joke. Let her talk." He said, "Benny, why art? This is my passion. You said find something I love. I want to make things." "Why not design?" His voice quiet. She knew he wouldn't say carpentry. He'd lost a finger. "At least with odd history, you could work in a museum. I don't know what kind of prospects you'd have, though. Binnie, you really need to reconsider. You need something more general, more practical." "I've made my decision. I don't understand why you're saying to change it." "Benny, please get real." Her father receded into the background and remained silent during the tuition ultimatum. She wasn't sure if he was standing beside Arlene for that or had gone off to hide in the bathroom. "That's it. *Click*."

Arlene knifed her dry tuna and Benny scraped a forkful of beans. Then Albert stuck his pinky stub against his nose. A decades-old nose-picking joke. Benny sputtered a half-laugh. "Gross, Dad." "Oh, Al." "Well, it works, doesn't it?" Arlene brought out the baked yams for dessert. "Want to make them tropical?" They sprinkled the yams with coconut rum, a tiny bottle they'd acquired on their vacation in Puerto Rico a year ago. They weren't really rum drinkers except when it came to fruity dessert. "God," thought Benny, "that teeny tiny bottle." "Speaking of work," Benny said, raking her fork through globs of rummy yam, somewhat enjoying an upwelling of spite. "I'm thinking of moving to the city. That commute can be tiresome on a late night. Give up Aunt Ruby's apartment." "Well," said Benny, chest tightening. "Yeah." "Oh, honey," said Arlene, her eyes going glossy. "I don't think that's a good idea." Benny sucked her cheeks. A bubble of burnt yam sugar sat toward the rim of her plate. She'd taken the charred stuff of her own volition. She'd pictured it in the oven, syrup bursting through the skin. It was good until it wasn't. "Think of all the money you're saving. You're set for life." Her father's nose whistled. A few bristly hairs poking out the nostrils. Benny tapped the char. It crumbled easily. Crème brûlée à la greenson. Her mouth curled. "It just doesn't feel safe and all when I'm on the subway all alone at 9:00." She hoped they wouldn't ask about the black cars she could take when she worked that late. The fancy cars that whisked her home anytime she worked past 8. Living in Manhattan would be liberating. The idea of adulthood she'd had as a child. "Well, it seems like an enormous waste to me." Al patted Arlene's arm. Benny mashed her finger into the charcoal. Of course, she'd been grateful for Ruby's apartment. She'd been grateful and grateful and grateful. Charred crumbs stuck to her skin. But at what cost? It was a never-ending cycle. Don't want a bat mitzvah? Do it for Ruby and you'll reap the rewards. Want to go to college? Study something useful or foot the bill. Whatever support was lovingly offered came with strings, and she was starting to feel beholden, stifled, and here she was acting like a child, pouting over her dessert and justifying her choices to her parents. Why?

Benny carried the dessert plates into the kitchen. Arlene said, "Thank you, honey." Satisfied that she'd gotten the last word. There was no arguing with her. Hot water blasted the dishes. Let her think what she'd think. Meanwhile, Benny would think her own thoughts and go her own way. Stop living in Ruby's tomb. Maybe a new place would grant her a sense of artistic freedom. She thought as she scrubbed, shake things up, and she could sleep later, be home quicker, not marinate in the scent of ancient mothballs. Whatever she found would be considerably smaller and more expensive. But then, wouldn't that be the true New York City experience? As a small girl, she'd assumed that by 25, she'd be married and living in one of those castle-like buildings next to Central Park, a great big sparkler on her manicured ring finger. A babysitter had patted her curly head as a toddler, saying, "Oh, you'll be a looker. Merry rich kid." No dice. Ha.

She left her parents to brew their after-dinner chamomile tea and peered into her old bedroom, now what her parents referred to as the den. Her father's stack of spy thrillers and *Star Trek* novels had doubled in size, wobbling toward the height of their matching ochre velour armchairs. Her mother's books, neatly stacked on a shelf, remained the same. M album's entire dozen historical romances arranged by era and the well-thumbed green tome entitled *Heal Yourself Today*. Dozens of starship Enterprise models cluttered the remaining shelves. Yarn and crochet needles lay on a side table in a snarl. All evidence of Benny's life in that room gone. "Want to watch *Mystery*?" asked Arlene from the hall. "It's probably a rerun, but your father never remembers." "No thanks. I don't want to get used to television again." "All right, dear. We loved seeing you. Let's not let weeks go by like that again." Binnie exhaled as she descended the cabbage-scented faux granite stairway. She rather liked her new idea of moving to the city. She'd said it out of spite, and now she simply had no choice but to follow through. She had to show her mother she could go it alone, that she could in fact be fully independent. She could never say, "It's Ruby's tomb." Yes, it was huge with charming archways between the foyer and the living room and creaky wood floors and a built-in glass-door spice cabinet in the kitchen that had stirred little Benny's imagination. Yes, it was also dark and overheated in winter and dank in summer and tainted by sad personal history. She could never say Ruby died alone, scared, unfulfilled. Her brightest days, a rosy memory of suitors, shiny with brilliant cream. She could never say, "This is part of some great long string of disappointment following the expected steps of your generation." Bitterly, she smiled. It was time to cut the cord before she hardened into a stone baby.

On the way to the Fort Hamilton Parkway station, Benny passed a young couple in elf hipster shoes. The man's were lime green with trapezoidal toes and the woman's burnt orange and curved at the tip. They glanced at her, then glanced away, almost ashamed, as if coming home to Kensington was not nearly as cool as coming home to Williamsburg, which was what their outfits aspired to. Benny recalled exploring Williamsburg as a high schooler with a *Time Out New York* map in hand and remarking that it seemed like a strange artsy college town that had been airlifted into northern Brooklyn. Eight years later, it was a different thing again, gone on to the next stage of development with pricey boutiques and high-end restaurants and narrow sidewalks crammed with shoppers and SUV-sized baby strollers. Park Slope had long been through this, but no one ever thought of non-Brownstone Brooklyn. No one thought of the vast swath south of Prospect Park. In a way, Benny too felt shame and at the same time pride. This is real authentic Brooklyn, not those northern parts with the gentrifying interlopers. But was she somehow one of the interlopers? Even as a born-and-bred Brooklynite, was she a traitor, wanting to move to Manhattan and pretending she was one of the conquering hordes? Shouldn't she feel a little pride in the slow trickle of artsy types, even if they only showed their faces late in the night for fear of recognizing each other in a not-cool part of Brooklyn? Wasn't she an artsy type? Hadn't she hated that friend of Ellen's who had moved to New York and refused to consider living anywhere but Manhattan even though it meant her rent would eat more than half her income and she'd still be in a rat hole. She'd hated that stupid [ __ ] And here she was wanting the same.

Sliding into a bright orange seat on the train, she unclenched her fists. She expelled a long yogic breath, the kind of breath used in the face of chaos. There is no need to feel angry. No need. The train shot out toward the 4th Avenue station over the glittering Gowanus Canal. The blue glow sign glowed in the night, reflecting on the black water. She stepped off to transfer, nearly slipping on a piece of detritus on the platform, a photograph. She kept her toe on it so that the wind would not blow it away as the train exited the station, whip it up and over into the tracks, bent down to pick it up. A little boy, age five or so, with a paper party hat, sitting at a bright yellow fast-food restaurant table and happily eating soft-serve vanilla ice cream, a gleam of sweet cream on his smile. He wore a plaid long-sleeved shirt, a relic of the early '80s. Who'd lose a photo like this? Just leave it flapping in the wind. The platform was empty. She pocketed the artifact, feeling lucky.

At home, with her coat and shoes still on, and the steam heat clanking, Benny switched on the incandescent light above her worktable and emptied a box of stale fruit candy, sorting out the yellow ones. The boy would be a character in a new diorama, and the yellow Juju Bees would be its center of gravity. She would shellac them together, and they'd lend the thing, whatever it was, an unearthly translucence. She would make a wooden box for it. Maybe she would paint the box and bake it the way Cornell baked his painted boxes to weather them, instant antiques. She stalked into the kitchen and nabbed a dusty container of turmeric, grabbed a circular from the recycling bin, and sprinkled on it a ring of the marigold-colored powder. Marigolds? Would those fit? They would add whimsy, perhaps. Silk Marigolds. The window shuddered in its wood frame as she thrust upward. She glued the little candies together with fast-acting glue, careful not to let it ooze, then shook her can of shellac, shielded her nose and mouth with one arm, and sprayed for a good hard minute. Then she rested, feeling giddy. The Juju Bees clustered together like something she'd seen in a science magazine. A magnified organism, a viral infection.

Chapter 2.

Sunlight warmed Benny's pale, thin forearm. A metal keypad surgically implanted there, she imagined sleepily, could thwart referees with electric zaps. The zaps would travel up her arm, which arranged and rearranged desperate objects into dream boxes. Flotsam à la Joseph Cornell, cheap toys, hard candy, vintage cutouts, things grasping at wonder. And by entering her brain, kill the desire to make art. One could devise a quasi-Victorian design for such a contraption. Wires entwining with nerves all the way up to the frontal lobe. Zip. There goes your inner life. Zap. Back to work.

She descended into the subway with *Utopia Parkway*, a biography of Cornell that she read intermittently, hoping it would help her find her own path. He too had an overbearing mother. His day jobs gave him headaches and stomach aches, just like Benny's. His diary entries chronicled airy lunches, red jam rolls, lemon cake, chocolate egg creams. Aunt Ruby could have been one of the girls lunching in automatons that Cornell brooded over, prim and oblivious to him. When she used to lean in to kiss Benny as a girl, she smelled of rose perfume and cold cream. The first time Aunt Ruby ever opted not to pinch her cheek was after her bat mitzvah. Benny hadn't wanted a bat mitzvah. She hated the idea of standing before her peers on the bimah. Her dress from Sears scrutinized and later her temple basement party so sad compared to others' splashy affairs. Custom T-shirts torpedoed out of a cannon. A Noah's Ark-themed cruise around Manhattan. An Absolut Vodka ad-themed shindig at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. Arlene had been appalled at the latter. A bad girl boast. In any case, Arlene begged Benny to have a bat mitzvah for Aunt Ruby's sake. Benny being the closest thing to a granddaughter she would ever have. So she did. Aunt Ruby, dark bobbed hair, perfectly sleek, expertly lined eyes watering, felled and caved.

As she marched up the grimy steps from the subway platform. A little ball of hate the size of a marble stuck in her throat. The sort of quiet hate a child feels for a place they do not wish to go but must to work. To battle for money, not hers. The bustle of Midtown on a Monday morning was in stark contrast to the prior two weeks. The darkened windows of downtown Wilmington's old stone buildings had summoned Cornell's haunted palace and setting for a fairy tale. A crowd of thin white trees rising up behind its gabled roof, stark against an inky black sky. In Wilmington, the spookiness was real. Boarded-up retail and for-lease signs, dismal panhandlers grimmer than New York's homeless. With so few people on the street, who would seek charity in such a city? The marble of hate slunk to Benny's stomach. She envisioned a diorama in the shape of a Bozzart's bank, its roof caving in. The diorama would sit on a low pedestal so that you could look down the hole in its top, and a mirror inside, angled just so, would make the darkness infinite. Title: Black Hole.

"Welcome back," Meline said in her subtle, lilting British Caribbean accent. Her high cheekbones framed a curious smile. Did Benny look disheveled? Pissed to be back. Two weeks of trial in Wilmington, and nothing but a weekend to wash away the bad taste of losing. The zombie's terrible smoker's cough, a long and tortured rattling of phlegm, resounded through the closed door of the firm's one windowless office. A set of Phoenician blinds covered the window on the door, shutting out the zombie's one chance for diffused natural light, but they could not hide the odor of cigarettes. "Richard Jones," his nameplate said. Everyone but Meline called him Dick, and maybe it was immature of Benny to think this was a private joke in the office. Yet, he never seemed to insist on being called Richard or even Jones. Meline used "Mister" with the partners, but not anyone else. He was Richard to her alone, and it sounded grand in her accent. Meline picked up the phone, dispelling any need for Benny to attempt small talk. Into the center of the Lipstick's ellipse she went. The building was not round, but oval, to her kitchen-adjacent cubicle. Down the hall, a woman knelt outside Capra's door, shining his shoes while he ate an apple and read the paper, a regular ritual. Following the firm's hierarchy, Simon would be next, then Baxter. Apparently embarrassed by the image of a woman kneeling before them to shine their shoes, they all opted to slip off their oxfords each morning and let her shine them in the hallway. Benny preferred the lawyers unshoed.

In the kitchen, with supreme care, she refilled the faux ebony box of espresso pods. Robust, earthy, fruity, floral, light. The tasting notes of purple, gold, black, green, and copper pods arranged in tidy lines. Little caffeine soldiers and colorful helmets. The pods had Italian names: Arpeggio, Lungo, Maestro. What about an assemblage like that? Like Talion's jeweled casket, a velvet-lined box Joseph Cornell had made in homage to the romantic-era ballerina Maria Taglioni, who traveled with a jewel casket full of precious stones gifted to her by European royalty. Instead of gems, Cornell filled the box with neat rows of glass ice cubes from a dime store and strung fake diamonds along the top. The word casket, of course, elicited the notion of death. Like the box was some relic.

Buried in a sumptuous tomb. The name coffee casket exuded much less magic. Capra's coffee casket. No, no, no. Maybe instead of espresso pods, she'd use gumdrops and a candy necklace. Gumdrop casket. Now that title sparkled.

A postcard of Cornell's untitled marine fantasy with Tamara Tumanova hung beside her computer. In a striped purple red bodice vaguely resembling veins and an expansive skirt of kelp and fleshy seaweed, the ballerina floated with hands and face poised upward in calm exultation. Silver, red gold, and green dappled fish swam. Murky butterflies flew. Coral grasped and sea vegetables swayed. "Sleep with the fishes," she thought of Peter Pan's casinos. "Wasn't all of the gaming industry the mob anyway?" She was surprised when neither side displayed the stereotypical appearance of mafiosos, nearly a pinky ring in the bunch.

Baxter sculpt toward Benny's desk. Without his suit coat, he appeared stringy. His salt and pepper hair fluffed a bit as he sculpted. "Hey, Benny," he muttered. "In Delaware, she had pied it." That voice thickened by the loss of the trial. "But now," he swiveled, his anxious body always fidgeting, drummed at the wall of her cubicle. Wouldn't meet her eye. "We've got to get started on this appeal. Rick will help, right, Rick?"

Simon in his office across from Benny's cubicle russled the Wall Street Journal and said, "Work on the appeal. Maybe they could pay some bills first." Through the open door, Benny could see his view of the East River. Baxter's face darkened into the guise of a fox, the wy fox Rick had long ago warned Benny about, the one racked by indecision, and which had no qualms about keeping them in the office late into the night, dismantling briefs he changed his mind about, recopying and reassembling them. Baxter did not turn to acknowledge Zimon.

Rick poked his head up from his cubicle which shared a half wall with Benny's on one side and Beatric's on the other. "Hm. Pancorp," said Baxter. "Yes, Pancorp. All right," said Baxter. "Go team." He slapped the top of the cubicle wall once more before loping away.

"Do you really need my help?" Rick asked. "I'm very busy with Oil Co." His shoulder in a crisp pink shirt gave a little twitch of pride. Pancorp was the case for losers. Oil Co. was the real deal, big money, promising a juicy bonus at the end of it. "Well," said Benny, "I don't really know what I'm doing, so a little help would be nice."

Five minutes of guidance, recuffed, and led the way toward the windowless file room at the center of the office. The air of disregard he seemed to carry about him, the feeling that at any minute he might casually say or do something cruel brought to mind a redneed little boy calmly burning ants with magnifying glasses.

Aside from Panc and Oil Co., business slowed that week. On Friday, Beatrice and Capra joked wistfully in the kitchen that despite the economic downturn, it wouldn't be long before people would be litigating again. It was good to be in bankruptcy.

At 4 p.m., Simon said, "I'm out of here. Going to catch double indemnity at Lincoln Center." "Barbara Stanwick," Kapper said. "What a broad," Simon said.

"Why doesn't everyone scram?" Benny slurped cold, sour coffee, and felt the glee and dread of being cut loose early on a Friday. Freedom by way of drying up prospects. Pulling on a wool coat riddled with pled lint, she remembered her little boy with a vanilla ice cream mouth and told herself the highwire act to come was absolutely necessary to her progress.

On 1st Avenue, not too far from 53rd, an antique shop displayed an apartment for rent sign in the window. The shop's hours were by chance or by appointment. The handwritten sign water stained and curling. The brown painted the doorway thick and flaking. There was no phone number on the rent sign. A chill crept into the air, cutting through the gold tinted autumn light.

Benny peered through the dirty window and knocked. An old woman in a quilted house coat opened the door halfway. "Yes, I'd like to see the apartment for rent." The woman shut the door. Vinnie stood around, unsure how long to wait. The woman came back in a wool peacacoat, her white hair, soft and curly, had a touch of blonde in it. She had a dower face and steely eyes and a long gray hair on her chin. She jangled a big chain of keys. "This way, please."

They walked up a narrow, creaking staircase that leaned slightly to the right. At the landing were two doors. The woman opened one of them. "It's an efficiency," she said. "Or a studio, whatever you call them these days." The lenolium in the seafoam green kitchenet was dirty and cracked. The wood floors of the living area rough and scratched. Splotches modeled the only two windows which faced First Avenue. A brown refrigerator gurgled. Sticky mouse traps clustered behind the front door, flecked with the carcasses of fruit flies.

Benny stuck her head in the tiny pink tiled bathroom and flushed the toilet, which was thankfully turdless. She'd suspected she'd find one just waiting for her in there. She turned on the sink and the shower and the gas stove and saw that everything worked okay. The colors were kind of nauseating, but at the same time, the combination worked. There was a history here, but it wasn't her history or that of anyone she knew. She could make this space her own.

"How much for you?" "Uh, yeah, for me." The woman appraised Benny's outfit. Her darting eyes calculated demeanor. "$1300 plus first, last and security." This was double the prize for less than half the space Benny had in Aunt Ruby's place, plus questionable atmosphere, though the woman in her store might add a saltiness to Benny's life that she could learn to appreciate. Actually, the price seemed kind of low given the area.

"I should add, I'm your upstairs neighbor and your downstairs neighbor, and the gentleman across the hall from you is my aranged husband." She crossed her arms. "We've owned this building for 30 years. I work long hours. You'll barely see me." Dale.

Outside, the cold air perked Benny up. She was happy to have the place, happy to have the process be quick, not some stressful, drawn out affair. The gold tinted light shifted to twilight indigo. Benny ended her other lease.

"You could have sublet the place, Benny," Arlene shouted on the phone. Benny imagined the blue vein pulsing in her mother's temple. "Your timing is spectacularly bad." Binny put on a cool, collected voice. "Oh well, Ma, you live, you learn."

The following Friday night, she used an entire bottle of soft scrub and two rolls of paper towels, scouring the place as hard as she could. She made a greasy mess of the wood floors, finding comfort in the smells of bleach and Murphy's oil soap. "Drill, baby, drill," Sarah Palin had said at the vice presidential debate the night before. Benny hadn't watched. She didn't have a TV, but Zimman had relished the ridiculousness in the office all day. "I can see Russia from my house," he added, channeling Tina Fay's impersonation in a ditzy falsetto. "Laugh all you want," Rick had muttered. "Laugh all the way to the bank."

