Pussywillow Binder totally had an art gallery. How could she not?
Galerie Awesome occupied a two story building in the inventively named Harbor Heights region of Star Harbor. The bottom floor had been set up as a storefront. The upper floor had originally been office space. A balcony wrapped around the front of the block, allowing access to it and what were now mostly loft apartments.
Since splitting off from her sisters… or possibly at some point before that when no one had been looking… Willow had adapted her upper story into a front office with living space in the back, though the only difference between the two sections was that the latter had a larger bed and the former, taking up the eastward-facing front of the floor, had a spectacularly sunny view in the morning.
Willow had a black velvet-upholstered chaise longue set up parallel to the big glass window and when the sun came up to a sufficient brightness to disturb her rest elsewhere in the apartment, she ambled over to it so the heat of the sun would get her sufficiently drowsy to sleep in spite of the light of it. Her cat eye-shaped sunglasses helped there, too.
Sometimes she remembered to put on something else before going to sun herself in the window. Usually it was her cat ear headband.
What did her hipster neighbors think of her, as they all had to walk past her building to get to their lofts?
She didn’t know and she didn’t care.
She was Willow, and she was awesome.
When she was sufficiently rested to face the burden of being so incredibly awesome in such a dull and dreary world, Willow liked to begin her day by watching the people on the other side of the street as they hurried about their sad little business. She sometimes watched the birds flying around and landing on the trees and roofs on the other side of the street.
They avoided her side.
“Lady eating something,” Willow said to herself, catching sight of a woman with her head wrapped up in a scarf hurrying down the sidewalk. She perked up, rolling over more onto her side and lifting herself up, craning her neck for a better view. “What’s she eating? Why’s she got food? What is that? Grapes? Is that grapes? Why does she get grapes?” She threw back her head and yelled, in a very yowly, whiny voice, “Grapes!”
“You don’t like grapes!” her assistant shouted from the direction of the spiral stairs connecting her work and living space to the gallery that had been her passion for longer than she bothered to remember.
“I want grapes!” she yelled back.
“Why do you want grapes?”
Willow scowled at the question, but when she scanned the street outside, she saw no trace of anything to suggest that grapes were worth eating.
“Who wants grapes?” Willow murmured to herself, then settled back down.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” her assistant said as she mounted the stairs. “I hope you’re decent.”
“I’m way better than decent,” Willow said. “I’m…”
“…awesome,” Echo said as she came up through the circular hole. She tossed a dark beaded throw blanket in Willow’s direction as she approached. It managed to drape her form with uncanny precision. “Papers called.”
“Which ones?”
“All of them,” Echo said. “I hesitate to ask, but at some point you’re going to end this whole not-talking-to-the-media thing and cash in the whole pile of ‘mystique’ chips you’ve been building up, preferably before they all realize you’re just weird and antisocial?”
“I’m not just weird and antisocial,” Willow said. “I’m also…”
“Yes, I know,” Echo said. She sighed. “You know, most people would be happy to get the kind of coverage you could be getting.”
“I’m a retired musical genius with a former freakshow star working for me,” Willow said.
“Reality show star,” Echo said.
“They’ll turn up at the opening whether I talk to them or not,” Willow said. “So there’s no reason for me to talk to them. I don’t do anything without a good reason.”
“So when you upended that ice bucket in the middle of the floor yesterday…?”
“I had my reasons.”
“You’re the boss, boss,” Echo said. “You also have three messages from a ‘Ray’, who says to call him.”
“What? No! I’m not calling him, he can call me,” Willow said.
“He has been. Do you want me to tell him a particular time you’ll be available?”
“Let’s not go crazy,” Willow said.
“So basically, you’re not talking to anyone who isn’t me,” Echo said.
“Who said I’m talking to you? I could be talking to myself in ways that just coincidentally sound as though I’m talking to you. Don’t be so self-centered. It’s not all about you. In fact, it’s mostly about me.”
Echo sighed and headed back down the stairs.
“If I ever absorb time traveling powers from somebody,” she said, “I’m going back in time and finishing my MBA instead of going on that stupid show.”
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