* * *

Esther and Manda continued their trip to the restroom, and when they returned to their friends, they found that the conversation happened to be about the encounter they witnessed with the gentleman from the next table.

"Okay," started Jill, the empathetic friend, "which one of you was the good looking older man hitting on?"

Manda rolled her eyes, and Ess just laughed. The thought processes of this group of single friends always entertained her. Everything led to, and most conversations were about, landing a man. Each and every one of them was scared that they would end up spending their life alone, no husband, and no family of their own. Not that Ess saw herself as an exception. At nearly twenty-nine years old, she had had fewer boyfriends than any of her friends. She was just as afraid of spinsterhood as the rest of them – and her few relations already teased her about being an old maid. Apparently, they thought it was unnatural to be unattached at her age.

One thing that Ess noticed, and her friends seemed not to, was that all of the friends in their slowly diminishing group that did marry, never had time to join their friends for the traditional girls-night-outs. Giving up such freedoms scared Ess only slightly less then being the only girl left in the group that could attend the girls-night-outs. So, she told herself that she would just go with the flow. Que sera, sera. Right?

"So?" Lisa prompted.

"So, what?" replied Ess. A few of the girls let out grunts of frustration at this.

Manda decided to answer their question for them, "The guy wasn't hitting on either of us," she answered. "He was telling Essy here about her stalker artist."

The whole table stared at Ess in wonder, and seemed to be waiting for the punch line. Of all the people that could have accompanied Ess to the restroom while the 'good-looking older man' stopped her, it had to be Manda.

The only thing to do was to put a stop to this before it became the theme for the night. "I don't have a stalker, thank you, Manda." Then she retold the conversation she had with the man about the sculptor that had apparently dedicated a collection of his work to her for the kindness she had shown him with the lemonade.

"Oh, I'm going to see this!" cried Lisa, and was accompanied in the idea by the rest of the girls at the table. "Where did you say the sculptures are on display?"

"I didn't say," replied Ess, "and I'm not going to say either. Let's just leave it alone." She was ready to be done with this conversation.

Manda, on the other hand, proved to be her disagreeable self once again. "It's at La Donne on 5th." She beamed, with a not-so-rare look of mischief in her eyes. "Apparently, the likeness to our Essy, here, is 'fantastic'."

"Thanks, Manda." Ess was being sarcastic, of course. These women were man-seeking missiles, even on the occasions when the seeking was not for their own benefit. Ess knew she would be dragged to La Donne on 5th before long.

CHAPTER TWO

It took less time than Ess expected to execute an excursion to La Donne on 5th. The next day, in fact, she found herself reluctantly dragged into a taxi van with four of her friends. Manda, of course, was present; Jill and Lisa, too. Beth came to be moral support for her friend who was being forced into something she appeared to dread; but also, out of her own curiosity.

The cab ride from 78th street to 5th avenue would be a long one, and the car reeked badly of cigarette smoke and, what was that? Garlic? Sickening stench. It didn't help Ess's stomach, which already churned because of the oddness of her current situation. She sat in the front seat, and tuned out the excited chatter amongst her friends by pondering her circumstances.

So far, her life had been uneventful. She had always been a quiet girl. Never popular, but never an outsider, she just floated her way through high school without much notice. Afterward, she attended college, and earned a communications degree. She never tapped into a special skill or talent, and had no job offers waiting for her after she finished college. She hunted for work like all the other average people with a standard education and little experience, and found an opportunity with a hospitality company, where she became a project manager. The pay was barely decent for a single girl who didn't live extravagantly, but it got her through from month to month. She unhappily found that she had to be on the telephone seven out of ten hours each day. At first, her shyness made her job difficult, but she did what she had to do, and eventually, became passive to it.

Esther understood her life to be unexceptional. She dreamed of making it more, but lacked the ability and know-how to go about it. So, she waited for change. What kind of change, though, she didn't know.

People probably don't even know just how ordinary and miniscule they are until a life-altering experience occurs. Then, their small lives may become interesting, possibly scary. Ess wondered if she would be able to handle any changes that could disrupt the fragile balance of her existence.

She thought it must be that people who actually did great things were driven. They did things not simply by chance, but by will and by choice. When an event occured in life, they stood on the precipice of life-altering decisions, and had two directions they could go: leap into the unknown, or back away into their small, safe lives. Walking along this precipice only stalled for time and left a person vulnerable to outside forces that could push or pull them in either direction without their consent. They had to act quickly so that the decision could be their own.

And all around, in every direction – regrets! But Ess once heard that more painful were the regrets of what we didn't do in life, than of what we did do.

Ess waited, Ess stalled for time, Ess regretted. She berated and she chided herself for not doing or at least searching for something better in life. She was disappointed, but secure in her unimportant existence.

Her mind wandered and twisted on the subject. At any length, it shortened the cab ride, and distracted her from the smell. They arrived at La Donne on 5th, and the five friends divvied up the cost to the driver.

Ess's recent train of thought left her dejected, and now came a moment that would most likely make her feel worse. Someone out there deemed her worthy to be immortalized in art. She would now have to discover for herself what that meant.

* * *

The interior of La Donne on 5th was an expansive modern minimalist design, with exposed beams, pipes and air ducts, and blue white lighting. Near the entrance there were skylights, but the dreary overcast morning did nothing to add illumination. The walls were high, and painted a uniform shade of pale blue. The only furniture in the room were a few strategically placed white washed cement benches in odd shapes. For all Ess knew, the benches may have been part of the art displays, because there were a fair number of people in the gallery, and no one was sitting on them. Maybe Ess wasn't the only one who questioned if they were really for seating or were part of the artwork.

"The funny thing is," Manda reflected to her friends, "this simple décor probably took the designer months to accomplish." The comment effectively made her friends laugh.

"Okay," started Jill, "Let's see who can spot Essy's mystery man's artwork first."

Oh great, thought Ess, now they were making a game out of it. Better and better. Let's play with Essy's little life. She shuddered, less sure then ever if she wanted to see herself captured forever motionless in stone.