"Let me smudge your new place," Ellen texted. "That sounds dirty." "You'll thank me later." Ellen showed up despite Benny's protests. A bundle of sage in one hand, a box of matches in the other. She lit the herbs on fire and wafted smoke into all the studios crevices. Benny worried that all the chemical fumes combining would cause an explosion. "I'm airing out the nasty," Ellen said. "If you say so. Help me move tomorrow." "Sorry, I have plans." She planted a big kiss on Benny's cheek on her way out. "Text me in the afternoon. I'll try to find time."

The next day, Gary helped Benny with multiple trips on the subway. She piled garbage bags into a granny cart. He lugged boxes on a hand cart. "There's got to be a better way," Benny said, already tired after the first leg of their journey. "Like hire other people to do this with a van and stuff. That would be brilliant." They laughed. After each descent to the platform, they collapsed on the shiny hard seats with a sigh and a smile. Each ascent at the enormous escalator at the Lexington Avenue stop offered another welcome moment of repose. Even if they were in a subterranean tunnel, even if subway stactites mysteriously dripped.

On their second trip, a gaggle of preschool-aged children hopped up, no doubt, on Saturday morning cartoons and Froot Loops swarmed around them, clamoring on the seats on either side. Maybe headed to Central Park, to the playground near the Mets Temple of Danger. The structure of that playground, tunnneled mounds, perfect for humans under four feet, and the experience of being inside an ancient temple transported from Egypt and reconstructed in a gallery filled with air and light had long been implanted in Benny's consciousness. She'd been to the dender many times and lamented as she grew, being unable to fit inside the playground's best structures. But the stone of the temple salvaged before the Nile flooded held a certain power. Something of the past not entirely lost. However perlloined. Gingerbread temple pudgy need children made of almond paste swarm a graham cracker dender scaling its ridges nibbling its columns and cornises lapping at a reflecting pool of blue dyed vanilla frosting. A candied hippopotamus peeps out of the water, snout flared, anticipating the snap of their fat little thighs. She would have to shellac it to make it last, but that would take the fun out of working with food. Candy too old to eat was a better material.

The children were now quacking like ducks. Their father/ uncle/nanny loomed over them trying to stop them from squirming off the seats and losing their balance with the train sway from clunking into a metal pole and crying. Gary scrunched his face and smiled, eyes shining with a level of aliveness she yet to see in him. She suppressed the urge to run her fingertip along his long brown lashes, his eyes unscrunched as if he sensed her urge. Her body hummed with hope and happiness.

Benny didn't own much furniture. Ruby's floral brocade sofa, which would not fit in her new studio, was destined for the building's basement laundry room. A perch for little old ladies who found the journey between loads cumbersome. She pictured them settling into the sagging cushions, paging through murder mysteries and bodice rippers while waiting for a dryer to become available. Arlene would hate to hear about this, but Benny didn't want to discuss the move with her anymore, even though in truth it felt a little like a betrayal. The last relic of Ruby abandoned in a basement laundry room.

Her workt they dismantled and were able to transport by subway on the third trip when Ellen actually lent a hand. Binnie hid her assemblage materials in a sealed cardboard box inside a sealed garbage bag before her friends arrived. Aunt Ruby's cut glass perfume bottle nested at the center of her materials wrapped in a layer of tissue paper, a layer of newspaper, bubble wrap, and packing tape. The one thing from Ruby's place she truly needed. Not the pre-war apartment, just the perfume bottle. The revelation of this difference perfume bottle, not apartment, buoied her upward. She felt lighter, freer, agile. Through all its protective wrappings, the cut glass bottle glowed. Portability.

The bed was a problem. "Burn it," said Ellen. "Ellen," said Benny. "What? It's not like you can sell that thing." Benny nodded. It was a terrible bed. She could barely remember how she'd acquired it, from a roommate of a friend of a friend. But she hadn't paid a scent for it. Arlene had consented to donate Ruby's simple oak frame to Goodwill before Benny moved in and had the mattress hauled away to the dump. Ruby had died in that bed. Arlene at least understood that.

"There is a thing called free cycle," said Gary. "You could give it away and someone will take it off your hands for free." They posted onto Free Cycle in Craigslist and sat on the floor in Aunt Ruby's place playing cards until someone called. "It has bed bugs?" Asked the woman. "No, never," said Benny. "Hang on, my husband will get it." They dismantled the bed. A man with scars all over his arms came and said he could get the bed home in two cab rides. They helped him lash the mattress to the car's roof, and as it pulled away, Benny asked, "Nife fight, you think?" One August, when Benny was changing buses in Albany, a topless man had sauntered around the station, his back splotched with bullet wound scars, shiny and thick. "Well, he's not a cutter," Gary said. Ellen's eyes flickered at Gary. "No."

Half an hour later, they helped the man lash the metal frames at top the taxi. The cabby frowned, but complied. The car started moving before the man even closed the passenger door. "What do I sleep on now?" Benny asked. "You're nearly a grown-up in a studio of your very own," said Ellen. "Go get yourself a nice futon."

Benny sighed. They went to a cheap furniture store near NYU and paid the extra $50 for delivery. And by 8:00 p.m., she had a studio full of boxes and garbage bags and a place to sleep that wasn't the floor. "Boxes depress me," said Ellen. "Let's go out for dinner."

Over Masamon curry and garlic naan. Ellen told Gary and Benny about how she was going to Amsterdam over Thanksgiving weekend for a quick getaway and to see Damen Hurse for the love of God, a diamond encrusted skull with real human teeth. Her eyes glittered as she spoke of the many diamonds and the many carrots, and what a splash the auction had been when it was sold last year to a private investment firm for a hundred million. Gary and Benny quietly. "Mhm." Gary made eyes at Benny, who slid her eyes sideways, feeling fuzzy inside. He looked like he might reach across the table to grab her hands if it wasn't for Ellen. Warm orange red chili shaped lights and multicolored Christmas lights lit up the walls of the restaurant. Smiling into her King Fisher beer, she felt as if a whole egg were in her belly, and it had ever so slightly cracked.

"So, are you coming to the holiday party?" The warm yokeky feeling in Benny's belly quickly congealed. "Oh, I guess it's so far off still." "Actually, it isn't. And you should bring a little something to show Alexis. Is that how it works?" She guzzled her beer, feeling hopeful but apprehensive. "Just show up at the gallery with a little something." It seemed foolhardy. "Gary asked. Can I come?" Ellen broke into a grin. "You can be Benny's date. I've always wanted to be arm candy." "Well," said Ellen. "That settles it. You have some work to do, Benny."

She did have work to do. She resented the push, but knew it to be true. Ellen and Gary escorted Benny back toward her new little nest. Ellen in the middle linking arms with both of them. Taxi zoomed by in yellow flashes. The occasional horn in the distance reverberating against the urban canyons thrilled Benny. Was it dumb to be excited about living in Manhattan? Six legs crossed the street in lockstep and she thought, "This is my life now." And smiled, felt the wind on her teeth.

"It's so nice out," Vinnie said. She didn't want the night to end. "Why don't we go down to the river?" They stared east to the little wooded park by the FDR. "Nice," said Ellen. "Nice, nice, nice." A little slice of the city she'd yet to experience. A new unconsidered vista. Gold star for Benny. Ellen's approval was rare. It was like finally grabbing the brass ring. And Benny hated herself just a little bit for this feeling, this enjoyment of her approval, but she felt it. In their friendship, Benny was constantly offering herself up to Alan, asking, "Am I any good?"

The scent of the Atlantic, cold and briney, laced the breeze. "How many people swim across that river?" Gary wondered. In the dark, Benny could decipher the outlines of the ruin on Roosevelt Island. The old insane asylum exposed by the muckreaker Nelly Bllye. She'd written a report on her in the sixth grade. Still remembered it. A unit called Great New Yorkers. "I bet a swim through that really brings out your third eye," said Ellen.

Before anyone could respond, she said, "Okay, your most common anxiety dream. Go." "The one where you forget to go to school for a year," said Gary. "Yet show up to the final exam knowing you know nothing and that you should have known something by now every damn time." "Mine's the naked one," said Ellen, standing on a street corner in a top but no pants. Feeling smug, relishing having the best one, Benny said, "eating glass." "Glass, Benny." Ellen tugged at her arm. "Sure, glass. What's wrong with you?" "Second most common, swallowing my own teeth." "You don't get those dreams. What about choking on a giant wad of bubble gum? Or the one with the enormous whack-a-oles?" "No, I only have the naked ones," Gary said. "I'd like to spend an hour in your brain, Benny." "More like in her pants." Ellen snorted. "It's a real circus in there," said Benny, ignoring Ellen, training her eyes on Gary, still buzzed from the beer. An army of mechanical monkeys banging on drums.

Someone shuffled toward them. A homeless man with a hospital bracelet around his bony wrist and gray bandages around his forearms asking for change. A string of saliva hung from his bottom lip, which drooped away from his face. "Sorry," said Ellen. She pulled Gary and Benny away. The man grunted and ambled past them toward the edge of the park. "He's in rough shape," Gary said. "Yeah," Benny said. "A strange thing to see in this tonier part of town." The rawness was getting so saturated it leeched through previous barriers. A crack in a dam. Kensington wasn't as grim, though she'd spied an elderly neighbor of her parents, stooping with difficulty toward a discarded melon in a ger's trash heap once.

Ellen's brows knit for a fleeting moment. "The vulnerable will be affected first and worst." Bene shook her head at the exchange of things compassionate adults say, and glanced over her shoulder at the man who was now urinating in an arc over the sidewalk, his head craned up to the sky and his mouth wide open. She could still see the string of saliva gleaming under the street lamp.

On Sunday morning, she haphazardly unpacked. She thought of the potential of the infection diarama, the incoherence of her other materials. She wanted infection to spread to new pieces, to replicate, mutate. She wanted to ask Ellen for advice. How did all those people at her gallery make their start? But she was afraid of the possible answers and how they might relate to her. Connections a possibility thanks to Ellen. Inherited wealth. Nope. Abject poverty a possibility. Immense sacrifice. Maybe talent. Luck.

Chapter 3. Beatrice limped around the office after a morning with the sadistic personal trainer who had her on a regimen of hundreds of daily squats. Sipping a jumbo green smoothie, she gave Benny a print out of a cleanse diet Gwennneth Paltro had recommended. Benny put it in her purse to throw out later. Benny knew Beatrice wasn't Jewish, but something about this performance suggested atonement. "Sugar is death," Beatrice said grimly, then moaned. "I would kill for a potato chip."

"We need to talk about the bills," Kapper said halfway across the room. Beatrice let out a yogic fire breath. In faint pencil, Benny sketched how she imagined Ellen's boss, Alexis, a patrician 50something woman with Susan Sontag hair, black with a shock of white. She'd never met her, never seen her, only met Ellen outside of the gallery for infrequent ja to expensive cocktail bars of Ellen's choosing. Once that summer, while Benny loitered on the sidewalk, waiting for Ellen to wrap up inside, a man had commented on her silver cherry blossom necklace. "That's a traditional Japanese fertility symbol." "Interesting," Benny said. "Not really," said the man, pleased with himself. Vinnie had peered through the window at Ellen, willing her to cut her smoozing short. She couldn't afford to have that attitude anymore. She would go to the gallery holiday party. She would get Alexis's card. This was part of the deal with herself, the one where she gave up the yolk of Aunt Ruby's place and struck out on her own.

Two cubicles over, Beatrice and Capra soberly discussed which bills would not be paid. Benny had never eased dropped on such a conversation before and certainly not in the workplace. Belt tightening, sure. Bill skipping. She hadn't known that was an option. She just ate less and less, cheaper and cheaper. But there was a limit to that. Scurvy, for starters. How extravagant life had seemed the night before the start of the trial. Debbotched even. Capra's mistress had come down to join them in Wilmington, and they were all supposed to accept it as easily as Benny picking up Capra's dry cleaning for him.

They went to dinner with the clients. Benny met Zimman, Capra, Baxter, and Georgina in the hotel lobby. Capra was off in the corner calling some cabs. Georgina jumped into Baxter's lap. Benny tried not to stare, but from the corner of her eye, she stared. Benny and Georgina were roughly the same age. Georgina had a skinny heroin chic thing going on, a delicate face, sharp cheeks and chin, little pointed nose, dark hair, and dark wide set eyes. Benny felt fat and pasty next to her. But once that summer, Baxter had said Benny didn't need to watch her weight, and as she walked away from him, she felt his eyes on the A-line of her polka dot skirt. "Hi," >> Georgina chirped. "Hi," said Baxter with a strange smile, not quite lascivious, not quite uncomfortable, but in a ven diagram of the two qualities, it was a dot just outside the overlap. "Miss me?" Simon and Baxter must have been used to Georgina's antics since neither of them flinched. If anything, Baxter seemed embarrassed that Benny was there, as if it would have been fine with just Georgina and the guys. Zimon turned away from Georgina, perched on Baxter's knee, and murmured something about the inevitable Capra Zimman sexual harassment suit. He wasn't looking at Benny when he said this, but she was sure it was directed at her. Like Benny could sue for that, another woman on a partner's lap.

When Capper got off the phone, Georgina scampered over to him and he hugged her from behind. It appeared terribly possessive, an obvious showing off of his half-age girlfriend. Baxter was biting his cuticles. "I guess that's better than smoking," Zimon said, averting his gaze from the love birds. "Give me a break," said Baxter.

They piled into two cabs. The cavernous restaurant was in a former warehouse. Blue lights backlit tall vases of smooth spindly branches. The clients, two hedge fund managers who had bought a majority stake in Peter Pan's casinos in early 2001 and were now being sued by a group of his creditors were already there. Ron Harrison of Neptune Management was a short, slight man with hang dog eyes. Fred Olsen of Taichi Financial was sturdy and tall, and one of his blue eyes seemed darker, duller, didn't show a gleam of understanding. A glass eye. Benny focused on his active eye, wondering what polite society dictated in such situations. What would Ruby do? Don't stare. Olsson nodded politely to Benny when they shook hands and gave curtain nods when other people spoke, only offering his opinion when expressly asked. Benny moved away and stood near Harrison instead. She didn't know what to say. All she knew of him was that in the office, Baxter avoided his persistent calls until Zimman cracked the whip and told him to make a decision, move forward. They managed 5 minutes of idle chitchat, but his eyes kept their wounded look the whole time, suggesting a sense of profound injustice performed for Benny to decipher.

At a round table, Georgina sat between Capra and Benny. Olsen sat on Benny's other side. Harrison, Baxter, and Zimon rounded the circle back to Capra. Benny felt nervous about the prospect of making conversation with Olsen. Is something about his general Scandinavian reticence comforted her. Georgina ordered a Shopan vodka martini. "I have celiacs disease," she said to Benny. "Oh, Shopan is the only vodka I can have." "It's made from potatoes." An ad Benny had seen for the drink came to mind. A woman with perfectly round breasts wearing a tall fur cap pouring the cold, clear liquid. Benny realized she just repeated the slogan out loud. "It's made from potatoes." "Right." Benny felt lame for ordering Chardonnay, but she didn't want to get drunk, and red wine gave her headaches and stained her lips and teeth. Cabra also had a martini. Simon had scotch. The rest ordered beer. Everyone but Benny ordered spinach salad to start. Spinach was the leaf of the era, taking over Roma, which had in turn taken over iceberg. But Benny didn't want to order the same thing as everyone else, and the only other salad was garden salad. A sad array of iceberg lettuce and stale shredded carrots. "Oh well," she thought. "White wine and iceberg," she felt herself disappearing into the wall. Except Georgina kept talking to her. "So that guy from SNL, Seth Meyers, he totally hit on me in a bar last night. Oh, I was like, whatever." The salad came and went. Vinnie rounded out her series of bland choices with a grilled chicken breast and vegetable medley. Georgina ordered a steak tartar and a second martini. Kea glared at her. Georgina rolled her eyes. "He can't keep up," she muttered, "I drink with my clients all the time." The second martini lowered before her on a tray, and her eyes said to the waitress, "Bless you." She leaned toward Benny. Her speech increased in speed and lowered in volume. "Have you met Harrison before? He's so gross. He totally hit on me." "Did he?" Vinnie lowered her voice, too. "That is gross." "Yeah, it's sad. He's kind of a mey peg. What college did you go to? I miss college. I was on the swim team and model UN." Vinnie wondered if Georgina was younger than she'd previously thought. The loud music made it difficult for her to hear everything being said. She supposed she could say what she did in college for fun, but she hadn't been on any kind of sports team or part of any kind of club. She reshelfd books in the library for 4 years, a task that became glooier when Arlene stopped paying tuition and Benny piled on student loans. She'd been too shy also to do the artsy activities she should have done. All night art making marathons in the student union, elaborate costumes for a drag ball. Her diligence at the library got her promoted to the special collections. There had been some artist books there, and she'd become enamored with dreamy, obscure objects, like a book in the shape of a bed, with embroidered quilts and pillowcases serving as pages. She wanted to make dreamy stuff like that, stuff of wonder. She couldn't begin to explain it.

The main course arrived, but Georgina only moved the food around on her plate. "You know, I can barely eat a thing. I have colitis. Nothing agrees with me." "I'm sorry." Was she saying this to bond with Benny? Was Benny now supposed to divulge something personal to Georgina, or was she just making something up to cover for an eating disorder? "I went to a small school upstate." "Benny said, "What?" "You asked me what college I went to. I went upstate. You probably haven't heard of it. Near Colgate, but not Colgate." "Oh, Colgate. Cool. I went to Columbia." "Oh." Benny didn't correct her. Georgina talked faster and faster at a lower and lower volume. Benny could barely understand her. Something about first meeting Capra at a craps table in Vegas. "At Peter Pans?" Benny asked. Georgina glanced at Harrison, then tilted her head at Benny. "Caesars. This was before she was laid off. He liked a high roller. He'd said he bought her a mink coat in the desert."

Baxter wanted dessert, but no one else did. He ordered a slice of flowerless seven layer chocolate ganache cake and eight spoons. "Come on," he said. "Everyone enjoy a bite." Each diner took a teeny bite of the cake, but still there was a healthy sliver left that no one would touch. Vinnie felt bad about the waste, but knew she couldn't be the person to finish the cake. It just seemed wrong. It would seem wrong for any of them, even if Baxter said, "Add a boy or add a girl to egg them on." Like the eater of the leftovers was a chump. Gary would have swooped in on it with good humor and relish. "Jokes on you," he'd say, dancing in his chair as he made the spoonful of moose last. "I guess that's the sacrificial cake," Benny said. Her cheeks reened as soon as the words came out of her mouth. "What a weird thing to say," she thought. "Sacrificial cake, like she'd next toss a virgin on a p." Inexplicably, Olsen let out a wild, hearty laugh. It was a strange laugh, like he'd been overtaken by the sudden mania of a Bakanel. Perhaps he was overt tired. or perhaps they were all doing coke behind her back. He laughed and his head shook and as he gasped for air, something plumped out of his face and cracked against his chocolate smeared plate. Shards of pale and colored glass scattered onto the tablecloth, into Benny and Harrison's laps and onto the floor. "My eye. Oh gosh," said Benny. "I'm so sorry." Everyone inspected the table, gathered the shards. Biddy didn't want to see Olsen's gaping eye socket. She crouched on the ground. Bits were on the black wood floor, striped black, blue, white. One inch long crescent-shaped chunk presented an inside texture like basaltt. She slipped the crescent chunk into her purse before gathering a few tiny glass splinters into her palm and offering. "We'll replace it, Fred." Baxter said. "Oh, you don't have to do that," Olen said. "I'm sorry," Benny said again. "It's not your fault," Olen said. "It's all right. Do you have a spare in the meantime?" asked Capra gently. No one asked explicitly if he'd have to wear an eye patch on the witness stand, but that seemed to be the collective worry. A pirate banker would not do. "I have my old one. This was just customordered from Switzerland. The glass has a special livelessness to it. I should have gotten used to it before wearing it out." Of course, he wanted a nice eye for his day in court. "You think they could put it back together?" said Baxter. "Let us know if we can help." Olen said he'd just have to get a new eye. The group grew somber. Benny's purse hid the stolen eyes shard, a secret that glowed and pulsated.

