Narrated by Roya/Orkideh in retrospect from the brink of her final death, the chapter meditates on grace as unearned. Roya recounts how she and Leila swapped passports so Leila could flee Iran and Gilgamesh, who had discovered their affair. Leila boarded Flight 655 under Roya's name and was killed when the USS Vincennes shot down the plane. Roya, holding Leila's papers, escaped through Turkey by bribing a young border guard, then flew to New York on Leila's passport.

In New York, Roya wandered, slept outdoors, stole necessities, and clung to a stolen Persian-English dictionary as her anchor. She mourned Leila bodily and Cyrus across time, while suppressing thoughts of Ali. She reflects on language, junk in communication, sex as the densest form of communication, and her preference for women, recalling Leila's intuitive fluency with her body.

Roya took a job at a Greek diner, rented a tiny apartment in the meatpacking district, and began painting obsessively, papering her walls with sketches and canvases. Living under Leila's name, she painted to escape the abyss. She frequented small galleries to absorb the contemporary visual vocabulary.

One day she wandered into Sang's Linh Gallery in Chelsea. Sang, a Vietnamese refugee and former button-factory worker turned gallerist, recognized her as a painter from the turpentine and paint on her neck. Sang demanded she bring in a piece. Asked her name, Roya invented "Orkideh"—the name she and Ali had chosen when they thought Cyrus would be a girl—refusing to attach Leila's name to her art.

Roya brought a large battlefield painting featuring her brother Arash as a child pretending to be an angel. Sang loved it, gave her a solo show, and a Times critic stumbled in and wrote a glowing review praising the Arash piece, Dudusch. The show sold out, launching Orkideh's career. She insists the success wasn't luck but the price of sacrificing her entire previous life.

The chapter closes with the staging of death-Speak at the Brooklyn Museum, after extensive legal waivers about her impending death. She set up a small private back room but preferred to sit out front with visitors, reminding them all that everyone is dying—she just faster.