Marion liked her life, mostly. A bit anyway. She liked the bits she liked, brief as they were, and put her head down through the rest. Which is about as much as can be said for anyone really. It was comfortable though permanent, in the way that a life will set over time like concrete drying in the sun, a child’s name scratched into the surface with amateur fingers. A baking fate. At night she put herself to bed with a liturgy of crime drama and soft-core prose. She didn’t trust herself with anything as risqué as romance.