“Two minutes,” she says. “Exactly.”
“That’s all he gets.” I don’t ask her to tell me who he is. I know she can’t or won’t. I don’t want to put her in that corner.
We reenter the main room, and the sound wraps back around me. The crowd has shifted. More museum people by the big piece. The critic who wanted crime maps stands with a drink and explains my work to a woman who could buy and probably will. I head the other direction and let them talk without me. I don’t owe them my face while they make up my mind for me.
An assistant with a tray of canapés offers me something on toast. I take it and put it back when she isn’t looking because my stomach isn’t interested in food right now. My hands shake and then stop. I let the shaking happen without calling it panic. I’ve met my panic. It looks different. This is pressure without air. It will pass.
“Rory.” A woman I went to school with for all of a semester appears, her hair bigger than the decade should allow. “Look at you. I told everyone you’d make it.”
“Hi, Dana.” I don’t remind her that she told everyone I should switch to design because “portraits don’t sell unless you’re dead.” People like Dana believe their last opinion is their only opinion. “Thanks for coming.”
“We should collaborate,” she says, which means she wants me to paint something for a show she’s curating and pay her for the privilege. “DM me.”
“Sure,” I say, and give her my neutral smile. She floats away, already bored with my yes.
A flash goes off too close to my face and I blink. “Sorry!” the photographer says, not sounding sorry. Zoe is on him in three seconds, angling him away from glare, away from me, away from the woman in the green dress who still stands in front of the mural band like it’s a window.
A staffer from the museum sidles up. “We’d like to talk about programming,” she says in a careful voice. “Panels, workshops. Nothing that would put your participants at risk.”
“Talk to my gallery,” I say. “We’ll build something that doesn’t turn people into material.”
She blinks and then smiles because she likes the line. “We’ll be in touch.”
I shake five more hands. I say thank you twenty times and mean it fifteen. I let the other five stand because sometimes gratitude is a performance and that’s part of the deal when you put things on walls other people pay to see. I redirect three questions that would have put me in a corner. I avoid giving anyone my home street by laughing and saying, “Harbor-adjacent,” which is true enough to answer and vague enough to protect.
Near the end of the night, Zoe taps her glass with a pen and gives the room a short speech. She thanks people without reciting a list that would make the rest of us stare at the chandelier. She says one sentence about me that doesn’t feel likea lie. “Aurora paints the part after the headline,” she says. “The part where people decide to keep going.” The room claps. I nod because people need to see me nod. I don’t step on the rug and stand next to her. I don’t give a speech. I’m not a politician.
After the clap and the drift, I retreat to the side gallery where an installation of someone else’s work keeps the air cooler and the crowd thinner.
My phone buzzes. A text from Jessa:Looking forward to 10:30 a.m. tomorrow. Our Chair will not join unless requested. Please route any press language through your gallery. Thank you for your clarity tonight.
I type back:Confirmed. No mention of partnership on wall cards. “Supports” is fine for program materials and website.
She replies:Agreed.
I put the phone away. The man in the dark coat does not reappear. Or he does and I don’t see him. Either way, it doesn’t change my plan. I’m here to finish this part of the work. I’m here to keep my terms. I’m here to walk back into the room and let the faces on the wall do the job we built them for and then to go home and sleep the kind of sleep you only earn when you didn’t lie to yourself all night.
By closing, the crowd thins to donors who linger because they can, interns who finally sit, staff who stop performing soft edges. The museum people take one more pass and tell Zoe they’ll email. The critic who wanted to turn me into a map leaves first, bored with how little I gave him to publish that would get him yelled at on the internet. Good. Let him be bored. Boredom is safer than hunger in men like that.
The gallery owner squeezes my hand. “You did well,” she says.
“We did well,” I say, because we did.
“We’ll debrief tomorrow,” Zoe tells me. “Go home. Sleep. Don’t read anything tonight. The Ledger piece is scheduled for the morning. We asked for a clean headline. No trauma bait.”
“Thank you.”
She leans in so no one else can hear. “Do you want me to try to find out who the dark coat was?”
“If it’s easy,” I say. “If it isn’t, let it go. We have enough to manage.”
She nods. “I’ll sweep the feeds anyway. For my nerves, not yours.”
I almost say mine need it too, then don’t. “I’ll text you when I’m home.”
“Do that.”
***
