I scan without turning my head, because you learn that too when you grow up in places where attention is a currency: don’t let them know you know. The mezzanine above the main floor holds a small reading. A man in a dark coat stands by the rail. He’s turned just enough that I can’t see his face. He doesn’t move or lift a phone. He doesn’t pretend to be looking at the room. He turns away as I look up and melts into the side corridor like he never stood there.
My heart ticks faster. I hear it in my throat the way I do when I run when it’s too cold and then stop. I check the exits: front glass doors, service hallway behind the installation at my three o’clock, the back stairwell to the office. My hand finds the seam of my clutch. My fingers count the corner of the card that says my name and two numbers: my phone and my fake studio phone.
“Rory,” someone says next to me, softly but too close. I step half a foot to the right on instinct and turn. It’s the gallery owner, cheeks flushed with the kind of success you can’t drink even if you try. “You’re handling this beautifully. The museum is at the large piece now. The foundation—” she hesitates, then drops it— “our anonymous benefactor sent word he’d like to say hello before he leaves. Will you give him two minutes?”
“I didn’t agree to meet him.”
“You didn’t refuse either,” she says, and makes it a joke so no one around us thinks we’re negotiating. “I’ll bring him to the office door. If you don’t like the look of him, step away and I’ll get in the middle, and we’ll call it a night. You have control here. I promise.”
The wordpromiselands hard because it always does. “Fine,” I say. “Two minutes. Not on camera or on the floor.”
“Office,” she says. “I’ll text when we’re ready.”
She moves off. I breathe slow through my nose and count four. It’s the same box breathing I use when a painting starts lying to me and I need it to stop without tearing it off the frame.In, hold, out, hold.The edges of the room come back where I left them. I put the champagne on a tray someone floats past me and trade it for a water. The glass sweats in my palm.
A journalist with a voice recorder at half-mast drifts in. “Your work suggests… there are spaces people go when the system fails. Are you—”
“I’m not a policy expert,” I quickly clarify. “I paint people.”
“But the rumors—”
“I’m not confirming rumors at an opening,” I interrupt. “If you want to talk about brushwork, I’m your girl.”
“Brushwork,” he repeats, like it’s a kind of treason. He backs away, logging me in whatever category he uses for women who won’t feed him.
A woman in a green dress stands in front of the mural translation with her arms wrapped around herself like she’s cold. She doesn’t look at me. She looks at the band of color along the baseboard and nods once. The nod has the weight of recognition. She doesn’t come over. I don’t go to her. That exchange is enough. It might be the only one that matters tonight.
Someone shouts my name for a photo across the room. I don’t turn. Zoe appears as if she teleported. “Office,” she whispers. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” I say. “Who is he?”
“Foundation liaison said patron.” She uses none of the words that would make me balk here. “No names. He’ll keep itthat way if you want him to. He’s at the end of the hall. I can cancel.”
“Two minutes,” I say again.
We step into the side corridor. The sound drops in half. The tiles here are matte. The walls are white without the dramatic light. The office door is closed. Zoe knocks once and opens it a sliver. The small administrative office looks like every gallery back room: steel shelves full of bubble wrap, a desk with a computer that belongs to three people at once, a calendar with shipping dates and one joke only the staff understands. It smells like cardboard and expensive dust.
There’s a man by the window with his back to us and hands in his coat pockets. He doesn’t turn when the door opens. He doesn’t move like he expects to be announced. He looks at the water the way people look at a thing they can’t use and resent anyway. Dark coat, clean lines, the posture of a man who knows he can pick any chair and make it look like it was built for him.
“Mr.…?” Zoe says, leaving space for a name.
He turns but only enough that I catch a profile and a clean jaw. He’s in his late thirties, maybe older. He looks like he could be the picture next to “donor” in a museum newsletter. He doesn’t extend a hand. He doesn’t smile for a camera that isn’t there. “Ms. Hale,” he says, voice even. “I wanted to congratulate you in person. The work does what you said it would.”
“I don’t think I told you what it would do,” I say.
“You told the room,” he says. “I listened.”
I don’t step into the office. I keep one foot in the corridor and one on the threshold. I’m not being dramatic. I’m measuring. “If you want to talk about terms or conditions, you can take them up with my gallery and the foundation contact. I’m not here to negotiate a relationship I haven’t agreed to.”
“I’m not here to negotiate,” he says. “I’m here to say the foundation will keep its hands where you put them. And toremind you that visibility can go sideways fast. You know that. Your curator knows that. So do the men in the corner who think they own the air.”
The way he says men in the corner lands like a nudge I didn’t want. My shoulders notch tighter. “I didn’t ask for reminders.”
“No,” he says. “You built your own.” He nods once, like he’s done, and turns back to the window. “Enjoy your night.”
It should feel like a win, but it doesn’t. It feels like the part of a game where someone moves a piece you didn’t know was yours. I don’t give him my back. I step away and the door shuts behind me with a soft click. My curator’s face looks like a woman who wants to know if she should start a fight she can win.
“I’m fine,” I say.
