Dent in the Bullet ✷ Anthony Lockwood.

I'm trying to tell you I love you.

I. Fleabag.
II. An Orestia: Elektra (tr. Anne Carson), Sophocles.
III. Sylvia Plath.
IV. Not Your Fault, Not Mine, Just Is, Katherine Fabrizio.
V. Fleabag.

ANTHONY LOCKWOOD COULD deny his beliefs in the universe and its ways all he wanted, but the proof was in his love for terrible odds. Why was he always betting on the losing dog if he placed no stock in karma and the cosmos' affections for a rags-to-riches story?

Like it or not, Anthony Lockwood has faith. He believes there is a strategy in counting on the impossible because the universe appreciates his grit. He believes good things come to those who wait simply because the stars know they deserve it.

Mathilde Lam is his gift from the stars — the fruits of his patience — and funnily enough, she had appeared on a completely clear night. No constellations were smiling down on their heaven-made match, no glittering golden strings indicating divine intervention. She was lit only by the lines of flickering street lamps and her smile.

Luck changed when Mattie showed up at 35 Portland Row's doorstep. And not just Lockwood's.

When Mathilde packed her bags and took a taxi across London, she wasn't just cashing in a favor from George Karim. She was running from a doomed fate at a dead-end job. Of course, to most, "dead-end" can't be used to describe a position as a renowned agent at Fittes, but to Mattie, the monotony may as well be the cause of her slow and painful death.

If you asked her then or even now, Mathilde would tell you that joining Lockwood & Co. was a leap of faith born from her own desperate fruition. But if you asked Anthony, he would tell you — only in secret, of course, and not in so many words, — that her arrival was exactly what he and the universe had agreed on.

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