Back at the hotel, Georgina slipped her arm around Benny's shoulder like they were old pals. Her bony hips swayed against Benny's, more than palish. The partners trailed behind. Baxter and Zimon's rooms were to the left of the elevators. Benny, Capra, and Georgina's to the right. "Have a good schlough," Baxter said as they parted ways. Benny wondered when Georgina would remove her arm, what she intended by lingering in front of Benny's door. "Well, good night," Benny said. "Good night," Kapper said, beckoning Georgina down the hall. "There it was," Benny posited, flirting with another woman to turn on a man. Georgina's motormouth faded down the hall. "Remember Tink's table? Remember Tink's tiny titties?" Capra uttered something sober sounding before shutting their door. Benny stored the eye shard in a plastic film canister among her art materials. She thought and thought and thought about what to do with it, but nothing came to her except Bunuel's onen and clouds sliding her across the moon. A knife slicing an eye. Not useful. She wasn't about to purchase sheep's eyes for the sake of art.

Rick sipped his 11:00 cup of tomato soup. He always had a tomato soup for lunch at 11 and snacked on carrot sticks at 3:00 in the afternoon. He ate so many carrots he would turn orange. She wondered if all the acid from the tomatoes contributed to his unpleasant demeanor. Baxter loafed by on his way to the coffee machine. "Beatrice, when you get a chance, that extra policy writer, you get the doctor's report." Her voice soft, clean as a whistle. "All right," Capra said. Beatress's thanks as Baxter left sounded strangely heavy. Maybe, thought Benny, she should take a sick day to prepare for her meeting with Alexis. Meeting? As if Alexis knew she existed. She made a list of what she would need for her gingerbread temple, which was almost everything. It felt dangerous playing hookie. She got a grand total of five vacation days per year, plus two floating religious holidays. But sick days were unlimited on an honor system, a blessing from a health scare Capra had suffered before Benny's time at CZB. If he hadn't almost died, she assumed they'd have a miserly aotment for illness, too. He was still careful. The provision in his lunch chart for this week, the chart, a Byzantine spreadsheet designed by a nutrition lifestyle guru and taped to Bitty's cubicle wall for her to manage, had been boiled parsnip, lightly massaged Tuscan kale salad, and a bottle of unsweetened cranberry juice cut with Austrian mineral water hand bottled in the Alps by Benny couldn't help but suppose Angelic Castradi and later hosen weeks passed with nar a sick day claimed Vinnie was being good she told herself lunch at her desk forgotten lunches these were virtues in the workplace she knew it was stupid but things ran smoothly and smoothly meant no one yelled no one grumbled no one cast glares of resentment her way time slipped past over election day mounted Ellen invited Benny and Gary up town to watch the pre-election day episode of Saturday Night Live.

On her space age vermilion couch, a tubular L-shaped affair with rounded corners, Ellen opened a bottle of Cabernet franced the cork to everyone's glee. "I'm going to Bali in the spring," Ellen said, pouring wine into three monster goblets. "Bies?" asked Benny. "Bali? Bali? Indonesia? With Todd? Work's been stressful. Time for a getaway." "Oh, yes. So stressful to anticipate spending Thanksgiving in Amsterdam, goping at diamonds in a skull." Benny vowed to be excited for her friend. First big trip. Getting serious. Ellen's face twisted like Benny had said the wrong thing. "Here, have some hard salami. Everyone needs a good hard salami. Am I right?" Benny chewed on a round of meat. "Is salami halal?" Gary asked Riley. Ellen giggled. But it wasn't the brain gap that Benny had come to identify as her genuine expression of pleasure. Wrong island. "Anyway, Todd's 100% beef. They have a water religion," Benny said of Bali. But then the show came on and Ellen was already turning up the volume. There was a skit of the Obamas doing a variety show. Maya Rudolph as Michelle saying solid as Barack and everyone smiled and smiled. Benny felt a gleam of hope that everything might just work out.

During a commercial break, Ellen muted the television and leaned over Gary toward Benny, shiny with anticipation. Binnie expected her to announce her latest epiphany in therapy, perhaps an irrational fear of Botto's nudes. "How are your projects coming along?" Ellen's rosy cheeks glowed. Benny splotched and flushed. The blue light of the television flickered over Ellen's face, danced with a twinkle in her eye. She seemed to be calculating, waiting for Benny to finally prove herself, finally show some godamn confidence. "I have just the thing for Alexis," she should say. "It will win her heart. It will blow her mind. In 2 years, I'll have a Guggenheim. In 5 years, I'll be a MacArthur genius." By's eyes darted around the apartment. Ellen shared a one-bedroom plus den with Cass, an editorial intern at Art Forum. Ellen got the bedroom. Feline Cass curled up in the nook that was the den behind an art deco room divider. In a pocket of quiet, Benny detected the subtle sound of a page turning behind the room divider. Visualizing white earbuds plugged into Cass's elf ears, she swirled the garnet wine. "Oh, you know, projects are good. Projects are coming along." Ellen drained her glass and said with half a grin, "Well, you know what they say, either [ __ ] or get off the pot." She snorted a short laugh. Gary's brown eyes softened into a sympathetic pudding. Ellen was sweeter when sober. Benny thought of biting through her goblet. It was delicate at the rim and sturdy at the base so that you could grasp it in her palm and shatter the top in her mouth easily enough. She set it down, the liquid gently sloshed. My Rudolph couldn't reappear fast enough. Gary grabbed the remote and turned the sound on. It seemed the pudding of his eyes hardened, but he liked to think he was mad at Ellen. "Gary, let the pudding skins fall from your eyes. I'm not worth the anger." They settled back into Ellen's couch, a reasonably priced $3,000 ro babois.

Gary walked Benny home. It was late, almost anything goes time, as Gary liked to call the weird hours between 3:00 and 6:00 in the morning. Apparently, it hadn't occurred to him that they could still take a cab, and the cross town subway transfers would be annoying. Anyway, Benny wanted to take a long walk with Gary, and it seemed he wanted to take a long walk with her. "What was that?" Gary asked a few steps out of Ellen's building. They thrust their hands in their pockets against the cold, sunk chins into coat collars. "You mean with Ellen? [ __ ] get off the pot." "Yeah, it was kind of harsh. I know. She's trying to push me, I guess. You know, tough love." A bus barreled down the otherwise empty street before he said, "It didn't feel like love to me." They strolled in silence. The pause before Gary's observation had been so considered. It wasn't about letting the noisy bus go by. Benny thought he had taken a moment to decide whether to say something or whether that would be inappropriate meddling. That was such a thing. When is it my place to intervene? He always seemed to be wondering. Two hands on, meddling. Two hands off, heartless. He was like the Goldilocks of interpersonal relationships. Did Ellen love Benny? Did Benny love Ellen? Were they truly friends?

The summer after graduation, on another long meander in the city, Ellen had confessed to Benny that she'd auditioned to be a sushi model. They just seen an off Broadway show, a birthday gift from Ellen's parents. Outside the theater, they drifted south. The crowd transformed from camera toading gawkers to drunken bridge and tunnel people. Lower order beings, Benny thought, then wished upon herself a terrible fate for lightning to strike her down to be mauled by a garbage truck. A man in a baseball cap stumbled out of a bar and leared at Ellen's cleavage. They rushed past his red rimmed eyes, wandered from Midtown to the far west side, grit in the viscous air sticking to their sway skin. Sunset a dusty white. On that desolate street, Ellen mentioned the gig. "What's a sushi model?" Vinnie asked. She imagined Ellen in a tuna costume waving a sign on a street corner. "Well, first you wax your entire body," said Ellen. "Uh-huh. Then they rub ice all over you to cool down the skin." Goose pimples prickled Benny's arms. "Then they drape your body with sushi. And people eat it off your body for, I don't know, $200 a pop. And you're naked?" "Well, they put flowers in strategic places." Ellen didn't make the cut. Benny thought her rubesness would have been a plus. more room for sushi, but her hips didn't jut out in the right way to allow for the artful drapery of pink and red and white slabs of salmon and tuna and squid. Ellen appeared sheepish in that moment. Benny should have hugged her.

They headed back to 7th Avenue, stopped in front of the Fashion Institute of Technology. The window displayed outsized suits, full body armor, really made of human hair, bulbous pockets of sewn fabric, recycled sweaters, and wings fashioned from black trash bags and cheap wire hangers. Black netting covered the face, a fencing mask. Sound suits, the sign said. She pictured herself lying on a cold metal table as business people with expense accounts maneuvered chopsticks around her naked body, picking raw fish off waxed iced skin. She contemplated the heat of the sound suits, the weight of hair and wool, the safety and suffocation, how much she would like such a suit. But Benny had tried to hug her, hadn't she? She recalled raising her arms, Ellen putting up her hand, saying, "It's too hot." Or had she imagined that scenario and rejected hugging her before Ellen could reject her? She hated that she couldn't remember.

Benny now said to Gary, "Maybe I should take a little break from Ellen." "That's probably a good idea." Her breath caught. She wanted to reverse course and defend Ellen. Had Gary always disliked her? But he wasn't wrong. Ellen, Binny decided, was poison for her, at least right now. The inquisition on her couch, the relish in her eyes. An eagerness for Benny to give up her art and be a nothing. Oblivion beats mediocrity, or else ascend to ranks of the astronomically famous, so that together at galleries far and wide, they'd shimmer. The in between was just too horrible to behold. Benny needed to protect herself. Gary sensed that. Invisible antenna sprang from his head, picking up on all kinds of emotional radio waves. They tucked down in Amsterdam, then across 57th. The streets were fairly deserted, but not in a creepy post-apocalyptic way. It was a clear night. You could even see a couple stars. No. One was a planet, Polaris and Venus. Benny snuggled into her wool coat and big fluffy scarf. Gary's nose turned pink in the wind. He shivered and she rubbed his shoulder. She thought he might turn his head to kiss her, but he only said thanks and continued to shiver in her embrace. And she wondered if he even liked her. Wondered why she bothered.

As they turned south on 1st Avenue, he said, "My parents are getting a divorce." "Oh, I'm so sorry. It's all right. It's not a surprise." She rubbed his arm. "Well, it's not all right." She squeezed him. "I guess I take issue with people who break promises. I guess I'm stubborn that way, even if things aren't working." Was that where it didn't feel like love came from? She pictured his house in suburban Kansas City, a ranch house or a split level or a bungalow, a driveway with a netless basketball hoop. He bought a bar without telling her. He thought it would be the best surprise ever. She threw him out. his mom wrapped up in a blanket on the sofa, drinking hot cider, contemplating her Miss Kansas City tiara in a glass cabinet. They fought like lunatics. They were always doing crazy things like that, impulsive things. So Gary always kept his feet on the ground, head down, nose to the grindstone. "I know it's for the best." Vinnie kissed him on the cheek. at her door, his cold nose close, he said. "Thank you for listening." "Of course," she said. They hugged. A real hug, not angled away. She wondered about the timing, whether to kiss him for real, the need for warmth, his full lips near enough to brush. As she pulled away, she asked, "Are you okay to go home? It's so late." She didn't exactly want to invite him up in a salacious way, but she worried. "Oh, I'm fine," he said, focusing on a spot over her shoulder. Clearly not fine. The kiss moment passed, and yet they lingered. "Election night," he said. "You, me, a bar in Brooklyn." Benny's chest sparkled. She gave him another big wet smack on the cheek before going upstairs. "Text me when you're home safe," she texted him, feeling a little too motherly. She fell asleep with a phone on her sternum and woke 45 minutes later to its little buzzing chirp, its red glow. "Home safe."

On Tuesday, the office atmosphere brightened. "Good morning. Did you vote?" was the refrain until lunch. On all computers. News websites were continually refreshed. At 6:00 sharp, Benny, brimming with hope, was on that train to Brooklyn. She and Gary dined at the cavernous old Mexican place on Fifth Avenue that now seemed out of place beside the Li Dah likes of Ali. Afterward, they moved from crowded bar to crowded bar. Rachel Maddo on every screen, impossible to hear over the den of everybody who seemed to be in exactly their demographic until they squeezed into a new cocktail lounge practically in the Gowana's canal. A handsome young pianist sporting a bow tie played schmultzy patriotic tunes. Closed captioning scrolled on all the televisions, and as if it were New Year's, signs promised champagne at the stroke of victory. Conversation was limited to murmurss of state names and meaningful glances. Alabama, Kansas, Rhode Island, Texas, Wisconsin, Ohio, Ohio, Ohio. Benny ordered two flutes when victory seemed imminent. When Rachel Meadow finally announced Obama's projected win, people drained their champagne and then ran to the streets and hollered as if all society's problems were finally irrevocably solved. Gary and Benny ran with them. And Benny, full of some unexpected vital force, took Gary in her arms, dipped him like the sailor from VJ day in Time Square, and gave him a big meaty kiss on the lips. In her mind, a grand chord sounded. Still holding him, she stopped kissing him, studied his face. His eyes were most definitely sparkling. They kissed again on the corner as cars sped up and down Fourth Avenue, swerved dangerously around corners, horns blaring. Benny's imaginary brass band sounded again, louder and richer, metallic, victorious. The walk to Garry's took on a jaunty pace. Laughing people spilled out of every bar, buoyant, balloonlike. He slipped an arm around her waist and her belly fluttered. She pressed her side into his and it fluttered again. A toy store occupied the ground floor of Gary's building. In its darkened window, pale dolls grinned. Cars zoomed up and down 7th Avenue, honking. Passengers leaning out their windows, howling. Mouse traps dotted their stairwell. They dashed upstairs, skipping around them. Kissed and kissed and kissed. Gently Benny bit Gary's earlobe, laughed, put her finger to her lips as she pulled him along, as if to shush herself, as if to tell him not to climb the stairs with his body's weight, afraid to disturb his roommates. He lived

In a three-bedroom railroad with five others. One of the roommates essentially lived in a walk-in closet. The apartment was dark, save a light over the kitchen sink, which brimmed with plates encrusted with burnt crumbs and shredded cheese. The Avenue street lamps streamed orange yellow into the living room where the thick windows muffled the night's revalry. On the rolled down metal shutters of an empty shop across the street, someone was spraying a blue and red portrait of Obama.

"Get a load of that," said Benny. Gary turned her chin toward him. They kissed more. "I really like you," Benny said into his neck. He squeezed her around the waist. "Me, too."

"You." Footsteps echoed up the stairs to the door. Before they could be intruded upon, she pulled him to his darkened bedroom. Gingerly navigating the amorphous path from door to bed, which Benny knew was lined with all manner of stuff. Their coats slipped to the floor as they reached for one another, pressed against one another, fell on the bed in twining limbs. Clothes fumbled off after awkward unbuttonings and unzipping. They dived under the comforter, heat-seeking, chest to chest, belly to belly, hips to hips.

Chapter 4. They fell into a comfortable habit of seeing each other every other day. A week later, they were snuggled in Benny's bed, laptop open to bootleg SNL on YouTube. She nuzzled his neck, took in his warm nutmeg scent. "Are you ever going to unpack that bag?" he asked, nodding at the hulking black garbage bag under her workt. Her assemblage supplies. They've been parked there since her move, through election day, through the rosy fog of Gary. She didn't want him to see what was inside. She closed up the bag whenever he was over until she made them part of a coherent, complete piece. The collected objects were like internal organs outside of a body, oozing their uselessness on the operating table. Olsen's eyes shard was in there, inert. It occurred to her that a clear garbage bag full of silicone hearts and lungs might make for a disturbing piece. A jolt of excitement came with that thought. The idea to diverge from dream boxes. She could get life-siz models from a medical supply company, figure out how best to cast molds. But working with silicone, would the fumes be worse than her glues? In school, they'd worn masks. At Rubies, the windows allowed for a cross breeze. The two window studio was trickier. Plus, what did it mean to choose hearts and lungs? Would that catch Alexis's attention? Not without more of a story. She should articulate more of the meaning for herself before going gonzo on silicone, which she hadn't touched since school. Don't rush, she urged herself, despite hearing Ellen's [ __ ] or get off the pot echoing in her mind. Yes, eventually. Not now. She pressed her cheek to Gary's shoulder, and he caressed her head. She let the familiar skits wash over her like a warm bath. Hearts and lungs. Hearts and lungs. Hearts and lungs. She breathed deep inside.

"Work picked up. People can't resist losses for long." Beatric said it was 6:00 on a Friday and they weren't going anywhere anytime soon. The hall elevator dinged and the door swung open, but Meline was gone for the day. She never stayed late. She was the only one in the office with young kids. A woman called in a tremulous voice. "Hello?" She poked her head around the divider between reception and the rest of the office. Long hair, dark and straight, an elegant, sharp face in the tradition of Kate Moss. "Oh, Beatrice," Georgina said, blushing. "Could you help me?" A little black dress clung to her swimmer's body. In the conference room, Beatus finished zipping up the back as if that were in any way her job. "We're seeing lamination def." Georgina called over her shoulder. "Beatric said." Capra tossed on a scarf and coat and escorted Georgina out, his hand at her elbow. After the door slammed shut, Rick said, "That wasn't his wife." Beatrice said. Nor his daughter, Benny said. The front door muffled Capra's words, but not his anger. Benny wondered if he had turned classic Kapper red. The elevator dinged. "She worked at Layman," Beatric said as if that explained anything. "Not anymore," Rick said. "No," said Beatrice. Maybe she lost her mind, Rick said. Oh, said Benny. Everyone shrugged. A wave of dark glee at the drama further exposed surged and departed. It was interesting that Benny and Beatus knew who Georgina was, but not Rick. He tapped his pen on the cubicle wall, contemplating something that amused him. Capra's wife was in big pharma. She'd gotten him on the experimental drug that saved his life. Classic Happer Red was a healthy hue, like a tomato warm in the sun. Maybe he was too healthy now. Go forth and enjoy youth before you're truly dead. Benny returned to her redactions. Maybe Capra's wife approved, she mused. But if that was the case, why would he be so flustered at Georgina's appearance in the office?

Thanksgiving glowed on the horizon. The holiday party at the gallery came ever closer. Her only progress had been circular thinking, a regular rejection of ideas, a deepening self-loathing, and a dread of rent coming due. Her overtime income from the trial had disappeared fast, and she was getting sick of ramen or bagels for dinner. One Thursday night, she paced her studio, which at first had been refreshingly cool compared to Ruby's place, but now was just cold. From the rickety futon to the two windows looking down on First Avenue to her work table to the grimy sea foam kitchenet, she went, pained fingertips tucked under her arms. infection sat on the floor beside the workt, the little boy in it imploring her to come back from the kitchenet and do better. Tomorrow night she would see Gary. Tonight she needed to sit at that table and work. She rifled through the box of materials. What about the cutout of Putin and the cutout of the marble row man? Put them together in a suggestive manner. They could be almost kissing like in that Berlin wall mural. She paper clipped them together and pushed them to the upper corner of her table. What about the dried peies? They were delicate, fragile, something without a blatant message. Just wonder. She pulled out the dismantled Swan Lake music box and let her eyes unfocus while she thought. put one flower on the tines, one beside the gears, one to the side of the knobbly cylinder forming a triangle. From time to time, she could hear the man across the hall cackle until he coughed up a lugie. "You'll catch your death," Arlene would say if she knew how cold the studio was. "Peie Triangle," had a certain appeal. Suggested a connection to the Bermuda Triangle. What did pees represent anyway? Careful not to fall in their trap, she jotted notes in her sketch pad and returned the materials to their place, feeling she'd made a millimeter of progress.

