Immaculate Conception

by Ling Ling Huang

This was the first lesson Mathilde taught me: artists create works of art; geniuses curate an emotional response.

Only once did the insidious murmurs worry me. It was said that between the two of us, Mathilde was the genius, but I was the beautiful one…because when two women are together, it’s a social mandate that one is more beautiful.

Is there anyone who knows a young woman’s body better than her closest friends? By way of love or comparison or some combination of the two?

Events like these remind me of money’s total power to control and leech the substance out of everything.

Everyone in the world had become, in a sense, an artist, and thus no one was.

What an unbelievable scam it is to get everything you’ve been told to want.

Frances comes upstairs to collect Mathilde, and I go with her. We’re both still in our monogrammed pajamas, one of Monika’s obsessions. Frances comes upstairs to collect Mathilde, and I go with her.