Status Updates From Cigarettes

Phoebe you poor thing; and Owen you monster!

The chapter I've just finished features perhaps the most excruciatingly convincing portrayal of spiralling madness I've ever encountered, including Charlotte Perkins Gilman and Mark Z Danielewski.

'He came to her studio at seven, a benign hour on this late June evening, the hot, clear air suffused with cinnamon incandescence. Phoebe had prepared chilled unshaken gimlets for him. They drifted out into the never-ending dusk. She led him across town to a steak house off Greenwich Avenue, modish but not deafeningly so. From their table, Owen looked about warily. Here, at least, bohemia seemed ready to spare him.'