Page 8 of There Are No Saints

Anger bubbles up inside of me, thick and hot.

Unlike Shaw, I don’t allow my emotions to shape my words. I carefully consider what will enrage him most.

Looking Alastor right in the eyes, I say, “No one will ever talk about your work the way they talk about mine. It must eat you up inside every day, waking up to your own mediocrity. You will never be great. Do you want to know why?”

He’s fixed in place, the sneer frozen on his lips.

“It’s because you lack discipline,” I tell him.

Now his fury washes over him, his fists clenched and trembling at his sides, his thick shoulders shaking.

“You’re no different than me,” he hisses. “You’re no better.”

“I am better,” I say. “Because whatever I do, I’m always in control.”

I walk away from him then, so those words can echo and echo in the emptiness of his head.

* * *

2

Mara Eldritch

Iget up at an ungodly hour so I can shower before all the hot water is gone.

I share a moldering Victorian row house with eight other artists. The house was hacked into flats by someone with no respect for building codes and very little understanding of basic geometry. Thin plywood walls divide the rooms into triangles and trapezoids with no consideration for how a rectangular bed is supposed to fit in the space. The slanting, rotted floors and sagging ceilings add to the madhouse effect.

I occupy the tiny attic space at the very top of the house—sweltering hot in summer, and frigid in winter. Still, it’s a coveted perch because it provides access to a small private balcony. I like to drag my mattress out on cool nights to sleep under the stars. That’s the closest I’ve ever come to camping.

My whole life has been spent in this city, often in worse houses than this.

I’ve never known anything but fog and ocean breeze, and streets that roll up and down in dizzying hills that make your calves burn and your body lean like a tree in wind.

The pipes shudder as I turn on the shower, crammed into a space the size of a phone booth. The water that sputters out is gray at first, then relatively clear. Lukewarm, but that’s better than ice cold.

I shower quickly because I can already hear doors creaking and slamming as several other roommates roll out of bed. Frank’s coffee is burning in the downstairs kitchen. Smells like his toast might be, too.

Artists are not known for rising early, but none of us are successful enough to avoid the shackles of a side job. I’ve got three.

This morning I’m working a brunch shift, and later I’ll be taking four unruly canines for a run in the park.

I slam my hip against the bathroom door to force it open again, the steam-swollen wood jammed into the frame. I almost collide with Joanna, who’s heading downstairs in an oversized t-shirt, nothing underneath.

“Mara,” she says, her face already screwing up in apology. “I can’t sublet my studio to you anymore—my residency at La Maison is over.”

“Starting when?” I ask, panic boiling in my guts.

“Next week.” She grimaces.

“Alright,” I say. “Thanks for letting me know.”

It is not alright. Not even fucking close to alright.

Studio space is impossible to acquire at the moment. Studio after studio has closed as the rent in San Francisco skyrockets.

Growing up, this was an artists’ city. Clarion Alley, the Mission School, and wild, chaotic underground art burgeoned everywhere you looked.

My mother wasn’t an artist per se, but she liked to fuck a lot of them. We crashed on couches and in little flats above steamy restaurants in Chinatown. Every day I saw grandiose murals being painted, pop-up installations and performance art breaking out on the street.

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