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all the various women he had recently dated, was presently dating, and was thinking of dating.
    Lily made a decision right then in the dark: to attempt the impossible. She knew she couldn’t win Strad with her looks. Her strength lay in her talent. She would win him through her music. She would impress him so deeply that he would have no choice but to fall in love with her. She would try to create music that beautified the world.
    Lily quit her job the next day, wanting to set to work immediately on her project. But beautifying the world with her music was not an easy task. It took her eight months of the most intense dedication. It required an extraordinary amount of perseverance.
    After many failed attempts, she decided that perhaps she was aiming too high. So she tried beautifying merely her neighborhood instead of the world.
    But she still couldn’t manage it.
    She scaled down, focusing on her street.
    But still, she didn’t pull it off.
    So she went to the supermarket and picked out a single item at random: a banana. She brought it home, put it on her piano, and stared at it for a while, rotating it, trying to see the unique beauty in the banana. She then imagined having a craving for it. And slowly, slowly, a melody came to her.
    She was excited. She found other objects in her apartment, spread them out on her piano, and studied them while trying to compose flattering pieces for them.
    She called us, told us she’d succeeded and wanted to test her music on us. We gathered at my apartment.
    “The piece of music I’m going to test is the one I composed for junk mail,” she told us. “But before I begin, I want to make sure you all dislike junk mail.”
    We confirmed we not only disliked it, but hated it.
    She went to my week-old pile of mail near the front door, pulled out all the junk mail, and plopped it on the ottoman cube in front of us.
    “You haven’t changed your minds yet, right? You still hate junk mail?”
    “Right!” we all exclaimed.
    “As I play the piece, pay close attention to your feelings and let me know if you detect any change in your perception of the junk mail. Let me know if you start finding it more beautiful and desirable.”
    She sat at the piano and played her junk mail melody while we gazed at the pile of junk mail.
    When Lily was done playing her piece, Penelope said, “I’m sorry, Lily, but this was not a valid test.”
    “Why not?” Lily asked, rising from her piano bench.
    “Did you take a look at this junk mail before you set it down? It’s not normal junk mail!” Penelope said, kneeling at the foot of the ottoman cube and looking through the envelopes and leaflets. “In fact, technically, I don’t think this is junk mail at all. I mean, look at it; it must have cost a fortune to print. The quality, the colors, the sheen, are all exceptional.”
    “She’s right,” Jack said, pulling the ottoman cube closer to him. “And not just the colors, but the words. There’s humor!”
    “And there’s irony, too,” I said, skimming some of the text. “And depth. And double meanings.”
    “And cliff-hangers!” Georgia exclaimed, dropping to her knees next to Penelope and zeroing in on a leaflet of junk mail. “It’s actually gripping! Listen to the suspense in this line: ‘Who dry cleans better than us?’ They don’t answer the question! They just leave it hanging like that, torturing us. It’s a great hook and extremely thought-provoking.”
    Lily just watched us.
    Since the music had ceased a minute ago, its effect was now wearing off. Our interest in the junk mail was starting to fade, but not before we reiterated that this had not been a good test because the pile of junk mail was better than average.
    Lily sat at her piano and played the same piece over again, which caused us to fight over who would get to keep the junk mail, even though it was mine. We ended up Xeroxing it on the machine in my living room closet, so that everyone could get a copy, and I kept