She smiles, satisfied. “Good.”
She pushes the glossy envelope at me again and I know she won’t stop until I put it in my bag. “Take it,” she says. “I can RSVP for you in the gallery system and keep your details off their spreadsheet if you want. We can dodge the ‘partners’ language. We can insist on the right line on the wall. We can specify no photos. We will make them work for every inch.”
“I will be walking into his house,” I say.
“You’ll be walking into a ballroom with rented chairs and too much ice,” she says. “The house is a metaphor he wants you to believe in. It’s a ballroom. Take his air and make it yours.”
“Do you practice these speeches in the shower?” I ask.
“Only when the water pressure is good,” she says making a face. “Okay, important: dress code is probably black tie optional, which means rich men in tuxes and everyone else in clothes that fit perfectly. We don’t have to go full glam. I can find you something that moves when you walk and has a pocket for your phone and for the card, because yes, you’re taking the card. I’m not arguing about that.”
“I wasn’t going to,” I say.
She beams. “Progress.”
We split what’s left of the croissant and sit in a silence that doesn’t feel like failure. The coffee shop noise keeps doing its cover work. The baristas call names. Lila’s scarf drips onto her lap and she goes “ugh” and makes wet-cat faces while dabbing at it with napkins. I open the sketchbook again and keep my hand flat over the staircase so I can only see the top turn. I add a line anyway, just a short one, enough for my body to remember that I can draw something without making it a confession.
“When did we meet?” Lila enquires suddenly.
“Three years ago,” I say, because I can always answer that. “You were trying to lift a crate by yourself.”
“I was trying to get a man to lift it for me by looking like I might die,” she says. “It worked twice. It didn’t work on you.”
“I told you to bend your knees,” I say. “And then I asked you who you were.”
“You asked me to show you what I could do,” she says. “And then you gave me a job in your studio for six weeks when I couldn’t pay rent.”
“I gave you a job because you could do it,” I say.
“You tell yourself that so you can sleep,” she says, but she’s smiling.
“It worked,” I say.
“So. Gala?” She holds the word out like a cookie.
“I’ll go,” I say, because I know I will, whether or not my stomach likes the idea. “But only if you don’t leave my side, and only if we keep control of entrances and I can come late and leave early without a speech.”
“I will build you an escape plan you can run with your eyes closed,” she says. “I will also arrange the entrance, so it looks like your idea.”
“It will be my idea,” I say, and she laughs.
She takes the envelope back long enough to slide a card out for me. The heavy cream stock has my name printed cleanly in black.AURORA HALE—VIP. It’s a little absurd. It will get me past a line I would never stand in. It will also put me in a room where every face is a photograph in waiting. I put the card in my bag between my sketchbook and a pencil tin. The bag suddenly weighs more.
“Jonah will text you again in two hours,” Lila says. “He’s on a loop. He pretends he doesn’t need answers. It’s cute. It’s also a lie. If you want, I’ll run interference for a day.”
“I can write,‘tomorrow afternoon, two to four,’” I say. “And mean it.”
“Set boundaries,” she says happily. “Use your new Foundation Voice.‘We confirmed your request with the artist.’”
“Shut up,” I say.
“I’m helpful,” she says.
She is. She also isn’t going to stop until she knows I’m not going to fall apart in a room with chandeliers. She taps her phone. “Okay, logistics: I’ll RSVP to the gala as your plus-one. We’ll send the museum a polite yes to the two education staff and one security person. No filming remains the hill I die on. I’ll coordinate with block-and-tackle on crate pickup for the pieces leaving Wednesday.”
“I’ll be at the studio at nine,” I say. “I want to re-wrap the smaller canvas; the corner tape was lifting.”
“I’ll bring better tape,” she says.
