Chapter 1: The Artist's Lament
The key turned in the lock with a sound like grinding bones, and then the door flew open, swallowing a sunbeam whole. Maryshka stood in the frame, cheeks flushed, shoulder-length hair haloed by the afternoon light. She was practically vibrating.
“You will not believe,” she announced, dropping her bag onto a pile of paint-splattered drop cloths, “what just tried to murder me in the park.”
Enya didn’t look up from the blank, primed canvas on her easel. It was the third one this week. “A existential dread wearing a trench coat?”
“A swan.” Maryshka strode across the wide-plank floor, her boots echoing in the high-ceilinged space. She snatched the half-empty glass of water from Enya’s taboret and drank it in one go. “A demon swan. I was eating a croissant, minding my own business, enjoying the pathetic spectacle of men trying to play football. And this… this feathered psychopath comes honking out of the pond like a winged missile. I had to run. I haven’t run since Year 11 PE. It chased me onto the bridge. People were laughing.”
A faint, almost imperceptible curve touched Enya’s lips. She finally turned from the easel, taking in her friend. Maryshka shone in the dusty studio air, a creature of motion and chatter in a room frozen in time. Canvases leaned against the white walls like tombstones—vibrant landscapes gone muddy, a portrait of a woman with only one eerily complete eye, abstract swirls that dissolved into indecipherable grays. In the far corner, catching the best of the light from the high, arched window, was a self-portrait from another life. Enya remembered the feeling of mixing those golds and carmines, the certainty of each stroke. Now it just looked like a photograph of a stranger.
“It probably thought your croissant was its ugly cygnet,” Enya said, her voice softer than the room.
“It was a butter croissant! It had no offspring-related illusions.” Maryshka was already rummaging through Enya’s small kitchenette, emerging with two glasses and a bottle of Merlot she’d clearly brought in her bag. The pop of the cork was obscenely loud. She filled the glasses to the brim. “Here. Drink. You look like you’ve been communing with that canvas all day and it told you a very sad secret.”
Enya accepted the glass. The wine was cheap, fruity, and perfect. She took a long swallow, feeling it warm a path down her throat. Maryshka sprawled on the sagging velvet sofa, kicking off her boots.
“So,” Maryshka said, eyes scanning the studio, “what’s the sad secret?”
For an hour, they just drank. Maryshka talked—about the swan, about her new manager who used inspirational quotes unironically, about a man on the tube who’d been reading a book on urban beekeeping and had pollen on his collar. Her stories were bright, little sparks against the overwhelming gray of Enya’s stagnation. The first bottle emptied into a comfortable silence.
Enya got up to open the second. The room tipped slightly. She poured, the glug of the wine sounding like a countdown.
“I’m broke, Mary.”
The words fell into the quiet. They weren’t dramatic. They were just heavy.
Maryshka set her glass down. “Okay.”
“No, I mean… I have nothing. The last painting I sold was the one of Mrs. Henderson’s schnauzer. Seventeen months ago.” Enya stared into the deep red liquid. “My savings are a memory. I’ve been bleeding the emergency fund dry for rent. For this.” She gestured weakly at the space, the light, the tomb of her ambition. “Last Tuesday I had to call my dad and ask for three hundred pounds. I told him it was for a course. He transferred it in five minutes, no questions.”
“Enya…”
“He was so happy I was ‘furthering my education’. I could hear it in his voice. He thinks I’ve come to my senses, that I’m pre-law again. My mother asked if I needed a new blazer for lectures.”
The facts stacked up, one after another, each a small stone in the wall she’d built around herself. She hadn’t told anyone. Saying it aloud made it real, and terrible.
Maryshka shifted forward, her face softening. “It’s a block. Everyone gets them. It’ll pass. You’re too talented for it not to.”
“Will it?” Enya’s voice cracked. “What if this is it? What if the well is just… dry? And I’ve been sitting here for over a year, waiting for a miracle, while my life empties out. I’m a functionless object. At least a law degree is a tool. A blunt, ugly tool you can use to pry open a door.”
“You don’t want to be a lawyer. You’d hate every second of it.”
“I hate every second of this!” The outburst echoed. A dust mote spiraled down from a ceiling beam. Enya wrapped her arms around herself. “At least hating something pays. At least it’s a defined path. This is just a slow rot. I’m going to call him on Sunday. I’m going to say yes. I’m going to let them enroll me.”
Maryshka studied her for a long moment, her pragmatic mind clearly whirring. She took a deliberate sip of wine. “When was the last time you got laid?”
Enya blinked. “What?”
“Simple question. Timeline. When?”
“That is not relevant.”
“Humor my irrelevant curiosity.”
Enya sighed, defeated. “After Leo. So. A year and a half ago.”
