Maeve Fly

Maeve works at a princess-themed park in Los Angeles and loves it. She dresses as the ice princess and entertains the visiting children. Her best friend is Kate, whom she describes as “unwaveringly virtuous” and as the “protagonist” of their story (4). They go into the breakroom, where they are glared at by the other princesses, and do a line of coke.

Their supervisor, Liz, comes in and threatens to have them fired for using drugs on the job. Maeve thinks of how bitter Liz is that she can no longer be a princess. After she had her breasts augmented, they became too big for her to look good in the costumes, so she was forced to start dressing in fur costumes. To compensate, their bosses gave her a promotion to Princess Supervisor, but Maeve knows it came with no pay raise or additional responsibility. Maeve believes that, in their story, Liz is her “nemesis.”

As Liz scolds them, Kate ignores her. She asks Maeve to go to Bab’s, a strip club where they go to meet tourists for free drinks and sex. Maeve declines and then feels guilty because she forgot that Kate’s brother had just moved to LA.

Maeve goes to her home, a mansion sitting on a hill above the tourist part of the Sunset Strip. Her front door has two cacti out front, a species that—despite growing on front lawns all over Los Angeles—is poisonous to humans; Maeve is one of the few people who knows this. She lives with her grandmother, Tallulah, who took her in after her parents disowned her years ago. Tallulah used to be a semi-famous actress, and Maeve shares her “angelic” looks.

Her grandmother’s nurse, Hilda, leaves, then Maeve goes into her grandmother’s room. She is unconscious, dying from cirrhosis of the liver—an illness caused by alcohol use disorder. She thinks back to the first time they met, when Maeve left her parents. As they sat in a bar together, Tallulah asked Maeve what she saw. Maeve then looked around at the people, realizing how desperately they were all trying to fit into Hollywood life. She noted how their desperation “poisoned the air,” yet she found it “intoxicating” (15). In that moment, as her grandmother approved of her, she felt as though her feelings of being different and not belonging anywhere finally went away.

As she closes the door to her grandmother’s room, she thinks of how little time she has left in the life she knows. She calculates that she has two years left, as after that time she will lose the most important people in her life: her grandmother and Kate. Her grandmother will likely die within two years, and Kate will find success as an actress in Hollywood. After that time, Maeve will be alone.

Maeve goes to her room. She turns on porn and a YouTube video of a wolf hunting a rabbit. She then opens social media on her phone. She has been messaging a woman, Susan Parker, using a fake account under the name Trixie Krueger. Susan is an NRA member and a Christian with five children; she regularly talks about how their country is being ruined by people of color. Maeve invented Trixie to talk with her, spending months discussing how their country is being ruined and how people need to return to God.

Maeve opens their chat and starts a new conversation with Susan. As she does so, with the videos playing in the background, she begins to masturbate. She tells Susan that she is a member of a group that could “do something” about her problems because they “stick together to stand up for the country [they] were promised” (22). After Susan expresses interest in joining, Maeve screenshots their entire conversation. She then posts it to Reddit, thinking how good it feels to ruin Susan’s life as she climaxes from the thrill of it.

An hour later, Maeve looks at the bougainvillea vines growing on the abandoned Tower Records building. She thinks of how they combine beauty and danger, with thorns growing among the flowers. She comes here often to look at and handle them, enjoying the cuts they cause on her hands.

She is shocked when she finds a hairless doll’s head among the vines, attached to the body of a toy alligator. She sees that it has the words “In order to know virtue” written on its body in blood and recognizes it as a quote from the Marquis de Sade (26). She is both fascinated and afraid of the doll, knowing for certain that it was placed there recently. She feels “deeply disturbed,” believing that it “portends something dark” (26). After several moments of holding the head, she puts it back, then quickly walks away.

Maeve goes to meet Kate at Bab’s. The strip club is located underneath the Gangplank—another strip club, this one pirate-themed, whose owner, Pedro, is a friend of hers. She goes to a table and reads a book, still bothered by finding the doll. She typically reads what she considers “subversive” books, which she feels offer the mentoring she no longer receives from her grandmother. The most intriguing character she has ever read about is Simone from Story of the Eye by Georges Bataille. She considers how Simone “embodies true savagery with no tragic backstory,” as Maeve respects Simone’s willingness to be a bad person without the need for “victimhood” to explain her behavior (30).

