Ula Frost had a cult following for a reason: her portraits—at least those painted in the last twenty-two years—were said to unlock alternate versions of their subjects from parallel universes, bringing them, somehow, into this world, the one that Marchand inhabited. Marchand wondered fleetingly about what alternate versions of himself might exist. A version of himself who’d never watched his own mother die, a version who never got shot while buying a Dr Pepper and a banana at a bodega that was being held up. A version of himself who’d studied harder, gotten better grades or advantages from
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