Sequestered in a motel room, Marie designed hovels and enclosed park
shelters. Nobody returned her phone calls. Her friends decided against a
birthday party. Frankly, the hovels were unimpressive, even for hovels.
	Once she found a studio downtown and moved in, she saw coffeeshops,
more different kinds than her city needed, but fine cafes nonetheless. Res-
ponse on the net was mixed: "Frankly," wrote someone on urbarch-l, "I see no
coherent reason to place a telephone pole indoors." One plan got adapted for
the vacant lot near her old motel.
	Marie moved to the attic of a co-op. She landed the contract for a
high-rise she thought might be out of her league. It went up on schedule,
but tenants saw Mickey Mouse walking the halls at noon, his severed head
under one arm and frankly, it freaked them the fuck out. She got a corner
office for cheap and borrowed her dad's pick-up to cart her desk from
attic to tower. He told her to keep the hammer from the tool kit in case
Mickey tried to start something.
	From an eagle's nest overlooking the bus station Marie turned out
a string of two-family homes. One included raceways in the ceiling for
Alvin and the Chipmunks to store the bodies of their fallen enemies, if
need be, but they never showed up. Her clients were happy, though frankly,
they didn't appreciate all the subtleties.
	Marie felt a little selfish taking up a whole house alone, but she
made her peace with the idea by going back to the co-op for Monday dinners.
Her former housemates were surprised to hear that any one person could be
hired to design entire towns, but Marie assured them her reputation made
it possible. Clark Gable stared balefully from the window of every building
as it was opened, but he left shortly after the residents arrived.
	Her government called her up one day and soon she was flying first-
class to Mars. The crew waved her forward to be the first one out; as she
put her hand to the door a burst of adrenaline hit her. She wasn't thinking
about the coming weeks of setting up camp; she smiled at the lifeless land-
scape because she had no doubt that she could fill it.

written for Janet H. on Prospect Hill 9/23/01

Big technical mistake in sentence #1: 'designed' and 'enclosed' appear to be parallel on first reading, which they shouldn't have been. I kept my cool for the rest, aside from some misguided use of semicolons at the end. External features of this story's composition include the discovery that my platen won't advance correctly unless it's level, the discovery that my ribbon was chewed up near the end, and the discovery that heavy things cut off circulation to your legs when you hold them in your lap for too long.

I've been wanting to prove to myself that I can come up with endings which aren't ominous. There you have it. One might wonder whether a real frog princess would be living alone in para 5, though.

- everything is by Aaron Mandel; please ask first if you're about to steal something -

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