Her reading is interrupted by Kate, who brings over her brother, Gideon. After Kate introduces them, she leaves with a director she just met, Derek, whom Maeve assumes she is trying to convince to give her a role in a film.

Gideon is a professional hockey player who just got traded to the Los Angeles Kings. Maeve immediately dislikes him, as he is considered the “golden” child in his family, while Kate is the outcast. She is immediately annoyed when Gideon says that he doesn’t like LA, calling it “fake.” Maeve argues that he is only looking at the “surface.” When she is rude to him, she expects him to dismiss her, but instead, he smiles and stares at her, then asks what secrets she is hiding. Maeve is thrown off, again thinking about the doll and feeling disturbed. Before she can respond, their conversation is interrupted by a minor earthquake, and then Kate returns from the bathroom with Derek.

As Maeve arrives at work, she thinks of how much she loves her job and the park she works in. She is enthralled by the beauty of the park and the job itself, where she has been forced to learn every detail about her princess’s voice, mannerisms, and life to interact with the guests. She also loves that her job gives her access to hidden aspects of the park: the tragic lives of the guests, the cats they release at night to control the rat population, and the rumors that some real skeletons are used in the pirate ride.

During their lunch break, Liz holds a meeting for park employees. They are introduced to Andre, a man who was sent from corporate to oversee their department. Maeve assumes that he is there because Liz reported her and Kate. However, after the meeting, he talks to Kate and Maeve alone. He tells them that they have been doing an excellent job and that the customers are happier with them than any of the other princesses. He then asks what they think about Liz. Although Kate is annoyed at her for it, Maeve tells Andre that Liz takes her job very seriously and ensures that they follow all the rules. She decides that complaining about Liz will only make corporate investigate them more, which could lead to Maeve and Kate getting in trouble. She also respects Liz as an “adversary” and one of the only sources of “excitement” at her job.

Maeve looks for the doll in the bougainvillea after avoiding it for days. However, the doll is gone. Shaken, she returns home and goes to her grandmother’s room. As she watches her grandmother sleep, Maeve again thinks of her first days in Los Angeles.

On her first morning waking up in her grandmother’s home, Maeve went downstairs and found her grandmother in the kitchen. Maeve was unsure how to act, realizing that her grandmother would not appreciate pleasantries. Instead, Maeve simply made herself coffee, then went and stood by her grandmother. They watched the sunrise over the Sunset Strip, with Maeve thinking how dirty yet beautiful everything looked. Afterward, her grandmother told her they needed to leave, so they walked out and got onto a tourist bus. Her grandmother explained that she does this every Sunday—takes a tour of Hollywood on the bus. Maeve spent the day seeing Hollywood for the first time, enamored by the touristic yet authentic nature of it all.

Maeve’s thoughts are interrupted by a phone call. Kate begs her to go to a party where she could potentially meet someone famous to help her career. Although Maeve doesn’t want to go, she agrees, thinking how she should continue to protect Kate as long as she can.

At the party, Maeve does her best to make small talk but is constantly distracted, trying to find Kate. She is annoyed that she can’t find enough alcohol to enjoy herself.

She jokes with Gideon, and he comments on her going to Stanford. She is annoyed that Kate told him that she went there and dropped out after two weeks. She walks away from Gideon but stops short when another earthquake hits. She’s unsure why, but her first thoughts are of the doll. She loses her balance, but Gideon catches her. She brushes him off and tries to walk away, but he stops her because her copy of Story of the Eye has fallen out of her bag. It is open, and Gideon reads her notes, making Maeve feel extremely uncomfortable. He gives it back to her and tries to offer her a ride home, but she dismisses him and walks away.

Maeve goes outside to call a car, but her phone doesn’t work, likely because she dropped it during the earthquake. She is leaning against a car, contemplating what to do, when Gideon comes out of the party. She realizes that she is leaning against his car. He offers her a ride home again, and she accepts because otherwise, she will likely have to sleep with someone for a ride.

On the drive, Gideon tries to talk about how much it bothers him that Kate is “wasting” her potential by hooking up with random men for the chance of being in their movies. Although Maeve agrees with him, she is annoyed that Gideon would try to talk about Kate to her. Gideon then complains about the city, saying that he prefers New York. When he tells Maeve that there is no “culture” in Los Angeles, Maeve becomes irate: Every place, by definition, has culture, and it’s arrogant of people from New York to pretend that theirs is the only one that matters. As she angrily tells Gideon to pull over, he starts laughing at her. She realizes that he is just saying things to annoy her, which makes her “feel a number of things, clawing at [her] insides” (70), but mostly anger.