Saturday afternoon, after Gary left, she and her neighbor opened their doors at the same time, both holding bags of trash. The old man blinked at Benny, sizing her up in much the same way his aranged wife, the land lady, had. After you," he said finally. He left his door open a crack. He appeared to be in the middle of watching an infomercial on vegetable slicers. It was in that moment that Benny remembered where she'd seen the old man before in Union Square, sitting on a plastic milk crate, demonstrating carrot peelers. When they got to the curb, the land lady opened her window on the third floor and poked her head out. Keep it down, Carl," she said, even though they hadn't been talking. Gingerly, he took the metal trash can cover from Benny and brought it down with a zealous crash.

The Monday before Thanksgiving, Baxter approached Benny's cubicle. "Do you do something different with your hair?" Vinnie patted her curls as if to make sure she hadn't gone bald, having tugged all her hair out in her anguished ruminations. No, it looks good. Before she could say thanks, he added, "There's a special gift for you in the file room." "Oh, box of pancort." He grinned awkwardly. She imagined the Bose arts bank of black hole. Roof caved in, plaster avalanching onto white marble. A waxed doll in a pinstriped suit would peer up at the wreckage with goggling eyes. Perhaps a caption, a line of dialogue for the doll. Baxter's inane question about Olsen's shattered glass eye. Think they can put it back together? She tried to jot down the idea before it evaporated. The wax, she realized, was inspired by the voodoo doll in the witches of Eastwick. Was it Susan Sandon who stuck in the pins? "Hey, Bob," said Beatus from her cubicle. Your policy writer's all set?" Baxter sighed like something heavy had been lifted off him, put his palm to his chest, and thanked her.

In the file room, Benny crouched over the pan court box, taking in the light stink of dusty papers and metal filing cabinets. The muffled sound of Baxter singing seeped through his closed door. She spied him through his window. He picked up the baseball bat he kept by his credenza, practicing his batting stance and swing, rolling his shoulders. He tossed the bat into one hand and held it like a microphone. "Come aboard," he crrewed. "We're expecting you." He bobbed his head like a hammy lounge singer, pacing back and forth. He leaned sideways. Why was he in such a good mood all of a sudden? She dug through the thick files and thought of sick days at home as a kid, watching reruns of the love boat and sipping her mom's best stab at Jewish penicellin. Hot chicken soup plopped from a can and garnished with a fistful of fresh parsley. The theme song swelled. Yes, love. It's love. Heyya. Baxter poured his feelings into the song like it was the last karaoke party on earth. Did he really think they'd win the appeal? Benny didn't understand much about the law, but it didn't seem a likely scenario. The judge had played favorites, so there were grounds, but the whole process would be deja vu. Why bother? Baxter, it struck her, had faith, at least a certain kind of faith.

Back in the summer, two teenage labavatures had shown up asking for Mr. Baxter. They'd peered out from the vestibule. Pale boys sporting black wool fedoras and pis while Meline asked Baxter if he would see them. He almost said yes, then said no, then almost said yes again. Finally, his face darkened as he said, "Send them away." Zimon intervened, told her, "Let the poor boys in. It's hot out there with their black wool pants and jackets. Simon invited them to sit in his office, then asked Benny to fetch some cold bottles of water. When she came in, he made a point of augling the decolletage of her summer dress, her bare summer legs. Simon rarely asked Benny to fetch water for him or anyone. This was some kind of weird, gross power trip. What was he insinuating to those teenage boys? It was like he wanted to perpetuate the orthodox assumption that everyone outside their community was constantly boinking. "You too could live the life of a sex crazed boy," he seemed to be implying. After she brought them the water, he closed the door, leaned back in his seat, and flashed them a chatty smile. She hoped he wasn't asking them embarrassing questions. A few minutes later, he led them back out, accepting from them a loaf of kala. He tried to give it to Baxter. Baxter refused it. I should never have told them I was Jewish. They'd intercepted him in the lobby of the building once before, asked if he was Jewish and would he like to pray with them. Baxter would have been uncomfortable with the situation. She couldn't imagine him wrapping that leather strap with a black cube around his arm and head and doing there as people streamed by with their dress shoes on the marble. publicly reconvening with a culture he'd whitewashed. What was the mysterious black cube all about? Anyway, Benny had gone to Hebrew school and knew there was a little prayer scroll inside, but still she didn't truly know. It was like a miniature version of the monolith in 2001, A Space Odyssey, or that famous black cube of a mosque, only you tied it to the forehead, a top the third eye. Inside a lacquered black box, a blank mannequin head is back lit with blue LEDs. Strapped on the mannequin's forehead, the black cube trumpeting out of little speakers in the box's dark corners. The soundtrack from 2001. Ba ba ba. Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum. An eyelid on the cube rises. A glass iris gleams. Was that wrong? It felt wrong. Madonna, with her study of Kabala and affected British accent, probably knew more than Benny about such things, and this displeased her. How had Baxter wriggled out of praying with those boys after he had admitted he was, in their eyes, a lapsed Jew? Well, if you don't want it, Simon had said at the hala, I'm making French toast tomorrow. Goes great with bacon. Come on, Baxter had said. Be respectful. Half my mother's family was slaughtered in the Holocaust, Simon said, still holding the kala. There is no god. I'm eating bacon. Baxter shifted his weight from one foot to the other before disappearing into his office. Something about Baxter's discomfort at that moment seemed connected to his general uneasiness, which had become so apparent when Harrison was on the witness stand. It was like with religion. He didn't want to admit some part of him might believe. And when it came to this case, he didn't want to admit that he didn't. His sense of duty to both cut him up in all kinds of directions.

Then there was the other grossness of the trial that Benny couldn't begin to discuss with anyone, even though Cabra himself had raised the spectre before they went down to Wilmington for 2 weeks. What would a Delaware jury think of brash New York Jews? Didn't matter what you said exactly. It was the accent, the manner of speaking, the look. Here, Simon supplied his seemingly favorite adjective, sworthy. The lead attorney on the other side, Brick Williams, had been just as greedy as anyone on their side. Benny knew it in her roing, resentment steeped liver. But he was from DC, just shy of the Mason Dixon line. Strawberry blonde, chiselfaced, patrician in the most waspy way Binnie could imagine. You have to care about money, but without caring about money in the old money way, she thought as she watched some of the jury members go at Williams with fanboy admiration.

The workday dragged on. A pin prick floater warned Benny of an oncoming migraine. Shutting her eyes, she willed herself to relax. She realized she hadn't seen Paul all day and went to peep into his tiny office. His pork pie hat and congeniality might cheer her up. Paul was a part-time attorney, part-time filmmaker. How he made that work, Benny wasn't sure, but it gave her hope. And he sported rosy cheeks her aunt Ruby would have surely pinched. He'd been the one person in the office with a whiff of artistic sensibility, the one person who upon meeting she thought might become a friend. But there was no Paul, no porkpie hat, no cheeks. His office had been wiped clean of any trace of him. She fidgeted in the hall much the same way as Baxter had. She shook herself as if to shake off his squeamish influence and decisively approached Beatrice. Is Paul gone? for a millisecond. Beatric's eyes darted in Rick's direction, then refocused on Benny. Unfortunately, we had to terminate his contract. "Oh, why?" Beatric's head tilted as her left eyebrow arched. "Sorry," said Benny. Another floater drifted over Beatric's head.

In the copy room a few minutes later, Rick stopped slicing backs on the paper cutter. It was determined that he wasn't pulling his weight, he informed Benny. Strips of blue paper fluttered into the recycling bin from the office guillotine. But Thanksgiving week, you and I without law degrees are just as capable. He was expensive. Rick shrugged. Dems to breaks. To breaks are harsh. The abyss between Benny's pay and Rick's resurfaced in her mind. What a steal, they must have thought. Peter Pan's slot machine coins clattered in a deluge, accompanied by bells and whistles. The migraine aura narrowed her vision. The water boiler on the kitchen counter gurgled and clicked. Rick made himself a cup of tea and offered Benny one. She demurred. He fished around for something behind the tea boxes. A shiny candy that fit in her palm with a cartoon turkey on the wrapper. Happy Thanksgiving, you crazy kid," Rick said. Alone in the room with just the hum of the Xerox machine and the hot sigh of the water burbling, Vinnie contemplated the foiled turkey. The red parallegal binder on her desk held a series of departure memos dated a year or two apart from one another. That was just the parallegals who'd quit. She also knew of a handful who'd been fired. Rick said triumphantly that he'd caught one guy snorting coke in the bathroom. Good thing he hadn't come to Delaware, she supposed. But there were more mundane reasons for the high turnover. Too many sloppy mistakes, a missed deadline, a lie on a resume. And the people who could do this work competently were a dime a dozen. Not dumb, sure, but not so special either. The shiny orange and brown wrapper crinkled between her fingers. Turkey waddles were so gross, so vulnerable. The migraine began, a rusted rod drilling through the left side of her skull. She ripped open the foil, splitting the cartoon bird's head in half, and paused before sinking her teeth into its chocolate neck, collapsing the delicate shell into gelatinous marshmallow.

Thanksgiving dinner was at Arlene and Albert's. Arlene asked if Benny wanted to invite any friends who might be Thanksgiving orphans. Against her better judgment, Benny invited Gary over to meet her parents. Barely 3 weeks into their relationship. Gary was not flying home for the holiday. It was never worth it, he said, for just 4 days, and he couldn't choose one parent over another during the divorce. My dad's going to be in a motel, he said, voice brittle. You want to be with him? I can't. Anyway, he get a bonus for working the phones on Black Friday, offering 50 and 60some year old women the cosmetics and wine club gift packages first thing in the morning. Okay, but fair warning about my family's food. I love canned cranberry sauce. I love the way it jiggles. No deep fried turkey, no brining, no Julia child butter massages. I love dried turkey. Gary waited in front of her parents' building holding a casserole. He gotten there before her, but didn't want to go inside alone. I walked around the block, he said. I do that sometimes, she said, kissing him over her sloshing bowl of cranberry sauce. What did you bring? brisket. I can't have Thanksgiving without it. My dad's going to love you. Inside, the steam heat clanged away. The warmth, a shock compared to the tundra Vinnie had become accustomed to in her studio. She peeled off her sweater and rolled up the sleeves of her turtleneck. "Everything's almost done," Arlene called from the kitchen. She came out with silverware and plastic placemats and festive paper napkins from IKEA and shook Gary's hand, giving his eyes an intense inspection. Her millisecond long examination of his soul seemed to lead to approval. Very nice to meet you, young man. I'm sure Benny must think the world of you. Mom, Benny said, let me help you set the table. Albert rose from the couch and clapped Gary on the shoulder. I hope you don't mind if the game isn't on. I'm not much of a football fan. Gary spent the occasional weekend afternoon at a DY sports bar on Fifth Avenue where crusty old men started nursing Budweisers at 10:00 a.m. and snoozed over empty bottles into the early evening. Me either, he said, smiling. Everyone ooed and aed over Gary's brisket, a juicy slab of beef slathered in tomato paste. Arlene passed around boiled Brussels sprouts as Albert carved the turkey. Vinnie popped mashed potatoes in her plate and Garry's and drowned them both in gravy. "Give me some more of that brisket sauce," Albert said. "Now put it right on my turkey." The party sawed at meat and chewed on overcooked vegetables. "So tell us," said Albert. "How's work?" "Ugh," said Benny. "I don't know. She pushed some turkey around her plate. Mashed potatoes buried the meat. I kind of want to quit. Arlene raised an eyebrow. Why? I don't know. Nothing bad happened to me. It's not like that. But Delaware was just gross. The turkey emerged from under the potatoes and she splatted it into the pile again. Unsure of how to explain. Stopped herself from stabbing harder. couldn't let Gary see her act like a whiny baby. Words tumbled out anyway in a mealy mouth despair. Lawyers are gross. Everything is gross. Arlene's face fell. She opened the rare bottle of Merllo they drank on holidays and poured everyone a glass, taking time to gather energy before she spoke. "Are you really going to quit? Do you have a solid plan? You know, without Ruby's apartment, you'll be in a real pickle. It's okay, Arlene," Albert said, delicately placing more white meat on everyone's plates. No one seemed comfortable grabbing a turkey leg. Breast meat was more gental. Bene suppressed the urge to rip off a drumstick, dunk it in the gravy boat, and devour it medieval time style. "Let's just talk about nicer things. You never told us much about Wilmington. Was the city nice?" Benny shook her head and stared at her plate. The neatly mosaicked lobby of the Dupont came to mind with its photographs of famed guests, presidents and kings and Henry Kissinger. The Hotel Dupont was pretty, but really there's not much to see. She pushed the same piece of turkey around in a slurry of gravy, cranberry sauce, and Brussels sprout juice. She had seen the top of Joe Biden's silvery head at the train station with a hefty entourage buzzing around him, which was kind of neat, but somehow it didn't seem worth noting aloud. "So, Mr. and Mrs. Greenson," Gary interjected, lightly tapping Benny's elbow. "How did you two meet?" "Oh, they cooed together." "Let me tell you," said Albert. "We were in high school, Midwood. And there was an old school egg drop competition. Not like the soup. He knows what I mean. Right. Like in the physics class, right? Right, said Albert. A little check mark of approval in his voice. And I had devised a very pretty parachute out of a handkerchief and dental floss, said Arlene. And Al had done something else. What was it, Al? Ball bearings. A paper cup bottomed with ball bearings. "And my egg landed on his egg," said Arlene, slamming one fist onto the other. "Plop," she flattened her bottom hand. "Crack!" Then she dusted her hands together as if that explained the rest of their relationship. "Happily ever after." "Wow," said Gary. Arlene and Albert eyed each other over the table. Well masticated turkeys slid down Benny's gullet.

On a display shelf behind Gary sat the stuffed crocodile Benny had gotten from her parents' getaway weekend to the now shuttered Pean Hook Casino, part of Peter Pan's suite of bankrupt businesses. The radiator hissed. During the trial, while Williams had picked at financial minutia to illustrate Panc Corpse wrongdoing in his steady, sober manner with none of the self-interrupting drama Zimman favored, the sale of a Caribbean cruise liner featuring acrobatic swashbuckling, a prime Las Vegas casino with a high rollers club called the Plunder Room, a New Orleans hotel with a wildly popular restaurant called Tinx Table. A craving for deep fried Oreos had crept onto Benny's tongue. only Atlantic City's best. She'd eat a bucket of hot cookies like it was popcorn, cram her cheeks with them like a chipmunk. She imagined Joseph Cornell eating them too for Laurenly on the Jersey Shore. Then got another dream box idea. Inside a big glass bottle, Victorian illustrations of swashbuckling pirates and lost boys tustling on a ship. behind them at the center of the composition clamoring aboard from the sea. Ursula the sea witch, the Disney version's face pasted on a Japanese woodblock print of an octopus body, but in the middle she'd have Venus of Willindorf tits. Maybe it would be an old photograph or old anthropological drawing, and the octopus tentacles would be poised to grab pirate and lost boy alike and press them to her bosom and smother them.

Benny's plate was empty. She pulled at the top of her turtleneck. "I need some air," she said. "Everything okay?" asked Arlene. "Just feeling warm," she said, pushing herself away from the table. stifled. In fact, the heat prickled her skin. She wanted to give her whole body a shake. The cooler air of the imitation granite hall granted a small reprieve. She stomped down the stairs and out to Ocean Parkway into the bracing cold. Gary followed. Your mom asked me to bring you your coat. Benil laughed. Of course she did. She took her coat but didn't put it on. Aren't you cold? Aren't you hot? Is something wrong? Vinnie gulped air. It's just a little too much right now. I can't I can't do what they want me to do. I want to live how I want to live. I can't do the same meaningless thing day in and day out. I'm going to die, leaving nothing of consequence. She opened her eyes. They snapped closed on the last sentence. Gary appeared pained. He scratched the back of his neck like he couldn't decide whether to hug her or recommend therapy. "I'm sorry," Benny said. Immediately after apologizing, she wondered if she should not have apologized. "There's nothing wrong with her desire to do something of consequence as compared to what Arlene, Albert, and Gary did." "She thought Gary was deeply stuck." She admitted to herself. His low pay meant trying to get as many hours as possible, and between that and the long commute, he never seemed to have the time to find something better. He was deeply in debt from college, and worked a sales job that any high school graduate would be fine at. The degree offered the tiny solace of maybe one day becoming the middle manager of a business he couldn't care less about. Benny couldn't figure out what Gary was passionate about beyond his vague sense of wanting to do something good for the world. He always lit up around the children clamoring on the shiny orange seats of the fra. She imagined he'd make a great school teacher. His student debt would certainly not be fixed by that career change. Cars whooed off the Prospect Expressway and down Ocean Parkway. She craned her neck back. The full moon shone through the bare branches of the thin locust tree. Betty Smith's tree of a tree grows in Brooklyn fame. Benny imagined a campaign for it. The locust tree thriving despite circumstances since 1943. Gently, Gary said. They just want to make sure you have a plan, that's all. I know. A soulless plan. A plan of drudgery. She focused on the moon through the branches. I don't think that's fair. Everything they expect is too normal. It's unreal and dead. That sounds really dramatic. Benny, are you sure you're not overreacting? She wasn't about to ask if he'd read the bell jar or explain the feeling of a glass dome descending over everything. She didn't want him to become alarmed at the implication of the reference if he knew it, or the oddity of the explanation if he didn't. Maybe it was a thing you just got or didn't get. I just want to live a life that feels alive. Doesn't everybody? I guess. Benny, do you respect what I do? It came out fast. Not one of his long considered utterances like when he suggested a break from Ellen. It was a turn she didn't want the conversation to take, but it was her own damn fault that it was going that way. You are not your job. She scuffed her shoe into a pile of foliage. Does it bother you when I buy you dinner? His cheeks flushed. What does that mean? Withdrawn. She crunched the leaves. I don't know. I'm confused. Gary glanced up. Benny followed his gaze. A couple carried two casserles into another building, giggling as they murmured to each other. The woman's lipstick pleasingly dark and thick. A spiky chestnut fell from a nearby tree. Gary's face smoothed. "Benny," he said finally. "You make me feel alive." His tone suggested a desire to mend the situation, even though he was the one who'd been hurt. "I do." Gary nodded and held out his arms. It felt good at first, the notion that you could give someone else a feeling of aliveness, and Gary deserved it. She leaned into the magnetic pull of his embrace. Even though a hug was the last thing she wanted, it didn't feel any more fraying than her parents' overheated apartment. She would rather they sprint into the dark together as quickly as possible. She grabbed his arm. Let's go for a walk. We'll come back for dessert. Should we tell your parents? We'll be quick. She yanked him toward the bridge, over the expressway, then toward Prospect Park. Where are we going? Ducks or horses? What? You choose, ducks or horses. Then we go back for dessert. Okay, horses. Excellent choice. Instead of entering the park, she veered into the pocket of Windsor Terrace where the tiny Kensington stables lived. They stood outside the locked up white wooden doors. "Do you want to go horseback riding sometime when they're open?" asked Gary. "Shh," said Benny. She closed her eyes. She wanted to hear a horse snort. There was a quiet scuffle inside, hooves shifting on hay. She smiled. Poor horses. Gary squeezed her hand. She imagined a horse fluttering its lips. Imagined a dark small window dream box in which you could just barely make out ecquin silhouettes. The gleams in hor's eyes. A recorded scuffle so faint and irregularly timed that you could never be sure you really heard it. A scent of manure so faint you'd have to question your detection of it. She hadn't thought to include scent in her work. She thrilled at the idea from [ __ ] or get off the pot to actual horse [ __ ] She kissed Gary's cheek meatily. They hugged bellyto belly. Now that they'd run into the woods, now that her blood pumped more vigorously, the hug felt bright. Outside her parents' building, a rangy modeled cat skimmed their legs. "You're still working on something to show Alexis, right?" A little of the fresh air went out of her. "Yes, definitely," she said, despite the sensation that she had very little to show for herself. Only after her second helping of dessert did it occur to her that people might not want to purchase art that literally smelled like [ __ ]

Chapter 5. On the 1st of December, Capra unveiled a pyramid of heritage Asian pears. Each fruit cradled in a foam lattice. He couped as if they were rare gems. Thus began an onslaught of holiday gifts. Chocolate truffles and sugar cookies and sea salt caramels from the south of France. Hourly Benny devoured treats. Occasionally she spied Baxter doing the same alone in the kitchen. Face drooping, shoulders slumped, eyes lusterless. Gold and silver foil littering the counter. Simon hectored him. His clients were losers, criminals. Baxter waved him away, let the taunts fall on his back on his way to the sugar. One time he noticed Benny standing there. He strained his posture and forced a smile that eventually seemed genuine. She couldn't help but think this was a transformation he performed regularly, not just at work, but at home for his college age daughter Becca, a freshman at Tus. He'd grimaced over a Pepto-Bismol tablet on the Asella to Wilmington, telling Zimon of Becca's plan to spend winter break skiing in Switzerland. Benny had met her over the summer, a happy golucky teen with diamond stud earrings and focal fry. Probably not someone who noticed the subtleties of smiles.

