I know Ern was starting to think of you as the better woman, but you’re not; you’re just another fucked-up brat. Maybe you should have come along and fucked each other silly, if that’s what it led to. That’s what the people thought you were doing anyhow. Or maybe we could have had one of those barroom brawls, like you see in those Old West movies, speaking of your cowgirls. I can picture us rolling around on somebody’s floor, and Ern just sitting there and smiling. Give him some relief, huh? Maybe I should have gone after you. So how do you like your mushrooms?

But for him not to see who you really were! The reason you wouldn’t believe what that “razor blade” woman did is because you’re afraid of what you could be capable of your own funky self. (I know who mailed me that glass bird!)

Another thing. I went to see one of our Gillette’s new exhibitions. I didn’t go the day they said she’d show up, didn’t want to surprise or scare her. Didn’t you write somewhere where they were the same thing: surprise and fear? Anyway, someone must’ve told her I was there, because she sent me this postcard asking me to come spend some time with her. Can you believe that? She’s got to know I know. She’s off to Morocco, Amsterdam, Paris and wonders if I’d like to come along. Maybe traveling alone scares her. Can you picture me a part of her entourage? But anyway, as I was looking at her paintings I got to thinking: She just might be the best of our generation. She just might be. But then, considering our generation . . . Nothing to kill for, huh?

From one weird bitch to another

Yours truly,
Catherine Peacock Shuger

Epilogue

I slept with my back to Lantis. At first we slept with our backs to each other. Then he turned toward me and put his hand on my shoulder.

“What kind of woman are you?” he asked softly.

“I don’t know what kind,” I said.

“Don’t give me that bullshit about going to find yourself.”

“I won’t give you that bullshit,” I said. Anyway, I already had myself. Didn’t we all already have ourselves, for better or worse?

Pressure on my shoulder made me turn to face him.

“Manda-Panda?” he asked.

“What?”

“Can’t we do better than this? Can’t we do better than this?”

I said nothing.

“I never imagined this,” he said.

If I’d written the scene, my next line might have been him saying he should have kept his trap shut, and her saying that he was too honest a man for that, and—

“I never imagined it either,” she said instead.

SCRAP THIS AND START OVER

Prologue

When the young man in the café looked up, he smiled at me. I just saw him briefly from the patio, but he was the most handsome young man I’ve ever seen. Dark black eyes, brown skin, black hair. Features as if they were chiseled, supernatural.