“Are you enjoying this?” she asks. “This part.”
The question is a knife angled at a tendon. The wrong answer makes the hand useless. The right answer, if there is one, is not pretty.
“I enjoy solving problems,” I say. “I enjoy closing doors. I enjoy seeing a woman stand in a room and not have to step back because a man leaned too close. I enjoy that you didn’t hang up. I don’t enjoy that someone put a heel mark by your door.”
“That heel mark is yours,” she accuses.
“No,” I say. “It’s not.”
It isn’t. I didn’t go in. I sent a man I trust to check a latch. He messed with a brush he shouldn’t have. He walked out. Whoever else put pressure on that door didn’t leave anything I could use except the oval the rain made when it hit their shoe and dried wrong. I don’t like that there’s a second set of unknowns in a room I am already in charge of containing. I will fix that. Tonight, I’ll keep her on the line long enough to keep her from writing this conversation into something I can’t use.
“You knew about the card,” she says.
“I wrote the sentence,” I say.
“For your safety,” she quotes flatly. “Possessive.”
“Economical,” I say. “Space was limited.”
She laughs once and it is sharp enough to cut and small enough to hold. The first unscripted sound between us. The monitors don’t catch it; my ear does. It lands in me next to the list of paints she used on the mouth and the exact way she holds a brush when she’s got the line she wants and doesn’t want to ruin it by reaching for a second one.
“I’m going to cover your camera,” she says. “Tonight.”
“That’s your choice,” I say.
“I don’t want to be prey,” she says quietly. It’s the same line she said in the bathroom and in the car and in the dark at the table. It isn’t a plea. It’s a standard.
“Then don’t be,” I say. “I’m not asking you to be.”
“You left a card that makes me feel like I am.”
“I left a card so when you decide to do something about it you don’t have to waste time figuring out who to call.”
“You,” she says, and the word is both answer and accusation.
“Me,” I reply.
“Tomorrow,” she says again, as if that word is a test for both of us. “You keep your promises. I keep mine. If you break yours, I pull the plug.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” I say. “You never will.”
“That’s not true,” she says. “You’ll make sure it isn’t.”
Silence again. Then, “Goodnight, Ward.”
“Goodnight, Aurora.”
Chapter 7 – Aurora
The coffee shop is the kind of crowded that feels like a dare.
Every table is full. People stand in the aisle with laptops tucked under arms like shields. The windows sweat from the inside where the heat hits the glass. Outside, the drizzle turns everything two shades grayer. Inside, milk steamers hiss and dump a cyclone of white noise into the room so anyone on a phone has to lean in and yell. The line snakes past the pastry case to the door; a guy in a beanie keeps telling the person behind him that the kouign-amann “changes lives.”
My booth is at the back near the bathroom sign—the spot with the worst lighting and the best sightline. I chose it because there’s a solid wall to my left and the kitchen door to my right. I can see both exits without whipping my head around like prey.
I’ve been here forty minutes. The sketchbook is open. A stack of emails sits in my inbox flagged in yellow. I skim replies between lines of gallery shipping updates; a tentative schedule for the museum walkthrough next week; three requests to “chat about process” from outlets that write about art like it’s workout gear. My coffee cooled fifteen minutes ago. I keep sipping it anyway, so I have an excuse to raise something to my mouth when my chest tightens.
I slept with the lamp on again last night. Third night in a row. The first four nights after the show, I made it to maybe three a.m. before waking up to the feeling that the wall had moved five inches. It hadn’t. The camera in the studio is still covered with the cloth I taped over it. I thought about having it removed and then I didn’t. I thought about calling Ward and then I didn’t. I’m not proud of the light, but it helps. Pride can get in the back seat for once.