On Saturday morning, Benny's phone vibrated. Long time coming tonight. Gary snuggled up to Benny. Who's that? Binny flipped her phone shut. Ellen, what you want? The holiday party is tonight. Oh, yeah. Do you want to go? I thought I was taking a break from Ellen. You should probably go. Benny flipped open her phone again. Flipped it shut. Flipped it open. Probably should. See you there. she typed. As soon as she hit send, her stomach turned. I won't bring anything to show Alexis, though, she said. It would be stupid and presumptuous. Like, why would she look at my stuff? She'll be busy with a party. Just go check it out and be seen. I'll be your arm candy. Vinnie sighed. Fine. Now, how about you let me distract you? They sank back under the covers in a tangle of limbs.

In the bathroom, Benny sharpened her eyeliner and applied it to the vulnerable rims of her eyes, adjusting wobbly lines into smoky smudges. Somehow, she reflected, Ellen knew how to rub Benny's face in it without ever knowing what Benny's it was. They'd grown up in wildly different versions of New York City. Benny had understood that the first time she met Ellen's parents at a reception at their gallery soon after graduation, she'd been standing beside a video of a nude woman rolling around in yogurt and Vaseline on a tarp spliced with images of a piglet nuzzling an absurdly red apple. Ellen's parents were making the rounds. Benny overcompensated for her shyness by practically lunging at them. Chilly and aloof, they'd warmed up to her when learning that Ellen knew Bene from their alma mater. They couped, "Pleased to meet you." They were white-haired and angular, nothing like curvy Ellen, an edgy version of the farmer couple in American Gothic. Benny worried they'd always associate her with the rooting piglet and the squish of petroleum jelly. Ellen's parents had, of course, helped her get the job at the gallery in West Chelsea. She was open about it, didn't mind getting help from them. That's how you survived in this city, she said. Bootstraps are [ __ ] She'd expounded upon this before offering to get Benny an interview. Although Benny was struggling to make ends meet with sporadic work at the time, she demurred, not wanting to put herself in the position of fetching Ellen's morning coffee or oatmeal or pano shakalot. Being at Ellen's back and call was not an option. Not if she wanted to keep her as a friend. Someone she could talk to frankly despite everything. Ellen knew too much about Benny, and Benny knew too much about Ellen via the deep confessional mode of their shared past. Rooted in midnight instant message chats about the mean things they'd done in middle and high school. Benny had once stitched a voodoo doll of a girl she disliked. Ellen spread the news of a friend's lost virginity to her entire social circle or about bad college dates. Ellie 123. He pushed your head where? Binster. I should make revenge art. Ellie 123. Yeah. Bster. A rubber mold of his head set on a spike. Ellie 123. Dot dot dot. Finster outside his dorm window before he wakes. Ellie 123. You're sick. Lol. Lol. Lol. She rinsed antifrizz serum off her fingers and wiped off the lipstick she just applied, leaving behind the faintest stain. Medieval corral rang through the dim gallery. Visitors chattered above their hum. The buzz that night surrounded a series of bluish modeled paintings of a slinky sandyhaired woman lying in an old claw-footed bathtub empty of water. Its coating flaked. In each iteration, faint markings on her arm or leg or shoulder suggested a vagina. Where is Waldo for genitalia? The music and paintings together suggested to Benny a sex cold. Something out of the world of Rosemary's baby. They sipped Procco and searched the crowd for Ellen. I'm sure there's a secret penis. A woman in pew said in passing. "The secret penis is the viewer," replied a man in a bulbous conte jacket. The male gaze, a skull with two silicone penises bobbling out of the eye sockets. Benny bit her tongue and peered down at her black boots to stop herself from laughing. "There she is," Gary said. Across the room, Ellen, all in black, stood at the elbow of a woman of Amazonian stature in a vermilion sheath dress that accentuated her healthy bone structure. thick black hair, straight and sleek, hung down to her waist. Rapunzel quality. You could scale a building on that hair. The man in the bulbous coat pulled the Amazon away from Ellen. Benny and Gary gravitated toward her. He's totally buying the whole series, Ellen murmured, eyes sparkling. Benny tilted her head toward the Amazon. Is that the artist? That's my boss. Oh. The patrician 50something Susan Sa tag doppelganger version of Alexis vanished from Benny's mind. Where's the artist? Ellen turned. In another corner of the room stood the slinky woman of the paintings, wearing a black knit cap and a slouchy sweater that fell off one shoulder. The Amazon was now introducing the bulbous coated man to her, and he was shaking her one hand in his meaty two. The Amazon was all smiles. Benny drained her glass and felt flushed. The Amazon moved on with a toothy grin. Ellen grabbed Benny by the arm. "Alexis," she blurted. "I want you to meet my good friend Benny. You should see her work sometime." Alexis's eyebrow arched, giving Benny a swift appraisal that felt wholly different from the one Arlene had subjected Gary to. Benny wished she had given more thought to her outfit beyond a boxy sweater and her nice jeans. Charmed. "And what do you do?" she asked it hurriedly. Seemed eager to move on. "Diaras, like assemblages, that sort of thing." Benny's face burned. "Chming. Come in sometime. Show me something," Alexa said, handing her a card. Then he took it and patted her purse as if to find a card of her own to give, which she did not have. "Alexis had no time for this charade." A silver fox of a man with a young, intricately freckled face moved toward them. "Excuse me," Alexa said, lightly touching Benny's shoulder. Benny's insides rustled around like a hyena. "Brent," they air kissed. "Ellen, take Brent's coat." Ellen winked at Benny and they were gone. The hyena rolled around in the grass while Benny's heart pounded in her ears. You imbecile, she thought. That was way too easy. Way, way too easy. Alexis had just wanted to get rid of her. Why had Ellen put her on the spot? She turned to Gary. I think this means we can go now. Gary seemed disappointed to leave the party so soon. Really? Vinnie gave one furt of nod. All right, if you want. Outside, he jettisoned the disappointment. I'm proud of you. She stared at the card, minimalist gray with a hint of cantaloupe. Alexis Thornne, curator. The phone number used chic dots rather than dashes. I didn't do anything. He tisked. Can we be happy, please? I'm sorry. Yes, let's celebrate. Let's get fancy cocktails. They found a spot down the street on the edge of the meat packing district and drank pomegranate and elderflower concoctions in vintage cordial glasses, $18 each. A group of young men, one table over, grew rowdier with each bottle of Moa Shandon until one of them smashed his coupe glass to the gleaming white subway tile and challenged his friend to a race. The bouncer escorted them out. Through the window, Benny and Gary watched a Ferrari and a Lamborghini screech away on the cobblestones as the remaining boys cheered from the curb.

On Tuesday, zero billable work. Benny slipped envelopes into the postage meter. It went e E thump. She thought about Alexis whether to take her tossed off invitation seriously. Ellen certainly did. She texted that Sunday. First Saturday in Jan, brunch party at the gallery. Bring something. On her first day of work, she'd been tasked with scanning 2,000 brittle pages from Capra's most esteemed client, the Hermes estate. The machine kept jamming, blinking red and honking. Failure, failure, failure, elbow deep in the ass of it, her sweaty cheek pressed to the overheated plastic. She wondered how this compared to helping a cow give birth. Would she rather her arm in that kind of mysterious warmth than this kind of mysterious warmth? It would have been more spiritually rewarding at least. Now the fax machine beside the postage meter sucked sheets through his printer. A parallegal resume came through. Then a cover sheet addressed to Capra from a Tennessee court and several pages of court documents. Whistling, Rick plucked them out of the tray, chucking the resume. Wait, are you just throwing that out? You can give it to Beatrice if you prefer. She'll throw it out. Benny frowned. I'll give that court document to Capra. Knock yourself out. In his office, Capra's radio voice broke into high-pitched exasperation. What's wrong with this new Excel? There's this quote, Benny said. Every enhancement is also an amputation. Capra cocked his head to the side, a quizzical expression morphing into something faintly impressed, and she felt like she'd scored a point. She handed him the facts. "Summary judgment," he broke out laughing as if he'd gotten away with something. "A good lawyer knows the law," he'd once quipped. "A great lawyer knows the judge."

In the lobby the next morning, a crowd jostled in front of the towering pink and gold ornamented Christmas tree. Benny paused at the security desk, disturbed by what she saw. Shouting men in business suits, 20 or so of them, with arms raised, hands grasping the air. Face veins visibly pulsed throughout the tightly clustered mini riot while security guards and police kept the men at bay. It seemed the crowd was trying to get through to the elevators. All they were missing was torches and pitchforks. Benny had never seen anything like it. Not in real life. It was like news footage of the New York Stock Exchange, but worse. Strained throats and temples on the verge of explosion. Arms ready to bludgeon. The men were not blocking the elevator bank needed, so she proceeded, giving the scene a wide birth while she rubbernecked at the agitating crowd. Upstairs, shaken, she asked Meline if she'd seen the ruckus. But Meline shook her head and said she'd come in at 7:00 to catch up on filing. "Let me check the news," she said. But there wasn't anything online yet. "Fucking a," Baxter muttered, bursting through the front door. Simon waved Baxter into his office, closed the door, and pulled the blinds down. Baxter's silhouette paced. A stabby conversation, voices staccato. Capra arrived, eyes delicately leaking. What's happening? Meline asked. Angry Invest downstairs. Hold my coals. He knocked on Zimon's door and slipped inside. Meline's spine straightened. Oh. Oh, I bet it's that hedge fund on the 19th floor. It was a large firm, she explained, much bigger than Helios and Kronos. The mysterious hedge fund that resided next door to CZB. The only reason Benny even knew about this obscure neighbor was because an energetic young woman with graying hair had introduced herself in the elevator one morning. I'm Pretty, she said, shooting out her hand to shake Benny's after they exchanged weather related pleasantries. What do you do? Benny asked. I manage Kronos. What's that? A fund of funds, she said breathlessly, almost conspiratorally before disappearing behind the inconspicuous black door. What's a fund of funds? Binnie wondered. Were there also funds of funds of funds? The creation myth came to mind. The one with the crust of the earth teetering upon an infinite pile of turtles. Turtles all the way down. The sound of Zimon flopping on his leather sofa ended the partner's meeting. Benny wanted to ask Meline what more she knew, but the door swung open. A moment of silence preceded the heavy step of dress shoes on carpet. Baxter yanked the zombie out of his office for a cigarette. Benny expected Capra to say, "Release the hounds." "Get me reservations for four at John," he said to Meline. "12:00." "Okay, Bernie," Simon shouted from his prone position. Relax, will you?

At lunchtime, the riot in the lobby dispersed, but a larger crowd of reporters with notepads, cameras, and microphones gathered outside. Vinnie followed a cluster of men emerging from the elevator bank for the bottom 20 stories of the building, thinking they'd clear a path for her. First, a burly, younger man went through the revolving doors. Then, a droopy-faced man with longish gray hair. Then, Benny. The young man tried to clear a path into the crowd of journalists and cameramen. The older man hung back in the bay of the revolving door, avoiding the journalists lunging at him with questions. This meant that Benny was stuck inside the revolving doors. She could not go backwards or forwards without the glass smacking into the older man. She imagined a doll-sized version of herself in a transparent box, creepily, blankfaced, and pushing against a motionless door. Better yet, fill the box with pliable rubber dolls in business attire, filling the box so tight their limbs would be spled in awkward directions, their noses smooshed to the glass. Finally, the men succeeded in fighting their way out. The swarm followed them. Benny escaped and slipped around the edge of the crowd. "Ma'am, do you have any comments?" asked a reporter after the man slipped into a black SUV and sped off. "Who was that?" "Bernie Maidoff," said the reporter, disappointed he didn't have a scoop. "Who's that?" He goggled at her. King of the biggest Ponzi scheme in history. The ordeal made Benny ravenous. On the corner, she devoured a euro in 10 large bites. Raw onions and taziki sauce slopping on the sidewalk. Pigeons and seagulls ellighted on these droppings. The seagulls quickly beating out the pigeons. Back upstairs, she stopped by Meline's desk. "I got stuck behind maid off and the revolving doors," she said. "No kidding." Meline beckoned her over to her computer. Every news site had screaming headlines about maid off. The Ponzi scheme, the billions of dollars lost. That morning's angry crowd had consisted of investors who'd lost money elsewhere in the economic downturn and were now trying to pull their money out of made off investment securities. But it was too late for them. Now little birds took up the other quarters of her imagined revolving door diarama. Allah Cornell's aviaries. A blue feathered rubythroatated hummingbird. A pelican in full bloat. A tawny wood pigeon. So much nicer than your average rat with wings. The birds could be the most flamboyant subjects in a stark setting of white walls and glass. Maybe it could take on a Hitchcockian flavor. The birds, but godly colorful, autobon, but obviously murderous. Perhaps the door could be mechanized so the birds would move as

If in a carousel, or perhaps they'd be in the process of getting pulled into the gy. Lee Bontiku's industrial constructions came to mind. Laundry conveyor belt canvas wrangled over steel and shaped into an all-devouring mouth of overwhelming anxiety. The negative space, the equivalent of Bontiku grabbing you by the collar and sucking you into darkness. Perhaps she could reference this in "Black Hole." Make them companion pieces. Birds sucked into an abyss at the top of a bank, its roof caving. She had no shortage of ideas. The problem was completion, time, skill.

She slapped her palm on the desk hard, startling Meline. "You okay?"

"Sorry, I guess I just got mad at the scheme." Meline cocked her head at Benny, but before she could say anything, the phone rang and the day went on.

"He'll just get a slap on the wrist," Arlene said when she called Benny that night, panting for juicy details she couldn't get from the news.

"You really think so?" Benny said.

"It's not what I want, Benny. It's what I think."

"Ashonda," Al said.

"Of course it is." Arlene answered, putting on a more serious tone.

The next morning, Maid Off was arrested in his home. That day and the next brought news of more and more victims who'd lost everything, including people who were not among the richest of the rich, but desperately wanted to be, as well as a handful of universities and charitable foundations. Benny half expected to find some personal connection to the mess, like a friend of a friend of a friend going bankrupt, or some organization that had passed through her life closing its doors. But all she found was a deep squeamishness over Maid Off being Jewish.

The FBI shut down access to Maid Off's offices, which occupied the 17th to the 19th floors, and were carefully combing through their files. A three-floor operation, so much larger than CZB's tiny digs. The 17th floor was where the money had disappeared. Investigators in windbreakers streamed in and out of the building. It was exciting if you didn't think too much about all the people who'd been screwed over.

Zimon sat back in his office chair as Baxter lingered in his doorway, nails chewed down to stubs. "Won't be great for the Jews," Simon said. Baxter dismissed Zimon with a wave of the hand and darkened face, galumped out for a cigarette.

Friday morning, the partners and Beatus held a long meeting in the conference room. The tone was somber. Benny worried they'd announced that CZB had invested millions with Maid Off. They'd all gone off the deep end. They were doomed. And Benny had a long, illustrious future as a bag lady. They streamed out of the conference room, revealing nothing.

Baxter and Zimmen began calling employees into Baxter's office one by one. First the zombie addressed as Mr. Jones, abruptly and with a short, nervous laugh. Then Rick, then Meline, all solemn poker faces everywhere. Benny grasped at her wrists. She leaned forward, broke into a cold sweat. "Maybe I am getting laid off. I can't afford my studio. I cannot, cannot, cannot live with my parents. They are going to kill me. The ghost of Ruby will haunt me forever. Idiot. I cannot, cannot, cannot go to law school."

Toward the end of the day, it was finally her turn. "Benny, would you come and see us now?" said Baxter, an impassive expression on his face surely hid a grave situation. She grabbed a notepad and pen.

"You won't be needing that," said Zimon. Oh boy. All her mistakes had come to light. She had helped them lose the trial. The firm was bankrupt. She was going to lose her job effective immediately. She'd be on a park bench with all her belongings stuffed into plastic bags from Sea Town by the end of the month, muttering to her only friends, the pigeons.

Benny settled into the chair in front of Baxter's disconcertingly neat desk. Usually, a maelstrom of papers covered every inch of it. "This is your year-end review," he said. Oh, she almost exclaimed. She sat back, then forward. It could still be bad. Baxter thanked her for her help with the trial, praised her calm demeanor. She wanted to laugh at that. Calm? Had she missed out on a lucrative career in acting? Caught off guard, Baxter had lately appeared damaged. If she were an expressionist, she'd paint his portrait in bruised tones and hack to the center, like one of Francis Bacon's self-portrait distortions. But now, any pain over the Pancorp loss was well hidden as he slipped into his role of evaluator. Placid with a glint of empathy and intelligence. "Business has been slow," he said. Here it came. It was happening right now. She was [ __ ].

"So, I'm sorry we can't give you a bigger bonus," he said. The mental images of herself tumbling down a flight of stairs. Paused. A bonus. She'd never had a bonus. She wished he'd say again how much it was because she'd missed it. A nice, round four-digit number. Maybe something they would sneeze at, but not her. Maybe she could buy a whole bunch of prosthetic eyes.