Maeve goes to the Tata Tiki Lounge, a bar she only ever goes to alone. She goes twice a week, and no one is ever there except the bartender and one other man whom she calls “Johnny” because he looks like Johnny Depp. The bartender plays her favorite music, Halloween music, and makes her a cocktail she drinks only when she’s alone: a piña colada.

She sits alone at a table and reads Story of the Eye. Central to the story is Simone’s sexual relationship with the narrator, and the novella ends with the “threesome-turned-murder of a Spanish priest and the insertion of his eyeball into Simone’s vagina” (73). Maeve thinks of how “fabulous” the story is but is bothered by the part that Gideon saw. He saw her extensive notes on a page that involves Simone inserting a whole egg into her rectum—something Maeve has tried to replicate many times but can never accomplish without breaking the egg. The thought of Gideon reading her notes fills her with rage.

Maeve thinks back to a time six months ago, shortly after her arrival in LA. She worked as an assistant in a film studio until she was fired for throwing a lamp at an actor. Her grandmother used her influence to prevent further repercussions. Her grandmother took her out to dinner to talk about it, and Maeve was convinced that she was going to be sent away—at one point even thinking that her grandmother might kill her. Instead, her grandmother told her that she and Maeve are both “wolves,” but that Maeve needs to keep her wolf hidden from the public. They are among “sheep” in LA and will never truly belong, but Maeve can learn how to be a “monkey” and “play pretend” (77).

Once a month, Maeve goes to stay with a famous director. She fulfills his sexual fantasies while she thinks about what it would be like to cut him open. Despite hating it, she continues to go each month, convinced that eventually she will get to kill him.

The morning after, she goes outside with him to the pool. He is annoyed to find that one of his ex-girlfriends, a famous actress, has moved into the complex. She introduces Maeve and the director to the man she is seeing, and as he gets out of the pool, Maeve recognizes him as Gideon. Annoyed, she goes and sits by herself to read.

After a few minutes, Gideon drags a chair over and sits next to her. He tells Maeve that he thinks they should have sex. She dismisses him, but then he tells her that he has figured out her problem: She should be using a soft-boiled egg. Maeve feels cycles of “rage. Curiosity. Rage,” but reminds herself that “the monkey observes,” and does not give Gideon any kind of reaction (83). Instead, she tells him that she is not interested, and then the actress comes over and interrupts them.

On her way home, Maeve checks to see if the doll is there, but it has not returned. She feels as though she is being watched. When she gets home, she immediately realizes that something is wrong, but she is not sure what it is. Her mind goes to the doll, but then she realizes that Hilda’s shoes are still outside her home, meaning that the nurse has not left for the day as she normally would have.

Maeve finds Hilda sitting in the living room. Hilda tells her that it is time to let her grandmother die peacefully, as her quality of life is worsening. Hilda’s pity enrages Maeve. She tries to tell Hilda that she should have a couple more years with her grandmother, but Hilda insists that she needs to recommend to the doctor that they let her grandmother go peacefully, as that’s what she requested in her will.

Maeve asks Hilda to help her in the basement. She tells her that there is a statue down there that she wants to bring up for her grandmother. When they get to the basement, Maeve pretends to search for a light switch. She grabs a mace—a prop leftover from a movie—and hits Hilda over the head with it.

Maeve continues to hit Hilda with the mace even after she is dead. She is insistent that “nothing of this woman who would end [her] grandmother” can remain, feeling as though Hilda “betrayed” her (91). She hadn’t planned to kill Hilda—though she has killed two other people and disposed of their bodies in the basement—but was overwhelmed by her anger.

Maeve dissolves the body’s soft tissues, then puts up the Halloween decorations—it is October 1—so she can add Hilda’s bones to her Halloween display and let them dry in the sun. While she felt “disappointed” by her last two killings, this one actually made her feel “good,” which bothers her.

As Maeve decorates and listens to music, the cops arrive. She is still covered in Hilda’s blood. They ask her if she is the one who reported that Hilda never came to work today, and Maeve tells them yes. She invites them inside, but they tell her they are just checking for the hospice agency and aren’t concerned.