There was a woman — some may know her, some may not; her story is a well-told tale, but certainly not the most-told — who lived on the outskirts of Central Park. If anyone were to look into it, they would not be sure exactly where she lived, at least not as in the place where she ate, slept, or paid an obscene amount of rent (which was likely because she often chose not to do these things). But they would have no trouble gesturing in a vague direction, and it was in this direction where the stuff of myths played out.
 
She was a strange woman; eccentric and stunning, yet not entirely out of place on the streets of New York. She had a smile like gilt ivory and wore ethereally beautiful clothing, though no one could ever recall the exact contents of these outfits. There were many things one could learn about her: the fact that she hardly ate, for example, and that when she did she was strictly vegetarian; or the fact that her skincare routine (which seemed to eliminate the issue of wrinkles entirely) consisted of remedies that had not been brewed for millennia, and never for human skin. But the most crucial fact about the woman was that she collected art. 
 
Incomplete art, to be specific. She wasn't picky: she'd take a child's half-finished popsicle stick project just as indiscriminately as Michelangelo's The Entombment. She owned a property in that Central Park corner — whether it was a gallery or a shop, well, that depended on the day — and treated everything with equal care along the never-dusty shelves. 
 
She had donors, too. Troubled artists with chronic creative block, who found solace in seeing their semi-complete work displayed. There was something pleasant, for many of them, in having these projects' burdens off their hands while still feeling like they were worth something. She was happy for them. Happier still when they went months without requiring the galleryshop — or when they returned, begging to take a particular piece back because the inspiration had finally arrived.
 
She always returned pieces if prompted, though she was careful not to pressure anybody either way.
 
The galleryshop was ninety years old, well over the age of many art societies. But the woman was much, much older.
 
Sometimes, inquisitive souls wandered in. They were curious less about the art and more about the woman herself. She shooed those souls out with every deception and distraction she could muster, but oftentimes they clung anyway.
 
"Excuse me ma'am, but what is your full name?"
 
"How long have you been running this place?" 
 
"I notice your walls contain photographs of Central Park's statues, which seems appropriate given they are primarily depictions of poets and artists. I'm writing a piece for New York Art Life, and I was wondering whether you felt a particular attachment to these?" 
 
Questions like the last one often threw her off-guard. "Why do you ask?" she inquired, her tongue dancing between the sound of music and a repulsive tone of venom.
 
"No— no reason."
 
She wasn't sure why they recoiled so fearfully.
 
She tried to be human, really. In fact, if being human was something to be learned — if one could simply open an instruction manual and follow a crafted set of rules — she ought to have been the best at it. But experience did not make up for all that she inherently lacked, and while ambling down the streets she often felt like one slip of the tongue, one lingering gaze on a colosseum or a winged logo, would give her away.
 
Occasionally, the woman came face to face with her own story. Sometimes it was through pop culture's subtle allusions — a brief nod to a statue come a-life, a cursory mention in that children's series she collected circumspectly in the back of the galleryshop — but every decade or so she found a new play, a new novel, a new carving that depicted the same classic tale, of a woman sculpted by a man and animated by the goddess of love during the throes of his one-sided lust.
 
In some versions of the story, the woman and the man lived happily ever after — though this interpretation was a rarity nowadays. It was easier, after all, to imagine the oppression and rage that the woman must have gone through; that her entire existence was crafted for the gaze of a man too greedy to love any mortal. She supposed she should have been grateful for these retellings, since without them she would cease to have a name: in their writings, Philostephanus and Ovid had cowered from giving the perfect feminine ideal nomenclature to call her own. 
 
Still, while none of these stories were entirely wrong, none were entirely right, either. They were a patchwork of incomplete truths — must like her galleryshop.
 
The woman had loved the man who sculpted her, but she had also resented him. The woman had survived a brutal loss of autonomy, breaking away after her creator's death and coming out better for it, but she had also outlived everybody she cared for. She wasn't like most goddesses or nymphs. She hadn't known she was going to last forever — hadn't anticipated that her body wouldn't frail or crumble or tarnish.
 
A few centuries into her plight, she'd begun to resent the goddess of love for her animation. Why had she been cursed with a conscience, a pathetic marble slab that held no meaning aside from one ancient fantasy? What had Aphrodite seen in her?

 

She'd touched many things over the years. The shockingly innocuous bumps that textured priceless paintings; the ripe stem of a Roman grape; the skin of other humans, of trysts she dared to sustain after Pygmalion; the sharp stab of a bullet and the thrush hairs on a horse. But none of it felt as valuable — as irreparably part of her — as the incomplete art. 
 
The woman's name was Galatea, and she was very, very lonely.