Maryshka’s eyebrows shot up. She actually coughed on her wine. “A year and a half? Are you serious? I thought you were just being selectively celibate, not conducting a archeological dig into your own libido.”
“I haven’t been interested. Men are…” Enya waved a hand, searching for the word. “They’re either exhausting or bland. It’s not worth the energy.”
Maryshka set her glass down with a definitive click. “That,” she said, pointing a finger, “is the reason. Right there.”
“The reason for my creative block is a lack of casual sex?”
“Yes! Or not even casual. Just… contact. Friction. Sex is directly important for art! It’s a circuit. You’re disconnected. You’re all brain and no blood. No pulse. You need to be… shaken. Jolted. Reminded you have a body that isn’t just a vessel for anxiety and failed lines.”
Enya dismissed the idea with a weary shake of her head. “That’s reductive. And ridiculous. I’ll call Dad on Sunday.”
“Fine,” Maryshka said, a mischievous gleam lighting in her eyes. She leaned forward, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial tone. “But if you’re going to surrender, do it properly. One last stand for the cause. This Friday, before you make the call, you come with me. There’s a summer rooftop party. Indie-rock, fairy lights, cheap gin. We go. We drink their gin. You talk to a man. Just one. You let him buy you a drink. You see if you can feel a single spark of anything. If it’s all ash, then Monday morning you call your dad, and I will personally help you shop for hideous pantsuits. But you have to try the experiment.”
“A party? Mary, no. I’m not looking for a spark. I’m looking to stop being a burden.”
“This is me helping you stop. My diagnosis is physical and emotional stagnation. My prescription is loud music and questionable choices. One night. What do you have to lose?”
Enya looked around the studio. At the portrait of her former self, glowing in the dying light. At the blank canvas, waiting for a confession it would never get. She had nothing to lose. That was the whole, crushing point.
She said nothing. She just took another long drink of wine, the silence hanging between them, thick with the unspoken promise of a Sunday deadline.
She just took another long drink of wine, the silence hanging between them, thick with the unspoken promise of a Sunday deadline.
Then Maryshka exhaled, a theatrical deflation. “Fine. Fine. Let’s talk about something that isn’t your impending corporate doom. Jessica from the coffee shop is pregnant.”
“Really?”
“Mm. By that bass player with the tragic beard. She says it was planned. I call it a biological hostage situation.”
They talked like that for an hour, the conversation meandering like smoke. They dissected mutual friends—who was dating, who was ghosting, who had inexplicably moved to Devon to raise alpacas. They complained about the unseasonable heat, the way the city smelled of hot pavement and wasted air conditioning. They talked about old times, their first shared flat with the perpetually leaking shower, the disastrous painting class where Enya had accidentally glued Maryshka’s hair to a collage.
The second bottle was emptied, then a third was opened. The light through the high window softened from gold to amber, then to a deep, bruised violet. Dust motes surrendered to the gloom. Empty glasses gathered on the floor like transparent mushrooms.
By the time the third bottle was half-gone, the world had taken on a soft, fuzzy focus. The weight in Enya’s chest had dulled, replaced by a warm, floating numbness. She was slumped into the sofa, one arm flung over her eyes.
“So,” Maryshka said, her voice bright and pinpoint-sharp in the quiet. “The party.”
Enya groaned, but it was a theatrical sound, lacking its earlier edge. “You’re a dog with a very specific, very scandalous bone.”
“I’m a friend with a very specific, very necessary prescription. One night. Roof. Stars. Gin. Noise. It’ll wash over you. It might even wake something up.”
“It’ll give me a headache,” Enya mumbled, but she was smiling behind her arm. The protest was a habit, a worn-out script. The genuine fear was buried under layers of Merlot and nostalgia. She felt loose, philosophically adrift. What was one more stupid night before the inevitable call?
“You’re already going to have a headache. This way you’ll have earned it.” Maryshka’s optimism was a tangible force, sunny and relentless. “Come on. For me. So I can tell people I didn’t just watch my best friend turn into a corporate pod person without a fight.”
Enya moved her arm, looking at Maryshka’s eager, slightly blurred face. The fight was gone, evaporated into the wine-dark air. All that was left was a weary, curious resignation.
“Ok-ok,” Enya said, the words slurring just a little. She laughed, a short, surprised burst of sound. “I’ll go to your party. And I’ll have the sex of my life with a guy. There. Happy?”
Maryshka’s eyes glittered with triumph and mischief. “Three guys.”
“What?”
“Three guys. Three intersections with three guys. At the very least.”
Enya burst into laughter, rolling onto her side, the sofa springs creaking in protest. “What? It was just one guy and only a drink! A theoretical drink!”
They both laughed, the sound rich and unhinged in the cavernous studio. Maryshka leaned forward, unwavering. “You should have agreed sooner. Now it’s three. The price of hesitation.”
