Prelude

Katherine Sophie and Sarah had bonded at the Beaux-Arts School because they were both foreigners, tall and smart, if not as wise as they could have thought. They had no urge for any career plan, so it cut them from half the school’s headcount, no desire for marriage from what they had witnessed, letting out half of the women students, they did not really binge or smoke, to scare off most of the rest of the would-be artists. Nonetheless, as it will be told, those whom they befriended remained rooted in their hearts. In Camille Stern’s Gallery, they met closer mainly because at first Sarah, who had rented an apartment in Camille’s attic, became her occasional lover and they both eyed Kate who did not shun their passes. Kate lived in the comfortable place Hugo, friend and investor for Camille, lent her as a reward for her complacent disrobing before his camera once a week or so, although she wasn’t sure there were any photographs taken at all. When everybody became more intimate at Camille’s, Sarah came to Hugo’s; and when Kate fled for Berlin, she let him have more than photos of her. Since her early schooldays, Sarah kept approximate flight logs and reminders, stacked in a worn khaki bag covered with dada graffiti that she had pushed around in her tribulations. Once, when Camille was lolling upstairs in her bed, she fetched her notes to tell drafts of her already turbulent story. Not only did Camille fall under the spell of a newly hectic Sarah sitting on her heels with sweat at her temples but she envied the wealth of her life’s paper records, as undecipherable as they were for anyone but that elfin tomboy with a taste of wild raspberry. The next day, Camille bought a stock of notebooks and started her own log. Contagion grew around as Camille showed her court of accomplices about how she had been captivated by Sarah’s demonstrative epiphany. And thus, instant hypertext helping, the yarn hereunder to the necessity for any of us to tell, and the best profits for Hugo, in the magic lair.

At the time when this endless tale starts, Sarah became very concerned with Kate…

KATHERINE SOPHIE

0 – Preamble to the Story of Katherine Sophie

Prelude

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