Warning! This Synopsis Contains many Spoilers. Although from the author’s point of view—this book being neither a mystery nor a thriller—no amount of foreknowledge of any plot-points will spoil the reader’s experience. In fact I believe all the information posted on this site can only enhance the reader’s experience.
Dressing Stone
Act I: Internal Monologue
CRAIG PLUMMER, once a world-renowned sculptor known as DeBris, has since the death of his first wife, CAROL JAVAL, suffered from a debilitating creative block. Remarried, and running a small contracting business, Craig is in the final stages of remodeling a Park Slope co-op for a family of three from Seattle. Moving in three weeks ahead of schedule, the imperious CYNTHIA KOHL and her restive, eight-year old autistic son leave Craig completely exasperated by week’s end. The following week the nanny, seventeen-year-old NINA BROWN, arrives from Seattle. The tall beauty’s propensity for puerile malapropisms, coupled with her gauche fashion sense, lead Craig to peg the girl as some sort of ditzy trailer trash. To Craig’s surprise, he and Nina develop an alliance in reaction to their overbearing employer, and soon begin to feel the stirrings of attraction as they flirt and fool around behind Cynthia’s back.
Over the weekend, Craig’s second wife CHERYL, a newly minted partner at a M&A firm who routinely puts in twelve hour days, nags him about selling their DUMBO loft and buying a house in Park Slope. The thirty-nine year old artist bristles at the idea of giving up his studio, preferring to hide behind the rationalization, “Even a failed artist is still an artist.”
The following week, on a rain soaked afternoon Craig runs into Nina coming out of a coffee shop in Park Slope, and offers her a lift home. Parked at the curb chatting, a blinding explosion from a very close lightening strike drives them into each other’s arms. The following day they avoid one another, but by days end they surrender to the attraction, and make plans for a late night rendezvous.
As the weekend approaches, Cheryl insists they start house hunting before she leaves on an upcoming business trip at the end of the month. With his wife rubbing his nose in the fact that her income is now double his, Craig gives in, and on only their second outing they put in a low-ball offer that—much to his chagrin—is accepted. Goaded by the threat to his loft, as well as inspired by drawings he’s made of his young muse, Craig feels his creative juices stirring, and while Cheryl believes he is in his studio eagerly starting to pack, he is for the first time since the death of his wife Carol at work on new ideas.
Act II: An Audience of One
As Craig gains creative momentum his artistic reawakening dredges up a half-perceived survivor’s guilt, and while revisiting a series of portraits of Carol done when they were kids in Art School, Craig is stunned by Nina’s resemblance to the pre-junkie, pre-anorexic Carol. Still very much in love with Carol, and despite the absurdity of it, he succumbs to the delusion that Carol has returned to him as Nina, and he has been given a second chance. Unaware she had a predecessor, Cheryl catches Craig with several cartons of Carol’s personal effects, and he is forced to confess his previous marriage. Glossing over his role in Carol’s drug addiction, Craig reveals that AIDS contracted from IV drug use was the cause of his first wife’s death, and Cheryl withdraws in a state of shock. The confrontation brings him down to earth, and after admitting to himself that Nina is not Carol, he realizes he is head-over-heels in love with Nina.
When the autistic boy is hospitalized for an eating disorder Cynthia has a nervous breakdown, and begins abusing Xanax. In the ensuing upheaval Nina starts pilfering the household pharmaceuticals for recreational use. Cheryl leaves on her business trip, and with Craig claiming that he and his wife have separated, the artist and the nanny spend most of their time together. With a strong preference for highbrow music, Craig is dismayed when Nina reveals an ardent devotion to Punk, Grunge, and her hometown hero, Kurt Cobain. Back working in his studio with regularity now, Craig believes his dark night of the soul is over and he has overcome his creative block, while Nina’s lack of interest in his work and in art in general begins to eat at him. As Craig considers breaking up with Nina, the mere thought of leaving his lover causes him to cling to her more tightly. Although admitting she is not Carol, he still feels she is somehow his ‘second chance’ and chance to redeem himself.
Act III: A Mistress in Kind
The following weekend, with Cheryl still away, Craig goes with Nina to a West Village club to meet some of her friends visiting from Seattle. Finding them in a panic over news that their hometown idol, Kurt Cobain, has gone missing, Nina is swept up in the emotion and abandoning Craig, she goes off with her friends to their hotel to await news of Kurt. Out of contact all weekend, Craig finally catches up with Nina late Monday night finding her completely distraught. Unaware she is crashing from a mixture of Ecstasy and LSD, he ends up thinking the autistic boy has died after Nina starts rambling about going back to Seattle for a funeral without mentioning Cobain by name. (During the week Cobain was missing, rumors of suicide abound, and many correctly assumed the worst.). Unknown to Craig, Nina’s ex-boyfriend, PK was among the friends at the hotel where she spent the weekend. As a known supplier to Cobain, PK is paranoid the police will detain him on his return to Seattle, and has forced Nina to hold a large cache of various drug until the search for Cobain is over.
