She lives near the top floor of the tall high-rise, in an apartment her
friend once described derisively as "post-pubescent and pre-informed",
words she now has tattooed in Victorian script above her left shoulder
blade. The homeless man who watches her come and go from the post of
his eternal vigil beside the mail drop box thinks of her as Asian,
though she is half Puerto Rican and half American mixto. Her window
high above the street is always open, symbolizing the endless
opportunity funded for her by her wealthy parents, with whom she never
speaks. "I am an artist," she lies, when people ask her what she does.
Sometimes she throws pieces of bread out through the open window at the
unsuspecting world below, but this wouldn't impress anyone as much as a
fantasy of art might. Her only art is standing naked with her eyes
closed and her arms upraised in front of the blast of harsh, angry
guitar raging from her expensive music system, art her neighbors all
hate because they only get to hear it, not see it. The music rouses
something less dead in her soul, something almost alive, almost vital.
It gives her the scraps of resolve she needs to throw on something
revealing and head out past the homeless man to abuse herself around
town, to let others have a go at her, to crawl home to the elevator
that loves her. For her life is an apartment in an empty world, where
she's not an artist, not even Asian. Death is like bread falling naked
to the ravenous masses below, guitar music fading away far above.
