Faceless
There are three things that I know about myself:
1. I am a woman of no importance at all.
2. I am a woman who, one day, fell in love with the least likely person.
3. I am a woman who faced the worst aspects of herself—and vows to never go back.
Briseis Cunningham—plain and ordinary!
After the 2024 Presidential Election, Briseis, a patriotic tour guide, felt like she wanted to take a tour of her own city of Philadelphia, looking for resolution in the past. While sitting on the tour bus, she has flashbacks of the last three summers, and what was occurring in her country at the time. Weighted down by the worries of the choice her nation just made, she undergoes a great deal of soul searching.
Beginning with one summer, in 2022, she accepts a job, working at the Philadelphia Chinese Lantern Festival. While there, she meets all the talented performers, but one stands out the most: Jin Chang, a Face Changer.
From there, it all begins!
Follow the tale of an American woman who stumbles on love for a man from another side of the world... and while also having to come to terms with what has just happened in the United States, her fear of the loss of the American Experiment, and her worries of where her country is headed.
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Release Date: November 24, 2025
Genre: Contemporary Romance
~ A White Satin Romance ~
Chapter One
The Remains of the Day
Whenever you choose to go on an adventure, the first thing that comes to mind is how to plan it all, and what is the best way to undertake it.
When travelling across land and ocean, between money, luggage, identification, and all the essentials, there is so much to consider.
Some of us dive into the task, eager to go to the world, with arms wide open. Others of us want nothing to do with the foreign, either because we are quite comfortable where we are, or because we are trained not to accept anything different than what we have been raised to.
And then there is the third kind: we don’t travel anywhere, because we can’t. Either because we are too busy, or we lack the ability to afford going anywhere.
I was the third kind—and I was both...
“That’s why I’m going,” I said to my co-worker, Vella, as I was rushing to get my coat on, “If I can’t be a tourist somewhere else, at least I can be it in my own city.”
I had just gotten done telling her about why I was riding a tour bus to the major tourist sites in downtown Philadelphia, despite that I had already been to all these places.
“Good!” Vella said, as she was finishing counting the money in the register, “I was waiting for you to give me a logical reason for what the heck you are doing. Because, until now, I was living off assumptions, and none of them made sense.”
I gave a fake dramatic sigh.
“Oh, you have been worried about my sanity—while also showing that you care about what I do. How nice.”
“I sell stuff at a tourist gift shop all day; I need to find my joys where I can.”
“I’m interesting?” I asked, putting my hat on.
“Not really,” she replied, smiling, “that just goes to show you how boring this day has been.”
“Darn,” I replied, “and just when I thought that I was finally beginning to have an identity.”
“It’s 2024; does anyone ever know what their identity is?”
I raised an eyebrow.
“Good point,” I admitted, “See you soon?”
“Tomorrow?”
“You know me; I never know that I’m working until the night before.”
“Check your schedule more often.”
“Why would I do that? When not knowing when I am working, until the last second, is one of the last great surprises that I have left.”
Nodding to her, I rushed out of the store, just as two tourists came past me.
“Excuse me,” the woman said, with an accent, “are they giving away free maps in there?”
“Yes, they are,” I answered, buttoning my coat up, “Just ask for one, and they will give you a gazette. Inside of it is a free map. And yes, there are bathrooms in there.”
The woman smiled.
“Thank you!”
Time has taught me to always give that information without the tourist asking first. When it comes to visiting a new city, you view every place that has a public bathroom as being a port in a storm.
“Where are you from?” I asked her.
“Italy.”
“Oh,” I said, smiling, “Bon Giorno!”
Her face widened and she responded with the same. And I was both happy that I learned that word—and embarrassed that I hadn’t learned any other Italian words. That would not be the first time that I felt like an uncultured idiot—as you will see.
“And thank you for being the inspiration that named us,” I elaborated, “you do know that America is named after an Italian explorer?”
“Yes,” she said, “Amerigo Vespucci. You are the feminine version of his name.”
“We are,” I said, speaking to her over my shoulder as I walked to the bus stop. “And that’s where it all began.”
“You’re welcome!” she said, going into the gift shop, with the man who she was with.
That is what it means to be a tour guide:
You meet the person.
You establish a quick relationship with them.
You make them comfortable.
And then you walk out of their life forever.
The only problem is that it becomes part of who we are.
We come.
We enter your life.
We give you a quick spark of something new.
But after the exotic aspect of us wears off—what are we?
Some of us know how to start a relationship and keep it going.
