The Doll
When she came to me – only five years ago now, though it seems like more – her name was plain old Alice Derby. And though she wasn’t old, she was plain. Small, pale lips, a slightly too-large nose, a flat chest and a non-existent ass. She wanted to be a star. She couldn’t sing, couldn’t act, couldn’t write or paint or dance, but she wanted to be in the newspapers and on the television, to be talked about and to have men stare covetously and women enviously when they walked past billboards of...