Lizzie likes to go over to Building 109 late on Fridays. She has her father’s keycard, which, to be honest, he wouldn’t notice was missing even if he noticed it. He’d just convince himself that it had basically always been lost, that he’d never actually had access to the place where he teaches. This fatalism would earn him a drink, which is, of course, why he’d engage in it in the first place.

Lizzie swipes herself in after hours and lounges. She pages through any remaining packets, hunts for inspiration and gossip. She sprawls on the floor in the front room and glares up at that hideous painting, with its fart browns and fart greens. The land smiles obediently as two dildos in suits commend each other on some precious shit related to new civilization.

Someday, Lizzie will create her own foundational masterpiece. Until that time, she needs to scheme. And that’s what she’s working on right now, sitting here in this evacuated institution. If she’s feeling particularly bitchy, she’ll go around and pee in a few of the office plants, though so far they seem immortal or possibly plastic.

More recently, prowling the premises, specifically the mailbox area, Lizzie came across a copy of Playboy. It was shoved into some second-year dude’s slot, presumably by some other overwhelmingly gifted and subtle second-year, and Lizzie fished it out, thinking it might make an accessory for a genius prank. On the cover were a blonde and a brunette, crotch deep in swirling greenish waters, their undergarments fashioned from cargo-shorts scraps and athletic mesh. Both appeared to have been shaved and starved within an inch of their lives, though they still had the hair on their heads plus breast fat. They were former Survivor contestants and, as the cover maintained, with vaguely genocidal wit, “Their Clothes Got Voted Off!” Also available: “CASUAL SEX 2003,” “COP TEASE,” “THE AMAZING TOBEY MAGUIRE.” Lizzie wasn’t that interested in the reality stars, and most of the interior was stale and heavy on the lip liner. Carnie Wilson made a cameo, post weight loss, in a dour corset.

Everything here is like looking into a ghost’s flaccid face, Lizzie thought, flipping to the centerfold. This model, with apple tits and tiny features, did not do much for Lizzie, except that there was one shot where all her crotch was visible, demurely shut like a walnut, with a decorative sprig of fur. Lizzie didn’t know why, but it moved her, this mound.

She ripped out the page and rammed the artifact back into so-and-so’s cubby, rumpling a Xerox. Let them wonder, Lizzie thought.

She went home, thinking of Loudermilk’s no-doubt ropy arms, gilded with an appropriate amount of hair.