THE BASIC STRUCTURE OF THE ARTISTS’ COLONY, I CAME TO understand, involved providing a group of people working with a variety of mediums private studio space during the day and then elaborate dinners together each night. You were not required to attend the dinners, should you still be entrenched in your work by eight o’clock, but they were always available.

Lonnie had failed to inform me of this dinner-party aspect of the trip and I hadn’t brought anything to wear other than jeans, so she loaned me a dress that first night, one of her simple cotton affairs. “It’s not going to fit,” I told her, even though the dress I’d worn the night Carlow came over had been all right. “I’m too flat.”

Lonnie didn’t even respond, she just shooed me into her bedroom to change, shaking her head. In fact, the dress suited me. I could tell as soon as I slid it over my head. I looked at myself in the mirror in her bedroom. The bust wasn’t form fitted so our difference in size was irrelevant. The fabric lay in such a way as to cover my lack of breasts. They really could’ve been any size at all under there. Lonnie, as if sensing I was done changing, burst through the door. “Shoes,” she said. “We wear the same size shoes, right?”

I hadn’t realized it, but we did. Of course, she would have dainty feet, despite being taller than me. She handed me a pair of navy heels and I slipped them on. I hardly ever wore heels, but these were comfortable, cradling my feet so perfectly that I didn’t feel off-balance.

“There,” Lonnie said simply, pronouncing me ready. I looked at her and found the heels had made up our difference in height. I was looking her directly in the eye. The feeling was off-putting.

“This is going to be boring,” she said.

She suppressed a grin, her lips smashed together. “Do you want to play a little game?” she said. “Between us?”

“What are you thinking?”

“Let’s tell them you’re me. And I’m you. They’ve probably never seen a photo of me—it wasn’t part of the application.”

“Why?”

“Just to fuck with them.” Every time Lonnie cursed it was surprising. Explicit words still came out of her mouth a little unnaturally, with too much satisfaction, as if she were breaking a rule. “We can make up stuff about the book you’re writing. I really hate talking about my work, actually.”

“You hate talking about your writing?”

“Every time you say what the story is about people just say, ‘Mmm, oh.’” She put a blank look on her face, in demonstration. “Even other writers. It makes me want to say, ‘It’s good, I swear!’”