The man had to pick me up because he lived in some suburb that I'd never heard of. He came with his wife in a minivan, and she got out to let me in. He was paralyzed from the waist down.

On the way to their house, I was a college graduate. The wife asked me how many books I'd read, and I said, Two thousand and thirteen. The husband asked where I grew up, and then he said, "Can't your parents give you money?"

"I want to be independent," I said.

We drove to a house that was small and gray. They had turned the dining room into a makeup room and the living room into a shooting gallery.

They wanted to show me photo albums so I knew what they liked. I sat on the sofa, next to the wife, and the husband narrated from his wheelchair. He liked clothes that fit narrowly and legs that spread widely. He pointed to one picture and said, "We have trouble with black girls because they don't shave down there." He pointed to my pants: "You shave, don't you?"

While we were flipping through their photos, the wife told me their story: He was injured in some war and got disability checks. He couldn't have sex, so they took photos. The last photo I looked at was a woman bent over, with a frying pan in her hand and a spatula up her butt. I told myself there was no way I could avoid looking pathetic, so I should just get it over with.

The wife said, "I'll help get you ready for him." She motioned me into the dining room and shut the door behind us. She said, "You can undress here, Honey." She told me to sit down, and she put makeup all over my face -- bright blues and dark reds. She pinched my nipples, and she rubbed a bright red on the erect part and pale rose on the aureole. "He loves reds," she said as she blended the edges of the colors with her thumb and finger. She asked me to stand up, and she combed a comb through my pubic hair. "He'll want it to be soft," she said. She ran the comb, she ran her fingers, and I got shivers, and she said, "OOoohh, isn't that nice?" She rubbed her hands up and down my sides. "Try to relax," she said, "He's a very sweet man. Can you relax for him?" I tried to relax by pretending I wasn't there. I picked at my cuticle until it bled.

She opened the door and presented me: "Isn't she beautiful?"

He said, "Yes," and she disappeared.

He said he picked out some clothes, and handed me a shirt with holes for the breasts. It was easy to pose for him because he liked the cheesy stuff; for him, stiff was good.

He gave me shorts with a cut-out crotch, and he was impressed that I could lie on my back on the sofa and do the splits. He called his wife in to see. She asked me if I could hold that pose or if I'd like her to help. He said I could stay split just fine, and she could go now. He wheeled his chair in between my legs and his lens approached. "Can you put your finger in?" he asked. Then he asked for two, but when he clicked he was out of film. "I'm sorry," he said.

"I'm sorry too," I said.

The last text of the series of “Agency for artists” shows up the process and particularly the result of her wandering: from artists of certain renown to the suburbs where the family lives. A more disheartening environment, in a “small and gray” house turned into a shooting gallery. The family askes her a thorny question (“Can't your parents give you money?” as assuming that the job she is into is the result not of a voluntary choice but a necessity due to poverty). This, the poverty as condition, is not the exact reason: she wants “to be independent”, by means of earning one's living offering her body in exchange.

Our character is each time more passive and talks as an inanimate doll (“they wanted”, “just get it over with”) as if she had a role to fit in, the women role of letting herself be driven to other's intentions, instead of claiming her rights. But not only she is affected by this alienation, also the wife seems to be subordinated to the man's desires, with the excuse of being handicaped.

Finally, she exteriorizes a “sorry” to, we might suppose, no agent more than herself. The situation overcomes her and the regret reveals itself.

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