I take a sip of coffee to buy seven seconds. “The museum walkthrough is the day before,” I say. “If I do both, it’s two nights of people wanting things.”
“You already live in a world where people want things,” she says. “This one just comes with smoked salmon.”
“Gross,” I say. “You know salmon makes the room smell like a locker.”
“I’m trying to sell you on power food. You’re impossible.” She pushes the envelope at me, so I have to put a hand on it or let it fall. I put a hand on it. It’s heavy in a way paper shouldn’t be. “Take it,” she says. “You don’t have to answer now. I will say yes for you if you want me to. That is a service I provide.”
“I’m thinking,” I say.
She sits back and peels her scarf off completely. She shakes water onto the floor like a dog. A businessman two tables over glares. She gives him a smile that sayssue me. “Okay. Next item. Jonah texted me.”
“Why?” I ask automatically, as if texts answer to my sense of narrative fairness.
“Because he lives in the city like everyone else we know and because he’s a chaos raccoon who can paint,” she says. “He’s in town. He wants to see your work. He told me to tell you his number hasn’t changed because he is, quote, ‘consistent in at least one thing.’” She mimics air quotes with the same scorn any sane person would have for that sentence.
My phone buzzes. I don’t need to look to know it’s him because we have that kind of bad timing. I glance anyway. It’s from Jonah:Back in town. Stole a wall last night. Show me your new faces?He’s a talented muralist with a signature line you can spot from two blocks. He is good at being kind. We dated for three months two years ago and then stopped because timing is a machine that doesn’t know you exist. We stayed friends in the way that keeps your rib cage from bracing when the name shows up on your screen.
Lila watches my face. “You don’t have to say yes to him either,” she says.
“I know.”
“He’s good for you in small doses,” she says, and then laughs at her own condescension. “Okay, that sounded like I think he’s made of sugar. He is… complicated. But he’s not creep energy. He is…solve it with a sloppy muralenergy. That I can live with.”
“He’ll register as a problem to Ward’s eyes,” I say before I can stop myself.
“Ward’s eyes can go read a book,” she says. “Also, use English. Say cameras if you mean cameras. Don’t make him into a man’s metaphor.”
I chew the inside of my cheek and choose not to argue with her over semantics when the semantics matter. “I haven’t told Jonah anything,” I say.
“Good. Don’t. The fewer people who know about the card, the better. I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone, and I haven’t, including my mother, which is a miracle because she is nosy and loves a secret like it’s free cake.”
My phone buzzes again.Jonah:Coffee/paint shop? I’ll bring the good markers. No questions.He means it. He thinks texts are contracts. He shows up when he says he will and leaves when you ask. I don’t hate those qualities.
I type:Busy morning. Maybe studio tomorrow.I leave it with no punctuation on purpose, so it doesn’t read like a yes with a heart or a no with a knife.
He replies with a thumbs-up and a spray can emoji because he is a cartoon. Lila watches me without commenting. She pulls the pastry back and picks flakes off the plate.
The booth behind Lila erupts with a laugh. A phone rings. Someone at the register asks for an extra pump of vanilla. I open the sketchbook to distract my hands. Without thinking, I draw a diagonal and then another, then the rise where the angle changes near a landing. It’s the kind of staircase you only draw if you’ve stood on it enough times that your feet learned the turn before your eyes did.
Lila leans over to look. I put my hand on the page before she can see the bottom of the line.
“That’s a nice shape,” she says lightly.
“It’s nothing,” I say, and close the sketchbook with a clap that makes a flake of croissant jump. “Doodle.”
“Mm-hmm.” She reads my face and leaves it alone. “I told the gallery we’d confirm the walk-through with Mirrow by noon,” she says. “They want to bring two education people and one person from security. You can say no to security, but I think we should let them come. Hearing you say ‘consent’ in a sentence makes bad men weaker. I like making bad men weak.”
“Noted,” I say. I flip the envelope over. The return address is a fancy building in lower Manhattan with a slate lobby and a guard who knows my face now because he’s watched me follow Lila into the elevator twice in the past six months to drop off a press packet. The Ward Foundation. The seal embossed on the flap is raised enough that my thumbnail catches it. I run my nail along the edge, and it leaves a thin white line.
“Jonah will be at the gala,” Lila says casually like she’s talking about the weather, then watches me, not casual at all.
“How do you know that?”
“Because the street art crowd is doing a big ‘community outreach’ install in the side hall and they got like twenty muralists to contribute pieces to be auctioned for charity,” she says. “It’s tacky but it’s fine and it will raise money and let rich people feel like they touched a wall. Jonah’s on the list. He likes checks; he likes causes; he likes free bars.”
“It’s a gala,” I say. “Not a free bar. It’s an auction disguised as a party.”
“Don’t ruin my punchlines,” she says. “Point being, you won’t be alone if you go. I will be there. Jonah will be there. Half the city will be there. And—yes—Ward will be there with a name tag that probably says Ward because he thinks that’s how people work.”