Enya waved a dismissive hand, still giggling. “No. Impossible. Ridiculous.” But her objection was paper-thin, a performance. The absurdity of the number was its own kind of shield.
“You obviously need to hook up with someone younger,” Maryshka pressed, her tone matter-of-fact. “Some beautiful, confused boy. You’ll show him what life is and ride him cowgirl style until he forgets his own name.”
“Maryshka!” Enya wheezed, tears of mirth at the corners of her eyes. She was fighting mostly for the show of it now, the last bastion of her pride. So she invented a condition, plucked from the air because it was impossible. “Okay! Fine. But in his car. And only if he has a convertible. A nice convertible. Otherwise the deal is off.”
The specification was so stupid, so random, that they both descended into another wave of helpless laughter. Maryshka poured more wine, splashing some onto the floorboards.
“Deal,” Maryshka said, clinking her glass against Enya’s. Her smile was wide, victorious, and full of affection. “A convertible. It’s written in the stars.”
It’s written in the stars.”
Their laughter subsided into hiccups and slow, wine-heavy breaths. The violet light was gone, replaced by the deep blue of true dusk. A single streetlamp outside the arched window began to hum, casting a long, skeletal shadow of the easel across the floor.
After a pause, Maryshka continued, her voice lower now, more speculative. “But also there should be an older guy. For comparison.”
Enya tilted her head back against the sofa, staring at the water stain on the ceiling that sometimes looked like a continent. “Agreed. But he needs to be exactly twice my age. For scientific purposes.”
Maryshka burst into laughter again, a short, sharp sound. “Okay, but then you’ll seduce him right there on a rooftop—some toilet, staff room, or just a dark corner.”
Enya laughed in protest. “Not fair!” But she was already laughing, the absurdity a hot wire in her chest. “Okay, but he’ll take me from behind so he won’t see my face blushing from shame!”
Maryshka considered that for a second, her head tilted. “Deal. But it will be an unprotected sex and you’ll encourage him to use his hands on your body actively. And not hold back.”
The laughter died in Enya’s throat. The room seemed to still. She became serious for a second, the fantasy hardening into something that felt less like a joke and more like a plan. A final, defiant act. “I wouldn’t want it any other way in my last rodeo as an artist.”
“Possibly last,” Maryshka corrected softly, but the correction barely landed.
They discussed some technical things then, their voices detached, analytical. How open and easily removable should be Enya’s clothes? A wrap dress, maybe. Or a top that tied at the back. Nothing with complicated clasps. They discussed what could possibly that man do with Enya’s body—the weight of an older man’s hands, different from a boy’s, the potential for roughness that wasn’t cruelty but certainty, the way experience might map a territory a younger man would just rush across. It was graphic, vulgar, and entirely theoretical, but talking about her own body as a subject, as a problem to be solved or a canvas to be marked, felt bizarrely familiar. It was a perverse echo of her work.
The conversation drifted, then stalled. The third bottle was empty. The city sounds filtered in—the distant wail of a siren, the lazy rumble of a night bus.
The city sounds filtered in—the distant wail of a siren, the lazy rumble of a night bus. The studio was now a cave of shadows, the streetlamp’s glow cutting the room into stark planes of light and dark. The air smelled of turpentine, dust, and the souring end of red wine.
Maryshka swirled the dregs in her glass, her eyes gleaming in the half-light. She had that look, the one that usually preceded an idea that was equal parts brilliant and disastrous.
“And finally,” Maryshka said with a triumph that sliced through the sluggish air, “there should be a loser. A complete, utterly helpless loser with no chances for anything. You’ll give him a blowjob to remember. Topless. And he will come on your breasts.”
Enya snorted, the sound wet and wine-heavy. She protested just for show, a wide, loose smile on her face. “Oh, c’mon!” The objection was pure reflex. Then she thought for a second, the gears turning slowly in the warm syrup of her mind. It was all a fictional game, a script for a movie she’d never star in. “Okay, but only if he will be in company of two other losers.”
Maryshka considered, tilting her head. “A trio of losers? Hard to catch. But agreed. Though, if we will find those, you will let his friends watch.”
The premise was so ludicrous, so depraved and silly, that it felt entirely safe. It was a cartoon. A dirty joke scrawled on a bathroom wall. Enya, now fully under the alcohol and under the spell of Maryshka’s playful darkness, leaned forward, her voice a conspiratorial stage whisper. “Deal. And if they really are total losers, I might even suck them too. You know, as charity.”
They both burst into long, helpless laughter, the kind that strained muscles and left them gasping for air. It was too much, too specific, too grimly funny.
“Well,” Maryshka adds, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye, her breath hitching. “If it’s charity, I might even join you.” She winks, a sharp, bright gesture in the gloom.
