The door chimes again and lets in a fat slice of gray. Lila is five minutes late and already talking when she slides into the booth across from me, her scarf peeling itself off her neck like it resents the sudden heat. She is the only person I have told about the new craziness in my life.
“Okay, first, if you make me sit through one more article that calls you ‘enigmatic,’ I’m going to print a shirt that says ENIGMA and wear it to your next panel,” she says. Her hair is in a top knot that never falls down, eyeliner that would survive a flood, and a pair of earrings that look like they belong on a chandelier in a better neighborhood.
She drops a pastry bag and a glossy envelope on the table like we’re doing a drug handoff. “Second, why is your coffee dead? Third, oh my God, the buzz, Aurora. The buzz.”
“Good morning,” I say, because I like being a little difficult around her; it’s part of our thing. “You’re wet.”
“It’s called atmosphere,” she says, snagging my dead coffee and taking a sip. “Jesus. Tragic. I’ll fix it.” She raises her hand and catches a barista’s eye, points to my cup, and mouths “please.” The barista nods like she owes Lila money. That’s Lila’s real talent. She can make people feel like she’s doing them a favor when they help her.
She wipes condensation off her phone screen with the back of her hand and flips it to show me a headline. “Ledger ran the piece. Clean. They used the good image of the anchor piece. No trauma bait in the title—literally just‘After the Headline’: Aurora Hale at Block 17.They even quoted your consent answer correctly. Miracles are possible.”
I look at the screen. Under the headline, the lead photo catches the left side of my face next to the anchor painting, clean light, no mid-blink shot. I nod. “They did the work,” I say. “Credit the copy editor.”
“Credit me,” she says, preening. “I babysat that journalist with a tray of canapés and an unblinking stare. Anyway, how are you? Did you sleep? You look good. Tired. But not ‘I ate my own hair’ tired.”
A barista slides a fresh coffee onto the table with a practiced move that dodges my sketchbook and Lila’s wrists. “I put it on the house,” she says to Lila, not to me. Lila gives her a wink. I re-evaluate my entire approach to service industry relationships.
Lila tears the pastry bag open and pushes half a croissant toward me. “Eat,” she says. “You have a face that says, ‘I forgot what food does.’”
I tear the croissant in half and take a bite that tastes like butter and heat. The coffee is the right temperature again. My stomach remembers how to be a person.
“I told you about the card,” I say. “I didn’t tell you about the call.”
Lila stops mid-sip and sets the cup down slowly. “You called,” she says in a voice that says she’s going to punch air in a minute. “You called the number on the anonymous creep’s bathroom gift. And you didn’t text me before or after so I could sit outside your door with a shoe as a weapon.”
“It was late,” I say. “You were probably asleep. And I didn’t want to—”
“Threaten my beauty rest? I don’t sleep. I go into standby mode with notifications enabled.” She puts both palms flat on the table. “You called. Okay. And?”
“He answered on the second ring,” I say. I keep my voice flat and clinical on purpose because if I make it a story I’ll start dressing it to be interesting, and that’s not what this is for. “He told me I was ‘safe to speak.’ He refused a name. He said to call him Ward.”
Lila’s eyes snap wide, then narrow. “Ward as in Ward Foundation Ward? Ward as in gala invitations and polite money and the building we can never get permits for because of their events?”
“Or Ward as in he likes his job title more than a last name,” I say, because that’s what he said. “He knew things he shouldn’t know. He said one of his people moved a brush and that it wouldn’t happen again.”
“Jesus.” She looks like she swallowed a lemon. “He admitted they had their hands on your stuff. I want to fight him with a roll of bubble wrap.”
I huff. “You’ll lose. He’d use the plastic to suffocate the problem.”
She goes very still at my choice of verb. I shouldn’t have used it. I look down. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry,” she says. “Be safe, mean, and whatever you need to be. He wants you to call him Ward? Fine. I’ll call him red flag in a tux.”
A group of students to our left erupts over an inside joke. Milk hisses. Someone drops a spoon and the sound is sharp enough to make my shoulders jump a millimeter. I write a note to myself in the margin of the sketchbook:call electrician about hallway bulb,because sometimes small practical tasks keep the animal brain from chewing on the wrong bone.
Lila taps the glossy envelope she dropped when she sat down. “Related,” she says. “Unrelated. Both. You know the foundation gala they do at the end of the month? They want you on the VIP list. I got this through the gallery inbox because apparently I can be trusted with fancy fonts.”
I don’t touch the envelope. The silver letters on heavy paper spell out WARD FOUNDATION ANNUAL WINTER GALA. “That’s quick,” I say, because we are a week out from theshow and I thought I had at least two before the city tried to dress me up.
“Buzz,” she says. “Also, cash. They smell an auction lot. Your work isn’t up for auction, relax. But they will still want you in the pictures.”
I flick my gaze to her. “Which pictures?”
“The kind where a woman who actually works stands next to a rich person who doesn’t sweat under lights,” she says cheerfully. “Kidding. Kidding—sort of. Listen, half the city will be there. Museum board. Gallery owners. Critics who want to be seen forgiving themselves after writing something mean. It’s good exposure.”
I keep my face neutral because the word exposure can live in my mouth only if I think about light and not eyes. “It’s also the exact kind of place where anonymous callers become real,” I say.
“Yes,” she says. “And? You walk in on your terms with your fight face on. You know the exits. You know your no. You know I will be glued to your elbow like a decorative barnacle. We can do this without letting them turn you into content.”
