One Story is happy and honored to bring you our second debut story of 2021, “Fair Use,” by Ann Aspell. Set in Burlington, Vermont, during a snowstorm, the story chronicles a chance encounter between two characters: Jenks is a struggling painter who was fired from his teaching job at the university—and who lost his girlfriend, Lonnie—in the wake of a plagiarism scandal. Ro is a successful visual artist passing through town en route to New York City after a museum purchased one of her paintings for its Canadian collection.
The two characters happen upon each other in a park beside Lake Champlain, and when Jenks invites Ro back to his loft to see his masterpiece-in-progress, one might expect they’ll end up in bed together, or not. What one won’t expect is what actually happens: a stunning, subversive transgression that alters the course of Jenks’s life in ways neither character anticipates.