The laughter died, leaving behind a ringing silence that felt different. It wasn’t empty anymore. It was charged, like the space between lightning and thunder. The fantasy had weight now, and shape. It had rules. A convertible, an older man in a dark corner, a trio of pathetic voyeurs. It was a grotesque syllabus for a course in her own degradation.
Enya’s smile faded, leaving a strange, hollow ache in her cheeks. She looked past Maryshka, towards her unfinished self-portrait. The painted Enya’s eyes seemed darker now, accusatory, or maybe just deeply sad. Is this what’s left? they seemed to ask. Plotting cheap transgression because you can’t create anything true?
A cold knot formed in her stomach, distinct from the wine.
“I think I’m going to be sick,” Enya mumbled, not entirely referring to the alcohol.
“You’re not,” Maryshka said, her pragmatic self returning. She stood up, a little unsteady, and began gathering the bottles. “You’re just sobering up to the idea. Which is good. It means part of you is already there.”
“Part of me is horrified.”
“That’s the same part.” Maryshka carried the bottles to the recycling with a clatter. “The part that’s been sitting silent in this museum of failure for a year. It needs to be horrified. It needs to feel something.”
Enya pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. Colored sparks bloomed in the darkness. “This is a terrible plan.”
“It’s a spectacular plan. It has benchmarks. It’s goal-oriented.” Maryshka wandered over to the blank canvas on the easel. She traced a finger through the fine layer of studio dust on its surface, drawing a sad smiley face. “Friday. Eight o’clock. I’ll pick you up. Wear the black wrap dress. The one that looks like you might be a war correspondent or a mistress.”
“I’m not going to do any of those things,” Enya said, but the words had no force. They were the last automatic protest of a defeated general.
They were the last automatic protest of a defeated general.
Silence pooled in the studio, thick and tasting of dust and tannins. The streetlamp’s glare through the window cut a harsh yellow wedge across the floorboards, stopping just short of Enya’s feet. She felt dissected by it. On one side, the warm, messy gloom of her failure. On the other, a stark, artificial light exposing nothing.
Maryshka didn’t move from the easel. Her finger was still resting near the dusty smiley face. She turned her head, and her profile was sharp against the darkening window. The playfulness was gone, sanded down to something harder, more essential.
“You will,” Maryshka said with a confident push in her voice that seemed to physically cross the room. “You have to. We need to bring that artist in you back to life.”
She turned fully then, leaning her hip against the drafting table. She counted off on her fingers, each point a nail in the coffin of Enya’s resistance. “Friday. Eight. The black dress. The convertible boy. The older man in the dark corner—twice your age, hands, no holding back. The trio of losers. The… charity work.” She didn’t smile. She was just reciting the terms. “All of it. Not a theoretical checklist. A real one.”
Enya looked at her own hands, pale in the shadows. They were clean. Too clean for a painter’s hands. She felt a surge of something bitter and cold in her throat. It wasn’t just about sex. It was about turning her body into a deliberate, chaotic event. A performance where she was both the artist and the ruined canvas. A final, violent sketch before surrendering the pencil for good.
She let out a long, tired breath, all the fight leaking out of her.
“Okay,” Enya replied, the word hollow. “I’ll go through with that. But only if all conditions will be in place.” She looked up, meeting Maryshka’s gaze. Her eyes felt scorched dry. “And pray it will help me.”
“It will,” Maryshka replied, her voice firm. Then, softer, almost to herself, she added, “It has to.”
The resolution hung between them, a fragile, ridiculous pact. Maryshka pushed off the table and pulled her phone from her pocket, the screen’s blue light washing over her face. Her thumbs tapped rapidly.
“Cab’s five minutes away,” she announced. She scooped up her bag and shrugged into her jacket. She paused at the door, a silhouette against the dim hallway light. “See you on Friday.” It wasn’t a goodbye. It was a confirmation of a rendezvous point before a jump.
Then she was gone. The sound of her boots on the stairs faded, replaced by the familiar, vast quiet of the studio.
Enya didn’t move for a long time. The quiet was different now. It had a new shape, a future-tense buzz at its edges. Friday. Conditions. A convertible. The words circled in her head, absurd and terrifying.
She stood, her legs stiff, and walked to the easel. She erased Maryshka’s dusty smiley face with a swipe of her palm. She stared at the blank, off-white surface. For over a year, it had been a wall. An end.
Now, perversely, it felt like a beginning. The worst kind. A door opening onto a room where she had agreed, in detailed, graphic terms, to dismantle herself.
She walked to the arched window and looked down at the street. A yellow cab idled, then pulled away, carrying Maryshka and her certainty off into the night. Enya placed her forehead against the cool glass. Her own reflection ghosted over the city lights—a pale, blurred smudge of a woman in a tomb of her own making.
Friday was three days away.
The canvas behind her waited, empty. For the first time in months, so did she.