"But we're able to give you a raise. 385." Oh. Huh. She wasn't sure if that was a good raise or not. Couldn't they have jumped up to a bigger, rounder number? Should she say something about Rick's salary? Maybe that would be whiny, ungrateful.

"Thank you," said Benny, stunned. "Thank you very much." Was it okay to say "Happy Hanukkah"? Well, she would say it.

"Happy Hanukkah."

"You, too." She tottered out of Baxter's office.

Simon was soon behind, pulling on his coat. Capra, too, was putting on a round fur cap, somewhat tourist in style. "I like your hat," Benny said.

"Thank you," Capra said. "It looks really warm." She considered wearing such a hat around her tundra of a studio.

"It is." The phone rang. Kra lingered, expectant. Benny answered. An agitated voice huffed into her ear. "Bernie, please." Her heart leapt. "Wait, who?"

"Capra, my husband." Margaret hurled words like darts, but he covered the mouthpiece. "It's for you." Keep grabbed the receiver. "Yes, yes, I know. I'm already out the door. I know. I said that an hour ago. I have my hat on. If you hang up now, I'll be home in 5 minutes. Yes." He handed the phone back to Benny.

"Well, I'm off," he said, grin tight. "We have reservations tonight." Lesser, perhaps the Greni Menon. Most likely a restaurant so cutting edge Benny had never heard of it. He disappeared around the reception wall, but the door did not swing open in a hurry. She heard him pause at Meline's desk.

"Pretty happy about your bonus, eh?" He murmured. An odd lilt in his tone. Brow furrowed. Benny grabbed a file to put on the zombie's chair. Meline was laughing, said, "Oh, you."

As Benny strolled past them, Kapper's hand lingered strangely on Meline's desk. His eyes flashed. "Oh, Benny," he said. "Before I forget, and then I really have to go. Do you like opera?"

Benny nodded dumbly. "Are you free this Tuesday? I have two tickets I can't use for you and a friend. They're excellent seats."

"Sure, thank you." He reached into his jacket pocket and handed her an envelope. "There you go. Good night."

Meline pulled on her coat. "I'm out of here." Vinnie waved the envelope at her. She'd never actually been to the opera. She'd been inside Lincoln Center once on a high school trip. The tour guide had said the shallow steps were designed so ladies could descend with ease, the skirts of their gowns trailing behind them. Backstage, they'd seen powdered wigs on wooden heads and bustled costumes and peered down through a window at the Philharmonic rehearsing. But the red-carpeted stairs and the spangled chandeliers had stuck most vividly in her mind.

Benny returned to her desk. Beatrice and Rick stared impassively at their computers. When they did this, you could never tell what they were thinking or if they were listening, but pretending not to listen. They were experts at the cubicle game.

"As soon as Baxter is gone, we're all cutting out of here early," muttered Beatrice, trained upon her screen. "Oh, and here," she said, finally looking at Benny and handing her an envelope over the cubicle wall. The plastic window crinkled under her thumb. Binnie glanced inside at her bonus. One short line and three zeros. That wasn't nearly enough to fully realize her tower of glass eyes. Maybe if she invested the money, might as well flush the check down the toilet. Maybe she could pretend she never got the raise and squirrel away the difference. But she had opera tickets and nothing to wear. Well, she thought, trying not to grow too giddy. "I have some shopping to do."

Benny took Gary out for dinner at Carmine's. "So, are you still thinking of quitting?" asked Gary. They were already bloated with cheesy garlic bread. Eating only a few bites of each entree was all that was possible and painful. They ate out of a profound sense of duty.

"Well," said Benny, hot pepper buzzing on her lips. "Maybe, maybe I'll stay at least a little while longer."

"That's what raises are for, to make you say 'maybe I'll stay.'" Benny dabbed the sheen of red oil from her mouth, embarrassed.

I guess. Saturday morning, they went to Bloomingdale's. Benny chose a pink satiny sheath, a Nicole Miller bodycon, smooth fabric all gathered and crinkly with short sleeves just off the shoulder. It was on sale, but still $300. "It's really tight," she told the saleswoman, who insisted on a size two, even though Benny always wore four or six.

"It's supposed to be," she said. "You've been wearing the wrong size, and anyway, the fabric is stretchy. If you gain a little weight." To illustrate, the saleswoman tugged at the backside of the dress.

"See, I guess I do look good in it," said Benny, gazing over her shoulder into the mirror. "I always thought of myself as kind of knobby, but lately I'm not." Zofig, Ruby might joke before patting her bottom. A boobier and a pair of Spanx smoothed out the body's unsightly little bulges. The saleswoman brought out also satiny beige mules, a matching clutch purse, a pashmina shawl, a bloodstone necklace. "Treat yourself," said the saleswoman with a big, toothy, red-lipped smile.

"I really never do treat myself."

"You look really, really good," said Gary.

Oh well, thought Benny. What the hell? There goes half the bonus. At the cash register, it began, or rather resumed, the self-loathing. [ __ ] you, she thought. [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ]. She slipped her credit card back into her wallet along with the receipt, but then she knew what to do. The rest of the bonus was going to prototypes.

"Your face," Gary said outside.

"What?"

"I just went through this dramatic gymnastics."

"Really?" she said. She leaned into a kiss, the shopping bag handle cutting into her arm, the plan feeling real.

On Sunday, she said goodbye to Gary and said nothing of getting on the train to Brooklyn right after him to buy at Lowe's. A 12x24 sheet of clear polycarbonate, a plastic cutter, and a silicone gel gun. She was glad she hadn't discarded her safety goggles and leather gloves when she trashed so many other art things.

Tuesday night, after watching a frothy L'Traviata and sipping from flutes of champagne, they strolled past the Lincoln Center fountain holding hands. Pleasantly dazed by the whirl of colors and music, Binnie pictured Cornell lurking outside the lead soprano's dressing room in hopes of showering her with admiration, then chickening out and slipping a gilded collage under her door, a woman's singing mouth, out of which flew a swallow carrying a limp spray of forget-me-nots. Gary studied Binnie with a hand in her back as she wobbled, distracted on her new shoes.

A squealing mouse greeted them at Benny's front door, stuck to the sticky pad by the fridge. Its tiny body shook, its distress high-pitched. "Ew."

"Want me to take care of it?" Gary asked.

"You don't have to do that for me," Benny said. "I like being chivalrous. It's okay." She grabbed a plastic grocery bag. In one quick scoop, she enveloped the mouse and the trap, then pushed all the air out of the bag until it stopped squeaking.

"Jesus, Penny, that's cold."

"Well, it was miserable." So, with a pinky lifted, she carried the bag to the dumpster outside. If she were another sort of artist, she thought she would keep the mouse and slice its body lengthwise, preserve the cross-sections of its corpse in formaldehyde and silicone. But that was too dark and too derivative. The urgency of the mouse problem had prevented her from quickly clearing her worktable on which several cut-down pieces of clear polycarbonate sat waiting to be made into possibly the revolving door piece. She still had to play with the black hole idea. Either way, she needed thin wire for the birds and, of course, little colorful birds. Taxidermy ones might be going too far, but maybe not.

Gary sat up straight on the futon when she returned, his eyes shining. She couldn't make out what his expression meant. It was neither smiling nor frowning, only a muted wonderment. She didn't want to be so presumptuous as to ask whether he'd glanced at her poultry progress, which she'd failed to hide. "Freudian slip."

"What?" she asked. "Did my mercy killing disgust you?"

"I mean, I don't know that I would have used the sticky traps in the first place, but then mice run rampant in my place."

"Come here," he said with crinkled brow. They unfolded the futon and snuggled under the covers. Falling asleep, Gary kissed Benny's cheek, murmuring, "Good night, sweet killer." She closed her eyes, but didn't fall asleep quickly. Instead, nursing a bruised feeling that spread from her chest up to her face.

"Did you enjoy the opera?" Capra asked the next morning by the espresso machine.

"Very much, thank you. I didn't expect there to be a ballet, too. I loved it."

"Ballerinas, those gorgeous aliens. No wonder Cornell was smitten. He was otherworldly and so were they. I just love the spectacle of opera," Capra said. She couldn't think of anything smart to say, and from her silence, Capra turned away, returned to his office with a shiny red apple. She refilled the faux ebony box with espresso pods, feeling dumb.

Walking back to her desk, she caught Rick glaring in her direction, like she'd done something horrible, like she'd strangled his puppy or ruined his life. Was it just because Capra gave her the opera tickets and not him? But soon his eyes slid back to his screen, and she assured herself, as Gary always insisted, that it had nothing to do with her.

Face in a snarl, Capra bounded back toward Benny. "Did you order Roman apples?"

Benny glanced at the lunch chart taped to the wall in her cube. "It says Gala on the chart," Benny said. "And yet this is a Roman apple. Don't order Roman apples in winter. They're mealy."

"Sorry, Mr. Capra. I didn't realize."

"It's all right," he said, voice drawn out, murder-like. The phone rang. "Pick up." Vinnie pressed mute. "It's Georgina. I'm not here." He tossed the yellowing apple in the garbage and poured himself another mug of coffee.

Baxter entered the kitchen, grabbed the coffee carafe before Kapper could put it back. The pot slipped to the linoleum, the glass shattering with a loud pop. [ __ ]. Gingerly, Capra stepped over the mess, sighing as he grumbled to himself. "It's never easy, is it?"

"What did you do?" Simon shouted. Baxter muttered something in reply. Benny strained to understand. "Button, rotten."

"What?"

"I said, 'I'll take care of it.'" Baxter knelt before the mess, reached for a large, jagged piece the size of a hand. Benny jumped in to help, almost tripped and fell into the shards. "Careful," Baxter waved her away like she was a gnat.

Meline said, "Mr. Baxter, leave it." He chucked shards into the garbage. "It should go in paper bags. Leave it. I'll call the janitor."

"It's all right. I'm on it. Leave it, Bob." [ __ ]. He plucked a glass splinter from his palm, wincing. Rick's hazel eyes gleamed in a way Benny had never seen them gleam.

Chapter 6. At work the following Tuesday, Benny eased into Christmas Eve Eve by perusing the headlines. A French investor of aristocratic lineage, Renee Terry de Leoche, had been found dead in his Midtown office. He'd lost an estimated 1.4 billion dollars in the Maid Off scandal. A combination of other people's money and his entire life savings. "He felt responsible," his brother was quoted as saying, "felt he needed to suffer the consequences of his poor decisions." He'd made risky investments and he used the earnings to restore the family's ancestral chalet in Brittany. It had once been a point of pride in his life. But he wondered if other less prominent suicides would occur. People who'd lost everything but whose loss was not as headline-worthy as this. An accountant in Belmore, a high school economics teacher in Sheep's Head Bay. People quietly offing themselves who might later converge as a single statistic tucked into a footnote.

The kitchen offered refuge from dark thoughts, consolation in a box of jelly donuts, in sugar cookies shaped like dreidles, in Christmas trees, in a box of diva the size of a Cadillac. She filled a napkin with dark chocolate salted caramels. A soaking sponge sat at the bottom of the kitchen sink. Oozing slime.

"You're going to get some serious cavities," Baxter said, making her jump. She hadn't heard him enter. He reached for a jelly donut. The cut on his palm, unbandaged, had crusted to scarlet. He sank his teeth into the doughnut, which gushed raspberry goo. Benny stopped chewing with a bulge of chocolate in her cheek, pointed to the sticky red splotch at the corner of his sugar-coated mouth. He ran his thumb over it, sucked it clean, winked, knocked his elbow against hers as he swallowed, said in that low voice that seemed to imply conspiracy, "I'm just teasing."

In Arlene and Albert's narrow kitchen that night, they formed an assembly line to make latkes for Hanukkah. Arlene shaped the latkes. Benny manned the frying. Gary plopped them on paper towels. And Albert appraised the process. Too thick. Too thin. Too brown. Not brown enough. More oil. Too much oil. Chop. Chop. "I'm hungry." After the first dozen, Gary excused himself. Benny, who'd been surprised he was willing to brave a repeat of Thanksgiving at all, flipped the batch sizzling in the pan, admiring the golden color. When Gary was out of the room, she turned to her mom. "Hey, so you guys have uh retirement plans, right?"

Arlene leaned on the counter. A half smile curling a pension. "Sure, we both do. But like, do you know how it works? Like, is it invested in something?" Arlene looked thoughtful. Albert said, "Invested? Sure." Arlene nodded. Benny said nothing. "It's solid," Arlene said. Her voice rose into a sing-song. "It's so good to hear you thinking about the future, Benny." Maternal eyes sparkled. "Now we're talking." In a fit of love, she wrapped Benny in a hug. "You know, now that you have a real job, you ought to start saving. There's that tax credit for first-time home buyers." Albert laughed softly, and though he didn't say Benny ought to partner up with someone financially stable, she could guess where his mind was drifting and bristled.

Gary came back from the bathroom and sidled up to Albert in the doorway, brow furrowed. "The latkes are burning." Benny wriggled out of her mother's arms and chucked the singed cakes onto the oily pile. "Sour cream," Albert said, shuffling to the fridge, finger pointing in the air. "Sour cream improves all."

On Christmas Eve, Capron needed a big thing done. An investor in a beer company was suing over a merger. Giddily, he asked Benny to stay late. "You don't care about Christmas anyway, right?" After the recent bonus and raise, she couldn't complain. Binnie texted Gary, pushing back their plans to 7:00. Gary arrived precisely at 7. He waited in the vestibule for half an hour while she kept working. Downtown, they sucked on Shanghai-style soup dumplings. Benny felt compelled to drink beer like it would enrich her now that she had some tiny hand in its production. She thought of doing a piece made up entirely of grasping dolls' hands. Could she somehow animate them? Have them actually try to grab things, slowly, creepily? Why did she always come up with impossible ideas, things she had no clue about executing? She guzzled her beer and ordered another. Oh, the grasping hands came from the movie Labyrinth. David Bowie, the Goblin King, clucked his tongue. Think of something else.

They caught a weird but boring movie at the film forum with lots of long takes focused on ocean waves and little clicks and squeaks that were maybe supposed to evoke sea mammal sounds. Benny wasn't paying close enough attention to know for sure. "What'd you think?" Gary asked afterward as the credits rolled.

"No opinion," quizzically he said. "Earth to Benny." She kissed him. "Sorry, none. No opinion." She still hadn't told him about the brunch thing at the gallery. She didn't want anyone's input on it until she knew what she was doing. If she didn't make a decision soon, she would have to give herself a lobotomy to make do with a path she found herself on, in which economic pressure pushed her into applying for law school. The omission was starting to feel like lying. If she wanted Gary to come along, she would have to say something soon.

The next day, Christmas, they strolled around Manhattan, resting as evening fell on the barricades in an empty Rockefeller Center. She loved Midtown Manhattan on a holiday night when it was dead quiet and empty. "You know," said Benny. "I feel really good around you."

"I do too," said Gary. "Around you." He squeezed her hand. "I love you, Benny."

Oh, thought Benny. She wasn't expecting that. She wasn't expecting that at all. Love so soon. She didn't know what to say or do. She put her arms around him, squeezed, and kissed and hugged. And he put his arms around her and squeezed and kissed and hugged right back. She clung to him as if they were the last two humans in an apocalyptic city.

Chapter 7. Between Christmas and New Year's, an anime porn company wanted to file bankruptcy. Kea said Benny could take the lead on the paperwork. "You've shown your diligence at trial. You are perfectly capable of this task." Sitting in the conference room with Capra and the ursw wild pornographer, a 60-something white man with a thick mustache, felt only slightly odd. She wished she hadn't sat so her back was turned to the view of the East River, but she was glad she'd worn a suit jacket to the meeting. She felt protected by it. It was relatively easy to go through the inventory to be liquidated. The cartoonish thumbnail images of the movies were not particularly graphic, though for some reason it was the ones that included "milk" in the title that made her queasy.

On New Year's Eve, a Wednesday, Gary picked Benny up in the lobby of the Lipstick Building. They strolled, fingers interlocked, down to Curry Hill for dinner. Batting eyelashes at each other in the warm glow of chili-shaped lights, they dipped papadoms in sweet chutneys and spicy green and orange sauces and plotted out an urban hike for Saturday which promised crisp, cold sunshine. An antique store in West Chelsea sold ornate doorknobs, Victorian art nouveau art deco knobs. He lit up, leaned in. "What are your plans for doorknobs?"

Binnie clamped up, wanted to snap. That's private. In part because she didn't know, and in part because she thought it was bad luck to share inadequately formed ideas. Spending time with Gary took up a lot of headspace. And ideas couldn't all be worked out at the subconscious level. She had to do the painful work of sitting and staring and sitting and arranging, physically searching, executing. Making that shop the destination was a way to fit her art into their time together. Even if she couldn't bring herself to divulge the goal, she didn't want to hurt Gary. She wanted his company, wanted to be with him, cherished the idea of a long walk, but there was only so much time. "I'm not sure yet," she said, crept her hand into his.

She felt some kinship with Joseph Cornell in this area. His trepidation over romance realized his suspicion that it might affect his art, ruin his ability to make it. Not that she felt entirely the same. Her feelings didn't stem from the same mixture of Victorian ideals, an imposing mother, and suffocating social anxiety, for one thing. But there was a hook of hesitation in her gut, a desire to have Gary near and yet keep him at arm's length. Providing space for yearning was part of it. She needed to yearn more. She thought being hungry sharpened the senses. Making art on a full stomach didn't work well. And maybe being in a happy relationship didn't help much either. Why make art if your love adult brain chemistry was telling you you had everything you could possibly want? But that wasn't quite right either.

After dinner, they cozied up on her futon with a sweating bottle of prosecco. The fizz buoyed her up. "I want to show you something," she said. Crouching beneath her worktable, she opened the garbage bag that hid "Infection," the one piece that was close to done. Inside, the little boy with the ice cream smile shined up at her in the dark. Turmeric dusted the cluster of gluey jujubes that orbited him like a small yellow moon. Nestled around the boy in the cosmic viral microbe silk marigolds. Strips of old plaid flannel similar to what the little boy wore lined the box. When it was on display, vanilla-scented candles would burn on top of the diorama, wax dribbling alter-like. The box commemorated a life unknown to her, saved for a chance encounter on a subway platform. Holding her breath, she lifted it up like it was a baby she delivered. "I think this one is almost done."

Gary joined her, peered inside. "This is awesome, Benny."

"You think?"

"Yes, I think this is great. What's it called?"

She cleared her throat. "Infection."

"Weird. I love it. Who's the little boy?"

"A stranger. I found the photo on a subway platform."

"You should show Ellen. Really?"

"Yes. She's your friend at an art gallery. And that's like—" He touched her arm excitedly. "That could be your sticktick. I find old photos on subway platforms and mix it with other cool finds and boom, here's my art."

"Yeah, but she knew she shouldn't ask. Do I really need a sticktick? A gimmick?"

"Sure." He kissed her. "Maybe it isn't that sticktick, but you need one. Anyway, we should celebrate." He refilled their glasses. "We'll take it to Ellen Saturday."

"Saturday." [ __ ] or get off the pot still pierced her sternum and tugged like a fish hook. Like you weren't already thinking about it when you were plotting our day in West Chelsea. "We'll be near the gallery, right?"

"Saturday. You knew about that?"

"Yes. Ellen invited me. Now put that down and come over here."