In a sad, yet comic conjunction of events Craig believes Nina wants to return to Seattle because the autistic boy has died, while Nina, in a state of profound emotional confusion, doesn’t really know what she wants. In fact, when she complains to Craig about having no means to get to back Seattle she is secretly hoping he will forbid it—secretly hoping he will ask her to move in with him—and desperately hoping he will save her from PK (who has managed to worm his way back into her life). But for Craig, who is secretly planning to set Nina up in his loft once he and his wife move into their Park Slope house, the timing couldn’t be worse. Believing his lover is out of a job, he can think of no other remedy, and exuberantly offers to take Nina back to Seattle. Nina is stunned and as he tells her he will fly her back to NY in a couple months, she resigns herself to her fate—while assuming he is going to fly with her out to Seattle.
With several key details left unspoken, Nina assumes they are en route to Newark airport, but with his wife not due back for another ten days Craig euphorically sets off on a cross-country drive. Bored by the endless trip Nina starts dipping into PK’s drug cache, and with each passing mile she shows herself to be less and less the person Craig thought she was. After inebriated incidents, and then nearly succumbing to an overdose, Craig finally realizes his lover is no mere ‘joy popper.’ Deprived of her drugs Nina admits she is recidivist from rehab, and spitefully tells Craig she’s just using him to get back to her old boyfriend. Heartbroken, Craig detours to Yellowstone Park intending to end it all. Luring Nina out on a walk along the Yellowstone River with the intention of drowning her in a boiling fumarole, a heavy downpour causes a flash flood and they are swept from the riverbank. Surviving the near drowning, they check into a motel, where egged on by Nina’s crocodile tears, Craig gains a renewed belief that Nina represents a ‘second chance’ to atone for Carol’s death, and he pledges to help her get clean. Before going back on the road Craig discovers the mother lode—PK’s cache of drugs, and as Nina watches in horror he sends thousands of dollars of contraband down the toilet. Now fearing PK’s wrath, Nina begs Craig to take her back to New York. During a rest stop in a Montana diner, a TV news flash announces the early morning discovery of Kurt Cobain’s body, and stoically setting her fears aside, Nina insists they continue on to Seattle.
Arriving at Nina’s father’s Lake Washington estate, Craig is stunned to learn Nina is a rich girl named FANCY who had been sent east after her second stint at the Betty Ford. Arriving in Seattle under the backdrop of Kurt Cobain’s suicide, and the fear of the thug PK’s wrath, Nina and Craig reconcile, and attend several vigils held for Cobain in the greater Seattle area. Nina has a flashback in which she recalls being repeatedly drugged and sexually molested by PK and his friends. Trying to outflank the drug dealer, they spread a rumor among some of his larger buyers that PK has turned police informant. When the plan backfires, Craig and Nina are drugged with Rohypnol(roofies), put in his car, and sent into Lake Washington. Surviving the near drowning, they make it back to Nina’s father’s estate. While recovering from the overdose Craig learns Nina had once been a nerdy overachiever who abruptly dropped out of school, that her father was the owner of the Park Slope co-op he remodeled, and that the Kohl’s were paid to take Nina on as nanny. At the same time, while catching up on her correspondence, Nina finds a letter purporting to be from Kurt Cobain describing a night two years back when PK drugged Nina with Rohypnol, and offered her to his friends for sex in a sick game he called “Passing Fancy.” Nina remembers enough of the details to realize why she woke up one day unable to bear hearing the name Fancy spoken. Driven mad by the desire to avenge his abused lover, Craig goes to PK’s home, and in the ensuing confrontation, Craig, while giving PK a severe beating, ends up on the right side of PK’s shotgun and kills the thug.
Awakening in the hospital, Craig learns Nina is safely back in rehab, and thanks to the manipulations of her father’s security chief, GORDEN CAMPBELL, PK’s death has been written off as a Cobain copy-cat suicide. Long suspecting PK of being responsible for Nina’s change in character, Campbell forged the letter from Cobain, and planted it for Nina to find, hoping it would jog the girl’s memory. In order to spare Nina’s parents more anguish, as well as to help save Craig’s marriage, the security chief covers up the illicit affair, claiming the artist was recruited by him to chaperone the underage nanny on her return to Seattle for Cobain’s funeral.
Back from Europe, Craig’s wife arrives in Seattle to find her hospitalized husband painted as a hero by Nina’s parents. Telling Craig she is pregnant, Cheryl praises her husband’s valor, revering him for his willingness to go the limit for the sake of a woman’s honor. Returning to Brooklyn, they move to a house in Park Slope, while Craig keeps his studio, and resumes his career as a sculptor.
END