But for the rest of us, we are what I call drive-by novelties. We enter, we give you something fresh—and then have nothing more to give you. No more conversations, no more experiences—because the truth is, you were the conversation. You were the experience. Outside of that, what else are we when we stop being a reflection of yourself? That was me. That was what I was growing into. And that is what I was afraid of.
Turning the corner, I dashed down Arch Street, worried that I had missed the tour bus, and was happy to see that there were people waiting.
Inwardly, I found satisfaction from the little things, the mundane that is a marvel to those of us who did not have much to our lives.
I had not missed the bus.
That, to a woman of no importance, was a small kind of accomplishment. An achievement. How pathetic I was.
* * *
Reaching 239 Arch Street, I stood at the bus stop, waiting to ride to more of the same, while knowing that it was all that I had.
“Excuse me,” a woman said behind me, “are you waiting for a bus?”
“Yes, I am,” I replied, “Which bus are you waiting for? The Big Bus? The Philadelphia Sightseeing one? Or the Kite & Key bus?”
“I think it’s the bus that’s purple and pink.”
“That’s the Kite & Key bus.” I smiled warmly at her, “That’s the one that I’m waiting for. My co-worker told me that it will get here in six minutes. We didn’t miss it.”
“Good.”
Like the previous woman, she also had an accent.
“Where are you from?” I asked her.
“Puerto Rico.”
“Ah! You’re Puerto Rican American.”
“Yes, I am.”
“Lovely flag.”
“Thank you!”
“Red, white, and blue,” I said, raising up my fist, in solidarity—after all, both our flags had those colors, because we were two nations, but one family. “Brothers in arms.”
“And sisters in arms.”
“Very well phrased. Mind if I steal that idea?”
“Steal away.”
“Puerto Rico is lovely. It’s a beautiful place.”
“Oh, you’ve been there?”
Again, from my conscious to subconscious, came the inner shame of lack of experience. Of making choices in life that did not guarantee that I would be able to encounter more nations besides my own.
But time taught me wit. Drive-by wit, to put it better. I can be a delight for a few minutes, but soon after, the jokes die, the wit dissolves, and I become the most boring individual. Fortunately, she will not know me long enough to learn that. After all, we only had six minutes. That was the longest that could be provided as a tour guide who had no tour.
“Nothing is more annoying than saying the word ‘no’, but it’s the only answer you will get,” I replied. “I did not, because that’s the path of a person who lives from paycheck to paycheck—we can’t visit anywhere, so we have the internet to save us from ourselves. I look at Puerto Rico online and get to see it from the computer screen. There are some parts of it that are very lovely.”
“The good thing about that is that you can enjoy our nation without having to deal with the pains of meeting people.”
We both laughed.
“Don’t worry,” I professed. “I’m an American—you guys don’t have people that we have never seen before. Welcome to Philadelphia.”
“Thank you. I am enjoying it.”
“Thank you,” I said, sighing, always happy to hear that people liked my city. “Tell us that, from time to time. We need to hear it.”
The woman went back to talking with her friend—which was the perfect time for us to speak before I had no more words to give.
Leaning against the gate of the courtyard, they conversed in Spanish.
I knew only ten Spanish words—another shortcoming of mine.
As they spoke, I could not help but look upward at the building we were next to as we waited for the Kite & Key tour bus.
It was the Betsy Ross House.
Small and quaint, stood the home of the woman who was known for making the first official American Flag.
The flag that began it all—a new experiment that entered, and showed us something different on the horizon, that many nations took part in creating. All that began with a shot heard around the world.
And the world responded.
Because the world came to help us as we built ourselves.
And so, a new nation was born.
Looking up at the red and white stripes, and the blue with the thirteen stars that marked the first thirteen British colonies that became American states, for the longest time, I took our flag for granted. After all, it was only a flag.
Only time, and accepting my own foolishness, would I begin to understand what it meant. And what it symbolized.
To me, I was born at a time when the flag was already old. It had seen many years.
However, when you begin to research history, you truly see how young it was, compared to so many other flags that came before it.
And when looking up at it, sewn by a woman who made it in her bedroom, at nighttime, risking her life, since she was committing treason, time began to unwind, I saw the idea of Betsy sewing all the American flags that she continued to make throughout the war, and how young those stars were.
Sewing something where there wasn’t something before.
Beginning something new from the old.
Beginnings.
Looking up at those three colors, as the flag flapped in the wind, refusing to lay limp, but show itself boldly amongst those who would see it, I remembered.
For that was where it all began, three years ago...