Benny couldn't sleep. It was well-documented that Cornell liked the company of young women, ballerinas, actresses, college students, and rarely admitted men into his basement studio to see works in progress. He was reluctant to sell his work to dealers, but gladly gave collages and dream boxes as gifts to the women he idolized. Relationships, however, never manifested. His painful shyness and obsession with innocence prevented that. He'd had his first sexual encounter in his 60s with an extravagantly exhibitionist performance artist, Yoi Kasama. This only after he'd gone around asking other artists if they knew any women who'd posed nude. "He didn't draw, but he wanted to learn," he said. Still, that encounter was not a romance. It was a performance, perhaps with Cornell as the audience. Benny wondered if Kusama snickered at him, amused in the same way Andy Warhol and his tribe were amused by Cornell. Did Gary find her amusing? They competed among themselves to see whom Cornell would admit into his house and for how long and how much they'd managed to see. They would pretend to need the bathroom to sneak a peek at the upstairs and his monk's cell of a bedroom. Filmy yellow light crept through the windows.

Benny wiped slobber from her pillow and expanded into a feline stretch. It was noon. Gary was not in bed. Her head remained on the pillow a moment as she trained a soft gaze on the shaft of sunlight. "Do on New Year's Day what you wish to do the rest of the year." All that sleep. Time wasted. Pick one thing, one project. Focus. Eyes closed, sunlight shining through the pink of her lids. The project came to her. The eyeball tower, a bulbous swirl refracting light. She smiled. "Thank you," she thought. The toilet flushed. Gary emerged.

"Coffee?"

"All right. If I do some work today?"

"You mean work?"

"Work? Art." He lit up, then hesitated. "Oh, you want me to leave?"

"Um, no, no, of course not. Just, you know, we can chill here for a bit." Benny curled up in a ball against the wall and sketched with a notepad against her bare thighs, sheets in a tangle. Eyeballs staring out, eyeballs going googly, eyeballs giving side-eye. Meanwhile, Gary browsed her short stack of books on Cornell, on dreams, astronomy, bird poems, a compendium of famous silent film moons. He leaned against the wall with a bird book and read for a while. Benny relaxed into her sketching. Should the eyeballs all glare pointedly in one direction, or should they look every which way, or?

The landlady's footsteps crept overhead. A pipe clanked. Gary peered out the window as if looking for a hawk on a rooftop, cleared his throat. "How about a bit of fresh air before the holidays are over and we have to return to our cubes?" Benny uncurled from her hunched position, spine crackling, quelled a violent wave of frustration, peeped out the window and squinted while the feeling passed. Snow wobbled in the street, shot through with sunlight. She glanced at the clock. Only 30 minutes had passed. Glanced at her notebook. "Or I could leave. It's just, you know, one of my few days off." The flurry did brighten First Avenue's grim blandness. Well, okay. She dug out her old upstate boots and they played for the rest of the day. The cold awakening them all rosy-cheeked, plopping in the fluff to make angels. They flung snowballs, lunched on hot dogs and conishes, dined on pizza and beer. Scents of snow and roasting chestnuts and salted pretzels, and the smoke of grilling kebabs melded into a supreme feeling of homeiness in the winter city.

Ellen's Gallery hosted a first Saturday of the year mimosa-infused shindig. A "Start Your Year With Art" gimmick full of brightness and hope and boozy bubbles. Outside the gallery, Benny stalled. "Infection" sat cradled in her hands, wrapped loosely in a kitchen towel. She recalled bringing the lunar terrarium to Professor Lewis's office hours, standing on the threshold, hopeful. The pitiful way her favorite professor had pursed her lips and crinkled. Somehow she thought showing her work to an art historian would feel safer than showing it to a working artist, but she'd left feeling dismissed and more clueless than ever. What made her think this would be any better?

Gary, hand on Benny's back, gently nudged her forward. A silver-haired man in ankle boots brushed past them, held open the door, and smiled. Faint freckles dotted his face. The man with the youthful features who'd whisked Alexis away at the holiday party. Benny stumbled in. Ellen, stationed at the front desk, smiled wide just as Benny tripped. "Benny!" The covered diorama creaked between them as they hugged. Ellen began to lift the cloth. Benny lightly slapped her hand. The phone rang. Ellen turned her back, answered. Benny put the box down among the postcards and catalogs, unveiled it. Gary lingered, hopeful, held her elbow in support. "Why don't you go look around?" She said, his mouth curled. "You mean it can't be your manager?"

Ellen glanced over her shoulder, held up her finger at them, and turned her back again. "I kid," he said. "Holler if you need the hard sell." He wandered off into the white room, which had been completely transformed since early December. Sinuous wooden sculptures punctured the center of the space. Rusted metal mobiles had been suspended from the ceiling, and they twirled, faintly creaking. Enormous encaustic lined one wall. Textured squares of indigo, crimson, and gold. Under a set of skylights at the back, a waif in knee-high boots poured drinks. Gary gravitated mimosa-ward. Ellen kept chattering. She laughed into the phone, glanced over her shoulder at Benny, laughed again. Standing there exposed, Benny wanted to shrink into a snail shell. She wanted to cover her snail shell in dirt. She wanted to put the dirt and robed shell inside a cedar box. She wanted to sink the box into the bottom of her mind. She folded and unfolded the kitchen towel, considered revealing "Infection." Leaving.

The lanky silver fox in the ankle boots passed by as Ellen hung up the phone. On his arm hung Alexis in a black sheath dress and high-heeled peep-toe boots, her toenails cobalt. Ellen glanced at "Infection" and Benny cringed. Ellen could easily say something before these giants that would change everything. But in view of the Amazon, her boss, Ellen's mouth stayed shut. "Now, isn't that charming?" the Amazon said, her New York body suggesting forward movement even as her head craned back toward Benny's creation, her prominent cheeks. Crab apples. "Say something," thought Benny. Anything. The bit of glue peeping out from the yellow candy didn't at least resemble mucus, but standing here before Alexis, she thought the piece leaned too heavily on the power of the photograph.

"We met last month," Benny blurted. She thought she would vomit on the cobalt toes.

"I remember." The Amazon handed her a card. "Call me." Benny's mouth opened, but she said nothing. A faint croak issued from her throat. She lost all ability to talk. The Amazon wandered out with the man into the brisk day, laughing huskily. "What was that?" she thought she heard him say. Benny pocketed the card, shrouded the diorama. The excitement that had rendered her temporarily mute flip-flopped to a clammy panic. The laughter wasn't promising. She'd [ __ ] up before she'd even truly begun.

"I got to go." Ellen bulked. "Wait, what? Why?" Her eyes strained hot. "Quitting while I'm ahead." Gary was looking at a video of a clown-faced naked woman smashing rotten tomatoes onto a kitchen counter with the heel of her hand. Benny swung the door open and barreled west toward the High Line. Her plan was to sit in the shadow of the old elevated train tracks on a plastic milk crate with her head between her knees. Gary soon caught up, stopped her mid-block. "Why are you running away?" Mimosa breath coiled in the crystalline air. Across the street, a man swung a garbage bag into a dumpster. An arc of liquid flew in the bag's wake.

"I saw what happened." He said, "Yeah, I panicked and she laughed. Forget about that. Remember, it isn't always about you."

"You always say that. Sometimes it is." Maybe her friend told her a dirty joke. She told me to call. I don't think she was serious. She gave you her card again. You have to call her Monday.

Nothing in Alexis's gallery, remotely connected to Benny's work. The place was big and cold. The woman's wardrobe matched the work she chose to display. Clean, bold lines. Even her bone structure matched. Benny felt like a Disney mouse. Pink paws joined prayerfully at a giant. "Don't crush me, please." She kept walking toward the Hudson. Gary followed. He put his arm around her. She tilted her head onto his shoulder and sniffled. "I'm concerned about you," he murmured. "Crushing a spirit is easier than crushing a mouse. It doesn't bleed."

Chapter 8. "Hail to the conquering, yada yada," Zimon said to Capra after New Year's with a little two-fingered salute. "One day of work for 20 grand ain't bad, right?" Capra had won the beer thing. Where was Benny's cut? An extra 30 bucks for the 90 minutes she'd stayed late while he got 20 grand. Blur. She swilled the espresso she'd made from an emerald pod. Essence of soylent green. She joked bitterly with herself. Someone somewhere had died for her coffee, surely. Meanwhile, Capra was planning to take Margaret out for a celebratory dinner at their favorite Michelin-starred restaurant in San Sebastian.

Benny said, "Simon, would you scan this and email it to me?" His 2007 tax return. He'd made $2 million. He always said his teeth were bad because when he was growing up, his parents never had money for the dentist. He was a true buy-your-own-boots-strapper thanks to free college in the '60s.

Benny collated documents in the quiet of the conference room. Thick gray clouds replaced the weekend's stark sunshine. They hovered low over Queens in a stone dome, threatened sleet rather than snow. But the cold, wet outside promised release from the Lipstick Building's dry, recycled air, which she now suspected of causing her migraines, possibly of slowly killing her. At lunch, Binny huddled beneath the building's granite columns and gulped damp January wind. The sleet fell in sharp drops against her cheeks. She spied Baxter, partially hidden by another column, staring at 53rd Street. Cigarette smoke coiling from his fingers. A sinking feeling pushed her back into the marbled lobby.

Upstairs, she slipped into the empty office that had been Paul's. She pretended he hadn't been laid off, but had left to pursue creative projects, was now filming on location in Prague or Saigon. Or maybe despite being laid off, he decided to throw caution to the wind. Do just that. Goose-pimpled from the cold, trembling. She called Alexis Thorne. It went straight to voicemail. "This is Alexis. Leave a message." The curator's low voice, quick and forthright. Benny forced herself not to hang up. "Hi, my name's Benny Greenson," she said, legs shaking. Slowed down. "I came to the gallery on Saturday. I had the diorama with the picture of the boy in the marigolds you said to call." She hung up, dialed again, sweating, left her number. Doofus. Stared at the phone, willing the little red light to glow with Alexis's call.

At the espresso machine, she brewed one of the gold pods. An empty box of chocolates sat ravaged in the trash. Someone had eaten them all overnight. Out from behind the trash can, a shiny black roach scuttled. Its bloated body made its gait wobbly. "What?" asked Beatrice from the doorway. Benny pointed. Beatrice yipped a high-pitched squeal that Benny never would have expected could come from her contralto voice box. The zombie ambled out of his office, chewing gum and hitching up his belt. "What's the problem, ladies?" They pointed at the roach, which now lingered fearlessly on the white linoleum. "Oh, no. I'm not killing that thing." He took an empty tissue box out of the trash, bent uneasily, and turned it over on top of the bug. "Now what?" Rick burst in with a can of Raid. "Everyone get out," he said. He shielded his mouth and nose with the crook of his arm, lifted the tissue box, and sprayed and sprayed underneath it as the bug danced in its poison shower. Then scurried under a cabinet and disappeared, presumably to die alone. "Let me know if you see any more roaches," said Beatrice. Benny shuddered. "A fancy building like the Lipstick should not have pests," she muttered. "You know, the building has a new management company, and they took pest control out of the standard package. Everyone has to pay extra. Uh, one bad tenant can ruin a whole building." Benny regretted spending so much of her bonus on non-art things. Feed the art, you dumbass, she thought as she left work that day.

She wandered down 53rd Street west of the MoMA. Joseph Boyce Saul Leit Jean Prouvet Batiste Melena. She wound her way through each special exhibit, cramming images into her brain. Some of Boy's small sculptures inside vitrines were delicate like Cornell's assemblages. But his belief that art had to connect with society, documented in a blurb about his political life, felt to Benny like a reproach, like he had pointed at her feeling of inarticulation, and left a bruise. Saul Leit's large wall drawings, faint white lines on black, both straight and not, continuous and broken, made her skin itch. The focus on mass production and John Prouve's design atelier felt like something she was supposed to nod at with appreciation, but it mostly annoyed her. Maybe that was what annoyed her about silicone. The idea that she could make a mold of anything and repeat it over and over. It was a cool technique, but also like, maybe try making something one of a kind and special, whatever that meant. Melena's hand-painted film posters from the 1920s at least had a little something something. The freshman reminded Benny of F. Scott Fitzgerald's lesser fiction, yet appeared soaked in so much raspberry and grape Kool-Aid you could drink from it. Greta Garbo as the mysterious lady pulled Benny across the room with intense, heavy-lidded eyes. Next to her, a two kooky woman with Medusa curls and a dollar bill on her cheek gaped out from the "Beggar on Horseback" poster. In a third piece, a femme fatale Benny had never heard of. Paula Negri of "Hotel Imperial" performed the most intense over-the-shoulder side Benny had ever seen. Not a single one of these special exhibits focused on stuff made by a woman. Was that her problem? The lack of role models? There were things mixed here and there in the permanent collections. Of course, as if she hadn't spent enough on the admission ticket, she found herself in the museum store purchasing a hot pink book, "Infinity Net," the autobiography of Yayoi Kusama, the artist she was sure she would loathe for her unkindness to Joseph Cornell.

At home, she flipped through the book. When she was a girl, Kusama wrote, "A field of violets sang to her." Benny kept the book open to that page, put her pillow on top, and went to sleep, hoping for a miracle.

Each day that Alexis did not call Benny back, she died a little inside. She didn't want to say anything to Ellen. She wasn't sure a nudge from Ellen would do any good. You had to be really good to be pushy, was the thing. She twisted up in knots, resentful of Ellen and Gary for making her do this too early. But then, but then what was she to do with the overpriced rat hole she lived in now? She'd cut the cord so as not to become a stone baby in Ruby's womb tomb, but she was more beholden than ever to her stupid job where she took pitiful solace in being called perfectly capable. Pitiful solace in doing something important, like helping a porno company go out of business. This private torment was easy to hide. She'd done it all through the trial and been praised for her calm demeanor. But that didn't mean it ever went away.

Inauguration Day reinvigorated the office's spirit, brought back the optimistic cheer of election day. The partners gathered around Capra's computer to watch news coverage of the parade, while the zombie, Beatrice, and Benny gathered around Meline's computer. The Obamas, their breath curling in the winter air, marched down the frigid streets of Washington, asphalt sparkling with frost. Michelle in a dreamy gold power dress, everyone smiling, smiling, smiling. The only person in the office who did not beam was Rick. His computer wallpaper still showed Elliot Spitzer's contrite face after his rocketing career was dashed by scandal. "What a douche," he'd once said to Benny of the former governor.

"Our little reactionary," Zimon joked that morning, slapping Rick on the back.

"Mhm," said Beatrice.

"Oh, be nice," said Meline. Jovial. Benny smiled. Rick sneered. He sat by himself in his cubicle and muttered something about opening a Twitter account.

When Obama's address began, Meline turned up the volume. The zombie leaned in, smelling of cigarettes and double mint gum. The words were rousing, Binnie thought, if a tad cerebral. "Homes have been lost, jobs shed, businesses shuttered, our healthcare is too costly, our schools fail too many, and each day brings further evidence that the ways we use energy strengthen our adversaries and threaten our planet. These are the indicators of crisis, subject to data and statistics. Less measurable, but no less profound, is a sapping of confidence across our land, a nagging fear that America's decline is inevitable." Alone in his cubicle in the center of the office, Rick snorted with laughter. The zombie's face crinkled in disdain. Binny peeked around the reception wall at the partners. Zimon hunched over Capra in his chair, Baxter's arms crossed and elbows cradled. Were the words getting through? On the face of it, they cared deeply about the law. Their expressions displayed appropriate reverence for a historic moment. But would anything change? "We remain a young nation, but in the words of scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things." Change. The desire was in Benny's fingertips. The meaning of it not yet there, only the yearning. But maybe that was okay. First you have to want.

The holiday gift baskets ceased. Benny was grateful. Perhaps the cessation of gorging would help her think. Beatrice went on her quarterly cleanse diet, eating nothing but greens and drinking nothing but water with a half lemon floating in the glass, proclaiming sugar as poison. Meline joined the pack to eliminate sugar from her diet. Beatrice once again printed out the regimen and gave it to Benny, and Benny once again put it in her purse to throw out later. Industrial-sized roaches kept appearing. The zombie kept saying he would not kill them. Benny never would have pegged him as an animal lover. The killing was left to Rick and sometimes Capra.

In Benny's daily perusal of Maid Off developments, she found another suicide. This article was shorter. The deceased investor being of less impressive providence, but still worthy of note. A retired British military officer who'd lost his life savings and shot himself in the head. There were human interest stories, too, accompanied by pictures of frail elderly people leaning on walkers. Elderly people who'd planned retirements in expensive assisted living communities, thinking their investment in Maidolf's fund would carry them comfortably to the end of their days.

"Look at these people, Dick," she said to the zombie when he came at her with a stack of files.

"Yeah," he sounded weary. "That'll be me one day."

"What do you mean?"

"Student loans. I'm in the hole like them. I'll work until I die." Benny.

Benny. Benny. I'm $80,000 in the hole. Don't worry. We'll all be working till we die. What he didn't say, and what Benny wondered, was whether he thought he'd make partner one day so the point would become moot. Though that wouldn't couldn't happen for everyone. You'd have to leave CZB, go someplace where the grind was more punishing. Would other law firms have the same implicit visual standards for making partner?

He tossed the files flagged with a 100 post-it notes on her desk. Deadpan, he said. Cabra needs this by four. Thanks, Dick. Uh-huh. He said, "You bet."

She googled maid off and suicide to see if anyone else had done themselves in. But only the two stories of the Frenchmen and the Brit appeared. That Sunday, after seeing Gary off to the subway, Vinnie headed south on 1 Avenue, trying to stay connected with that feeling she'd gotten in her fingertips. The feeling that she must do. Scr for materials, find stuff to light a spark. All the way down in Alphabet City, she stumbled on a curiosity shop, found three taxiderermy sparrows. They weren't the flamboyant kind of bird she'd envisioned for the revolving door and black hole piece is, but they were the right size for now. She cuped them in her palms. "How old are these?" she asked the shopkeep, a sturdy, ruddy cheicked woman who sat with her hands on her knees, poised to tell a story. "How old do you want them to be?" She had an oracle quality about her, this woman, a cash-only oracle. Benny withdrew $80 from the store's ATM and bought the sparrows. The sun was setting as she arrived home, having found no discarded treasures along the sidewalks. "GH, don't scrge in the garbage," she kept hearing Arlene say. It was an old habit. Inside, she rested the birds on her workt and got the kettle going. It was only after she defrosted herself with a cup of tea that the panic reemerged. With trepidation, she sat at the table, managed to pause the spiral of panic before she touched the sparrows again. the most delicate tap of fingertips to feathers. Compared to the pieces of clear polycarbonate she'd set aside for the revolving door, the birds would be outsized. Maybe that would be good. Maybe she needed bigger birds, smaller people.

