(Sent version) Dear Sheila,

Don't you dare dream that you've fired me from a stupid dead-end job with dead flowers! You didn't fire me. I QUIT!

Bryn

(Deleted version) Dear Karen,

This is my two-minutes notice. I took an exciting opportunity to shovel manure at a manure brick factory in Outer Mongolia. I think even you can see how it's a gigantic step-up from roasting in this shit in a dumpster fire you call a photo-studio.

Bryn

(Sent Version) Dear Karen,

Thank you for offering me an opportunity to work in your studio. It was a great favor to my mother and me. I'll always be grateful for it! Unfortunately, I can't continue with the work. I'm looking at a different career path, involving traveling abroad. I won't be checking my email, but please reach out to my mother if any problems arise from my abrupt departure.

Regards,

Bryn

My Dreadful Phase, that's what I called the days after Scali left me standing in the parking garage with a wad of bills in my bulging pocket.

Sheila, with a low cunning that permeates her nature, didn't fire me on that fateful Saturday. She wanted me to bring the van to the warehouse on Monday morning. We built our civilization on petty reasoning like that. So, yes, she fired me on Monday morning, as soon as I showed up at the warehouse.

It made it easier for me to leave L.A., but then I hit rock bottom, moving in with my parents in Menlo Park, CA. Hence, my Dreadful Phase.

Don't take me wrong, I love my mom and dad.

I love them because they're decent and if I showed up on their doorstep high, barefoot and pregnant, they would only worry about how to set up the baby room.

I'm grateful, but what I can't take is their expectation of my life ending in a spectacular failure, because I am artistic.

For their generation, with their one family equals one shot at an engineer-child mentality, I'm a fertilized cell that had divided into wrong parts. Sure, I have ten fingers and toes, and my nose is simply adorable, but my brain is just so darn artistic. So scattered and devoid of logic.

"Are you in trouble because of your ah... hobby?" my mom asks me before I even unpack my bags.

"No." I sigh. "And it's not a hobby. It's a calling. A lifestyle. Mom, it's what makes my life worth living."

"Of course, honey. Of course. I understand." Her eyes reflect deep concern, but not a drop of understanding. I do love her... I do.

I wish I didn't tell her about urban exploring, but I pretty much had to when I was a teen. Otherwise, she'd ascribe my absences to her irrational fear that I'll join a cult. I am artistic, you see...

After I had explained to her that my passion wasn't spiritual in nature, her anxieties became rational. It was for the best, because at least they prepared her for an inevitable phone call. One day, I was bound to be arrested for breaking and entering. It's a part of life for an urban explorer, but so far I dodged the bullet.

"So what is it?" asks my mom solicitously. "Is it a man?"

My knees give out, and I sit heavily on my old bed, in my childhood room.

The walls are pale pink, just as I remember them. The curtains are tied back with whimsical pink-and-silver bows. The trim is white. A collection of dolls and stuffies is neatly arranged on the white dresser. It's like I died, and my mom was afraid to redecorate and she kept the memories intact.

Compared to my neat past, my present, in the shape of opened dark duffle bags, is messy. They look like they would stain the freshly shampooed carpet. A blue t-shirt is sticking out of one of them, but I don't have the energy to take it out, re-fold it and stack it in my closet.

I can't go on unpacking my present, not yet. My head plunges into my knees, and despite my best efforts my body shakes with sobs. "Yes, mom, it's a man. Don't ask, please. Don't ask."

I can't tell mom about Scali, no matter how often she probes.

I can't tell anyone in Menlo Park about him.

He is a bad boy apotheosis, a no-nonsense dangerous man, and he doesn't seem real in this quiet community. If I haven't been shot at, I wouldn't believe men like him were real.

Since I'm a simple nobody, I can't find out anything about the Tangorello family feud on the net.

Sheesh, I wish I had the mad hacking skills to read police department secret records!

I wish Clara, the granny from the cemetery with the Tangorello fetish, had a Facebook.

I wish Matteo tested me.

I wish I may, I wish I might... and so I sit on it for weeks, while Scali doesn't text or call. I sit in Menlo Park and pine. I suffocate and I pine. Pine and suffocate.

A week into my Dreadful Phase, I obtain a job at Karen's photo-studio, the local joint that specializes in making cutesy family portraits. The work is so out of sync with my downer mood, it's almost comical.

Two weeks into it, everyone at home is sick and tired of my downer mood. I even grow sick and tired of it myself. Sheesh, what am I to creep around and secretly lose myself in sexual fantasies? A Jane Austen's heroine?

However, I can't snap out of it no matter how many bubble bath I take, and how often I watch the re-runs of the Gossip Girls

I miss Scali and the flash of excitement he brought into my life. I miss the thrill of knowing him so badly, that eventually I see the truth.

This phase isn't dreadful because I, a grown-ass woman, live with my parents. Or because I'm working a soulless job.

It's this dreadful because after meeting Scali, life is so horribly empty and boring without him.

Apparently, I need him to challenge me, I need him to throw my life into chaos, and say all those things that have amazing power to annoy and excite me at the same time.

The remedy to dreadfulness finally comes from my best pal Novavik. They send me an invite to an on-line competition for urban photography. After three nights of espressos, I enter my meticulously re-edited carnations-plus-hospital photo triptych.

I watch in disbelief as the likes climb on the 'Girl-with-Carnations in Search of Sanity' by B&W. The title is a little white lie, because the hospital wasn't a mental institution. But it just feels right, so I use my artistic license. Let it be in search of sanity, so long as its winning!

The adrenaline rush when I get the mail that I've won is like a million espressos combined. I'm $5K richer, and I never-ever win anything. But I won. I won!

I'm... free? Is it even possible?

My heart palpitates when I check my bank account and make calculations in a spreadsheet. Even if I subtract what I owe my parents for my keep, when I add what Karen the Mom-and-Tot Photographer pays me, plus a trickle of cash flow from selling Girl-with-Carnations prints...

Oh my God! The numbers add up to a wonderful conclusion: I can escape the familial stronghold.

I probably absented myself from L.A. for long enough to be forgotten by the Tangorello family, but I didn't want to go back to L.A. until I got the green light from Scali. Or until so much time elapses that I can face the reality that he'd forgotten all about me.

While I sit in indecision about what to do with my life, where to go, Novavik sends me another fateful message.

I take one look at it, and my breath hitches.

It's an address of a non-maintained chateau in the Loire Valley. It seems that the owners are looking for the tax breaks, so they took off the restrictions on the access to the exterior without advertising it widely. Before this off-the-beaten-path gem makes it on the websites and EyeWitness Tour Guides, someone with climbing/lock-picking skills could just sneak a peek inside and take a few photos.

It's a dream, a dream, I tell you!

While I drool over the virginal castle with Novavik, the explorer's fever grips me. It's just like the first time... It's always like the first time.

And it's never-ever like the first time.