One morning at the end of January, Benny considered saying something to Ellen about Alexis. Would Ellen say, "Just call her again, dummy." Or would she say, "Let it go. It's clear she's not interested." She couldn't stand the contrast between the obviousness and clarity of Ellen's point of view and the opaque muck of her own. "Clear as mud," her father liked to say. She fidgeted her mouse to wake up her computer from its slumber, then shuffled to the kitchen and poured herself black coffee, spilling dark drilets on the counter. Back at her desk after rumaging through her email and minimizing Outlook, a handful of unfamiliar PDFs on her desktop caught her eye. She hadn't scanned anything recently, never saved things to her desktop, and always gave files meaningful names. These had names generated by the scanner, just the date with no dashes, a run-on string of numbers. Someone had been using her computer since last night. She opened one PDF and her throat constricted. There on her desktop was a huge full color high-resolution image of Georgina topless in a g-string holding two exquisitly frosted pastel pink cupcakes in front of her chest with just enough sideb displaying the perkiness of her breasts. Vinnie closed the file, her whole being, she was sure, transformed red. She glanced around to see if anyone had seen. Meline was behind the reception wall on the phone, having one of her long murmuring conversations with a friend or relative. Beatric appeared lost in a spreadsheet. Rick had some complicated excavation project going in the file room. Simon reclined in his chair, browsing the New York Law Journal. Capra was taking a lengthy conference call behind closed doors. The zombie was leaving the kitchen with his hourly dose of caffeine, taking the long way around the oval of the lipstick back toward his office. Quickly, she opened and closed each PDF. All photos of a topless and g-string Georgina spled belly down on a bed, licking vanilla frosting off a cupcake, lying on her back with I love you, Bernie, written in baby blue icing on her belly, while she arched her eyebrow into a come hither stare, pink frosting, buttercream hiding her nipples. Why were these on her computer? Why now? Why her? Why this? Should she delete them? Hide them in a file in Capra's S- drive folder? Her eyes block hands cooled her hot cheeks, hopefully draining the beat redness of them. Rick came out of the file room with a pile of expandable files and plunked them on his desk. "Morning," she said to him, probing for a clue. "Morning," he said, voice jellled and eyelids lowered to a nonchalant deadness. Benny browsed her computer in search of clues. The offending PDFs not only sat on her desktop, they had been emailed from Benny's work email to an email she'd never seen before. Honeybear6969@gmail.com. Now she was both panicked and angry. What kind of trail was someone trying to leave? And who was Honeybear6969@gmail.com, a porn site? She didn't recognize it from the Chapter 7 bankruptcy case. The photos were more budoir than porn, she had to admit. But still, this was very bad. She could not, of course, Google this email address here. She'd do it as soon as she got home. She created a nest of file folders three layers deep inside an already existing stuff for Kappa folder inside the parallegal folder which held a gym membership confirmation a certificate attesting to the authenticity of a piece of art he bought a tax return and moved all the PDFs there under s parallegal stuff for capra misque February 2009 G. Perhaps the G would be taken for a folder mistakenly created and abandoned. In any case, no one ever looked inside the parallegal folder. In the collage by Benny's computer, Tamara Tumanova's hands seemed less exalted, more fatalistic. The whole gesture, an elegant shrug. Maybe Kapper had scanned the images early that morning, didn't want them on his own computer, but that made little sense. Was it possible someone had swiped the images from his office, scanned them for their own private use? Zimon Dick again? Why would that person be so careless? None of the men in the office were dumb. Were they? It seemed someone wanted Benny to see the images.

"Ta," Meline exclaimed somewhat softly as she came around the corner. She paused at Benny's desk. "You look pale. Are you okay?" "I feel a little sick to my stomach, come to think of it." "No, you really do look pale." Meline touched her forehead in search of a fever. She disappeared into the kitchen and brought back an ice pack wrapped in a paper towel. "Put this on your forehead." "Okay." "Want some lavender tea?" "Okay." It was nice of Meline to take care of her. It was nice to have someone maternal in the office. Why were her eyes leaking? Meline brought the tea out in a paper cup. She never used the firm branded mugs which others left in the sink for someone her to wash at the end of each day. And Vinnie drank it boiling hot until she felt the heat go into her fingers and toes. "Thank you," Benny said a little later, standing over Meline at her desk. "I do feel better." Meline tore herself from a photo stream of 100 unbelievable UFO sightings. A silver blur disc in a New Mexico night sky. "You're quite welcome," Meline said brusly.

Chapter nine.

One Thursday morning in February, Benny came in early to cover for Meline, who was visiting her parents in Guyana. The office would be quiet. All she had to do was answer the occasional call and transfer it to voicemail. With the lights still off, she dumped her stuff at her desk, rubbing her sleepy eyes, and ambled toward the kitchen to brew the coffee. The room appeared darker than usual, despite the fact that it was windowless, as if someone the night before had shut off all the machinery sporting glowing buttons. Then the darkness somehow squirmed. "My eyes must be wonky," she thought for a split second. "Maybe she'd rubbed them too vigorously." She flipped the light switch and her finger brushed to something smooth and hard that darted away. Hundreds, maybe thousands of shining roaches scuttled away from the harsh fluorescent light, their collective tiny feet a subtle tick tick tick tick. Benny grabbed her bag and ran outside screaming. After she dry heaved by the elevator, she called Beatrice, who let out a long disgusted moan. Capra finally agreed to hire an exterminator. And Benny wondered if CZB had been the bad tenant all along, not opting into the extra charge for pest control. No one could work remotely away from the roaches. They had to be able to answer the phones, access the files. No, it wouldn't do to let the roaches keep them away from work. Baxter jumped in, offering to find a pest control company. He was waiting on news of the Pan Corp appeal. Simon had been taunting him about his no good loser clients who didn't pay, and he needed something proactive to do. He didn't say all this in so many words, but Benny filled in the blanks. Were they the breed of roaches that ate the insides of televisions? Benny wondered, munching the guts out of the office's humming servers. She perched at the edge of her seat all day, as if she might crunch against a teeming coven of roaches on the back of her chair, as if they might slip into her pants pockets and infest her studio, as if they might fall from the drop ceiling into her shirt collar, making her dance convulsively.

The next day, Friday, Meline was still out. Benny arrived early again. The office was empty and quiet. "Roaches hate humans," Benny had heard once as she braced herself to switch on the lights. "They need our food, but they hate our smell. To save herself from disgust, to allow any roaches lingering in the dark to scuttle quickly from the light." She closed her eyes and kept them shut for 5 seconds after hitting the switch, stomping her feet to avoid any chance of hearing their movement. Eyes open. No hoorde. She breathed. The coffee pot burbled. Benny crouched before the fridge, filling it with dozens of tiny water bottles. She rose light-headed. The fridge door slammed shut. A figure passed in the hall as if from nowhere. Benny's heart jumped and she half shouted. "Ah, did I scare you?" Baxter leaned back into the doorway. He wasn't wearing shoes. Had been creeping around like a ninja. "You did? Sorry, Ben." "Mind if I call you Ben? Like a trash bin?" "Nah." He smiled and swiped his hand in the air like a like a oh, you know, Ben, Ben. His hand waved about in search of words. "It sounds cute." With just the two of them in the office, his tone took on a dollop smidge too much flirtatiousness. Uh-huh. The phone rang a relief. "It's Harrison Backter." grimaced, face darkening. He disappeared around the bend and hollered, "Send him through." His thick post-trial voice of defeat bled through the command in anticipation of dealing with Pancorp. Had he slept in the office or simply arrived at an ungodly hour? Why had he been working in the dark? A white bakery box arrived mid-morning. a gift from a client of Baxter's from New Orleans. Benny delivered it to Baxter, who was leaning toward his computer with a twisted mouth, as if his glasses no longer worked. A heavenly aroma wafted from the box despite it being closed. A familiar milange she couldn't quite parse. The heft of it suggested perhaps several sticks of butter. "For me, from Verier." Baxter leaned back in his chair, burgundy tie slightly a skew. "No way. That old dog." Simon had called him a criminal, but Simon said that about half of Baxter's clients. Capra disliked Verier, too. But Baxter had leads on other clients. GF Coast Oil. He needed a second oil co type case to make good on the pan corp losses and Benny wondered still about possible maid off losses. "Set it down over there." Benny balanced the box at top a pile of scrap paper blackened with thousands of inky hatchmark doodles. The neatness of his desk during her year end review was long gone. Baxter left early that day. He was feeling under the weather, he said. Before he left, he asked Benny to serve an 80-page brief to 12 people. She was glad he went home sick before she photocopied and bound everything, so he couldn't change his mind and make her rip out 12 spines and trash a thousand sheets of paper and crank through the copier another thousand. Maybe he won't come back, she thought. You're evil, she thought. The white box remained on his credenza next to an assortment of pain relievers and vitamin supplements. Pepto-Bismol Bstress Complex, Cavacava, extended release potassium. She picked up the potassium and read its benefits. Potassium is embedded in the entire process of thought moving through the brain, commanding muscles to move. If you really want to murder someone, her sixth grade life science teacher had once said, give them an extremely high dose of potassium. Potassium naturally increases in the body upon death, and so you see, it's a lethal agent impossible to detect. The kids used to mock him for the chalk dust always on the crotch of his black pants, which came from adjusting his balls when his back was to the glass, as if tween didn't track such transgressions. She still remembered the needs improvement he'd given her report on oysters, about how sand would irritate their stomachs, and out came the pearls. Was this place enough of an irritant to make her emit pearls? She imagined Zimon chastising Baxter about the mess, about leaving such personal things out in the open. Perhaps he'd been in search of a remedy before giving up and going home. Stop snooping. Benny wanted to tear open the cake box and devour whatever was inside. She opened the lid a crack for a peek. Green and yellow sprinkles gleamed. A whiff of yeasty cake, butter, cinnamon, vanilla. She lowered her nose to it. Lemon zest. That last scent shot happiness to her brain. How had she never considered grating lemon peel to enhance her mood? During the holidays, she'd grown accustomed to the endless stream of treats, the hourly highs. Now in the new year, Beatrice and Meline were cleansing themselves of sugar and other licit drugs. But Benny, leaving the cake on the credenza, found herself in the kitchen making a double espresso and dumping several packets of sugar in the little cup. As she stirred, she thought about her glass eye tower and her doll hand idea, the revolving door and the black hole in the rooftop with birds flying above it. thought about the empty maid offices downstairs, the two suicides, the news of more layoffs in the larger firms, including Laam and Watkins, the huge one downstairs, about how the night Gary said I love you, she'd thought of an empty Rockefeller Center as apocalyptic. She downed the espresso, harsh and sweet. A man in a blue jumpsuit and blue cap appeared in the kitchen with a dirty metal tank of something strapped to his back. "Hello, dear," he said. Wrinkles around his eyes and mouth swarmed into a gold tooththed smile. His eyes sparkled warmth like an all-knowing fairy godfather. A long metal wand snaked out of the tank. He lifted it and said with quiet pride, "Pest control. He knew he was here to save the day." "Oh," said Benny, her brain still halfway stuck in her dreamy apocalypse. "You'll have to talk to Beatrice over there," she said, pointing at the cubicle. "Already did," he said. "Just need you to clear out so I can spray this room." "Why did you find him so enigmatic?" His eyes and smile beamed from another time, another life. "All the food is well sealed." The narrow room was empty, but for office supplies and dirty coffee cups in the sink. She nodded, still feeling spacey. To his, "All right, then." She wandered out of the kitchen and settled at her desk. A spraying sound came through the closed door. "Liquid poison." "Quite reasonably priced," she heard Beatus say to Meline behind the reception wall. Baxter found them. Eyes unfocused. Benny imagined the whole building empty like the empty buildings of downtown Wilmington, only a 100 times bigger and more catastrophic. What if the whole building, echoing, abandoned, became an art squat? The light would be different, of course. Not the harsh white flickering she'd become accustomed to, but the sun fractured by the surrounding skyscrapers, the relentless curve of the lipstick building stacked ovals. What would the thing be abandoned and given over to Art? How many walls could be knocked down without the structure collapsing? And how many panthers could she set loose? And what would it look like from across the street? Watching them dart by the windows, sleek and black furred and hungry, knocking over potted plants, heaps of black soil spilling from cracked terracotta as they lunged at the throats of hedge fund managers. Perhaps in the basement mail room, a vast set of showbright light bulbs, the kind that lined vanity mirrors and green rooms, walls lined with them to light the dark, to make the viewer squint. There would be a level replicating the experience of a migraine, floating lights, a slight hint of green on the walls, a bare floor scattered with dust and grit, and an enormous rusted pipe slowly rotating through one side of the space, slowly expanding and contracting, creaking as it went. dedicated to office supply hazards. Stacks of papers, slippery lenolium, piles of glinting thumbtacks, errant staple guns shooting overhead, walls lined with rusting paper cutters, their blades yawning open, apt to crash down any minute in a pile of corroded metal, promising tetanus. Was this all derivative? Very well, then. It shall be derivative. One floor would be frozen. She'd set the thermostat impossibly low and spray the place with liquid nitrogen, icicles forming in ceiling grates. Was it the rings of hell she was constructing? Should there be a man in that ring eternally munching on his colleagueu's brain? The hot floor would contain vats of steaming black coffee, a bitter stink of burnt grounds and toner fumes. Wallpapering this floor would be documents from tobacco companies, dizzing red text printed on pink paper. Perhaps here we'd have moaning figures, neckties draped over their shoulders, parched mouths panting at the vats of coffee, unable to drink. Bright white walls and bright white floors would comprise the penultimate level. Feathers, glitter, and marshmallow fluff would drip down the walls with why not projections of hardcore pornography. Or the porn could be projected onto piles of white feathers scattered on the ground with a looping soundtrack of smacks and squishes. on the rooftop. The crown jewel, an enormous diamond encrusted Buddha, his belly cut open so you could enter it. Warm and red inside, a mix of ruby rhinestones and winking LEDs, and square packets of deep red liquid. The greatest surprise being the portal inside of the belly swallowing you up. never to return. An aura of wonder and triumph buzzed behind Benny's eyes. How in the hell would she ever get the chance to make such an installation? She wanted to go back into that world again and again. What else would she see? The exterminator emerged from the kitchen, closed the door behind him. "You all best clear out now," he told Beatrice. "I'm going to spray the rest of the office. Stuff's tasteless and odorless, so don't go thinking it's not there. It is, but it'll be safe again by Monday." Beatrice went around the office informing everyone they had to leave immediately. Meline reminded Beatrice of that summer 5 years ago when the whole city had lost power and one associate got left behind working on his laptop in the dark. Everyone had climbed down 34 flights of stairs together except this one who had to find his way all by himself. During the blackout of 2003, Benny and Gary had been at the terrible internship where they first became friends. The CD company, which was in Soho, sent everyone home. Benny and Gary strolled over the Brooklyn Bridge, giddy, a kind of summer snow day. Bars beckoned throngs of people into cool, dark rooms for free beer, eager to have it drunk before it spoiled. Neither of them wanted to return to their unairconditioned homes. So, they drank a few pints, then tipsy rescued melting ice cream sandwiches from a bodega, walking on together, all the way to Benny's parents' place. Benny had wanted to kiss him then, but she had her Banksy wannabe squatting in a barn outside Pikipsy, and he was seeing a girl in Monontlair, New Jersey. So, the mench went off by himself, head tilted into the night to his rented room in Sunset Park. The exterminator sprayed the copy room, the file room, and each emptied office. He came into the clerical area with a gentle, beused smile. This was what he did all day, Benny thought, pulling on her coat. Kill things. How is he so calm? So sweet. Pest control saves the day. Faintly in her mind's ear, a panther growled. Slouching home, Benny cultivated that triumphant buzz, tried to focus on her vision for the installation without getting hit by a bus. In the studio, she immediately parked herself at her work table and sketched a cross-section of the lipstick building. Matthew Barney's cremaster cycle came to mind. The goat man tap dancing in the white swirl of the Guggenheim. This could not be that. Not some high production film to watch it or remove. She wanted to walk inside of it, feel the dusty gray carpet under her feet, smell the panther droppings, the vats of burnt coffee and toner fluid. Let the summer sun beat down on her skin through the windows. Let the two cold floor give goosebumps, runny noses, hard nipples, shrunken balls. fingers could run through the piles and piles of white feathers, faintly sparkling on contact with the glitter and sticky with the marshmallow fluff. The porno floor should smell subtly of sex. Good. She thought this was good. The waistband of her pants chafed her belly, the button ready to pop off. She shot up from the seat and peeled off her work clothes, finding a red line circling her torso. In a sweatuit, she pllopped back down in her hard wooden seat. She wasn't actually all that great at drawing, one of the reasons she'd been attracted to Cornell's work at first, but she sketched and noted and sketched and sketched. Gary called at 7. Her phone was set to vibrate, so she hadn't noticed his three previous texts. But somehow now she noticed his call. The pulsing red glow of her flip phone. Whereas before that glow had conveyed Gary's affection, now it conveyed irritation. "I thought we were meeting in Union Square," he said. Benny slapped her forehead and blushed. "Jesus, I'm so sorry," she said. I'll get there as soon as I can. She threw on jeans and a sweater, tumbled down the stairs and out the door, and at a bodega on the way, plucked from a plastic tub the biggest, manliest sunflower. "I'm really sorry," she said again when they met across the street from the Virgin Mega Store. Steam puffed out of the hole in the public art piece next door. Maybe steam could be on her hot floor. vats of boiling water, tea kettles whistling alarm. She fixed her attention back on Gary, handing him the sunflower. Over his shoulder, the other monumental piece of public art flickered onward. A giant electronic clock. Time rushing away from her. "It's all right," he said, clearly still annoyed. She nestled her face into his shoulder. He took the flower and gently tapped her cheek with it. "Oop," he said. The gesture didn't feel right, and in her fragile state, she could tell it didn't feel right to him either, but they kissed somewhat chastely. Tucking her arm into his, she squeezed him to her side as they strolled, hips bumping. Time was rushing away, but it would also wash away this not right feeling, she thought. When everything came into balance, they settled on a movie, Secti New York, about an ambitious playwright who wins a MacArthur Genius Grant and attempts to put on a play by making a replica of New York City inside a warehouse. The playwright's first wife is a miniature portraitist who separates from him as her career explodes. Benny nodded on her fingernails throughout the movie. The idea of a city within a warehouse made her mind real. The translike strangess of the movie amplified the dreaminess she saw in her diaramas, as if her skull had cracked open and her creative juices had mixed with an invasive thickening agent. It would be difficult to scoop her ideas back in and solder shut the opening. They sat in the empty theater as the credits scrolled. Gary stood, held out his hand. "I need a glass of wine," she said. He helped her up. At the ebony bar of a tapas restaurant, they huddled close, nibbling on blanched asparagus, fried octopus, potato, and ham croettes. They shared a bottle of Malbeck. Gary insisted on paying, so Benny had ordered less than she wanted. But Gary ordered more and like a good grandmother, encouraged her to eat. "You'll never turn into a pink flamingo if you don't eat the shrimp," he said, pushing toward her a dish of them sizzling in garlic oil. "Gary, how did you know my heart of hearts desire to be a flamingo? I've known you for years and I've seen the bird books on your shelf. I know two and two is five." Benny took a big gulp of wine, pictured her teeth absorbing its purple tint. "Did you ever call that curator?" She winced. "Yeah, she never called back. Oh well, it was worth a shot." He put the last croadhead on her plate. Sullenly, she let its crisp shell collapse in her mouth. Salty potato puree burning her tongue. His reaction was underwhelming. So quick to accept defeat. "You'll try someone else," he offered. "Or call her back. Better yet, both." "The backpedaling was nice," she supposed. She nodded to plate him, excused herself. "Hey," he said when she returned from the lady's room. "You've inspired me." On a cocktail napkin, he drawn a cartoon female figure, hair faintly resembling Benny's mad scientist wispy curls frizzing out from a bun. The figure held in a Mickey Mouse hand, a cluster not unlike the Guju Bees of infection. "I'm your first follower, the school of Benny." Benny stood next to him on the high stool and slid her arm around his warm waist. Oh, dear acolyte. She pressed her cheek to his and squeezed. "Are those stink lines coming out of my head?" "Genius radio waves." He palmed the tips of her frizz and closed his eyes as if absorbing radiant energy.

Chapter 10.