“Exactly,” she says. “You’ve got the back for it. It looks like a line a draftsman would be proud of. We are going to do minimal face, clean eyes, real mouth, hair low, nothing you can’t rinse off in five minutes when you get home and decide to be a raccoon again.”
“I have paint on my knuckles,” I say.
“We’re leaving some,” she says. “As a signature.”
She keeps up a steady stream of commentary while she pulls garment bags and pins and little boxes out of her bag. It’s a performance, but it’s also cover. She knows I do better with aperson talking when my brain tries to calcify into self-defense. She spins me toward the big mirror near the shelf, and zips. The silk glides. I turn and the fabric moves with me instead of against me. The mirror shows a person who does not paint in a hoodie at a worktable under a lamp. She looks older and not sorry about it.
Lila steps back and squints like she’s aligning a frame. “Good,” she says. “Better than good. Put your hands down. Shoulders loose. Breathe.” She moves behind me and smooths the silk near my ribs, like a guard checking a seam. “You’re beautiful,” she says, but she says it like a fact, not a compliment. “And before you tell me you don’t care about being beautiful, I know. It’s not about that. It’s about walking into a room made for certain people and refusing to apologize for entering.”
She pulls a small box out of her bag and flips it open. Two simple earrings sit in the velvet, small enough not to steal anything. “Borrowed,” she says. “Insurance coverage on these is better than the building’s. Don’t lose them or we’ll have to marry rich just to pay the deductible.”
We talk practicals while she works. She mentions the catering like it matters because she wants to talk about something that isn’t men. “Celebrity chef,” she says. “Name I can’t pronounce. Tiny plates that taste like someone’s grandma cooked them in a kitchen the size of a closet. We will eat carbs before we go and then pretend we like foam.”
Somewhere between the hair and the earrings, she drops what she thinks she’s hiding in her bag. “Rumors say the founder might actually show,” she informs me too casually. “Like in the flesh. He’s usually a ghost. Or a photo next to a check.”
“Ward,” I gasp.
She watches me in the mirror. “You said his voice was…” She searches for something that sounds clinical and lands on, “Even.”
The word is uncomplicated and not neutral. It lives next to a dial tone in my head.
“If he’s there, you don’t have to do anything,” she says. “We can go in, do a lap, smile at the right cameras, make a donation to a thing that matters, steal three canapés, and leave before they invent a speech for you.”
“I know,” I say. My pulse bumps once, hard enough that the skin at my throat tells on me. Lila pretends not to see it. She pins one last thing and steps back.
“Look,” she exclaims.
The dress fits like it knows what it’s doing. My shoulder blades look like lines. The low knot she makes out of my hair feels only barely held, which means it will hold all night. The face is mine with less noise: lashes even, mouth a shade that doesn’t fight the silk, nothing that will run when I sweat. The paint on my knuckle shows under the lamp. I flex my hand once and the muscle moves. Lila nods at the mirror like she built me. “Good,” she says. “You look like yourself going to war in a ballroom.”
“Romantic,” I scoff.
“Realistic,” she says.
Jonah knocks and lets himself in backward, carrying a garment bag like a person smuggling contraband. He stops when he sees me, and for a second the idiot grin slides off and something else lives where it was. “Well, hello,” he whistles. Then he recovers. “You look like a problem I don’t have the vocabulary for. In a good way.”
“Don’t make it weird,” Lila says, passing him a lint roller to keep his hands busy. “She’s already married to her principles. You’re here to carry things and look friendly.”
He does both. He makes a show of bowing in the middle of the studio to diffuse whatever moment tried to happen. “At your service, milady,” he bows. I brush the silk by my hip to check for static; there isn’t any. Lila snaps a quick photo of the three ofus because she is sentimental and likes receipts even when she pretends she isn’t.
We eat bowls of plain pasta standing up like sinners because Lila insists on carbs and sanity before a night of air kisses. Jonah contributes by telling a story about a commissioning client who tried to pay him in “exposure” and a basket of artisanal pickles. He declined both. We laugh like hyenas. My phone buzzes once on the counter.Unknown number:We’ll be present but out of frame. Preview day protocols apply.I lock the screen without replying.
We leave the studio at six in a car Lila sweet-talked out of the gallery. I lock the door, check it twice, and then make myself stop. Jonah slides into the back with the garment bag he refuses to crease. Lila takes the front and strategizes with the driver like she personally designed the city. I sit behind her and press my hand flat on my knee until I trust it not to tremble.
The city rolls by like it decided to dress up too. Holiday lights still hang in places that forgot to take them down. The harbor glints in the distance. The terminal that used to hold crates now holds parties. When we pull up, the building wears a new skin: chandeliers hang from the exposed beams like frozen waterfalls; a carpet runs up the steps; the air smells like sea and something expensive in a way you can’t name. Security stands visible enough to make donors feel important and discreet enough to pretend they don’t exist.
“Deep breath,” Lila says, hand on the door handle like a referee. “We have a plan. We enter. We find the person at the desk who owes me a favor. We get your badge, so you don’t get asked for your name like you’re a spouse. We do a lap. We stop at the side lounge to make sure your pieces are hung straight. We let two cameras have your face for exactly ten seconds. We eat one real bite. We leave when I tap your wrist twice. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” I look at Jonah. “You good?”
He salutes with the garment bag. “I am here to be harmless and to lift heavy things. I can also smile. It makes me look like a puppy. They won’t know what to do with me.”
“They will try to adopt you,” Lila snorts. “Stay near us or some hedge fund will take you home.”
We climb. The carpet swallows the sound of heels. The entry hall opens and the event space does what it was engineered to do: swallow a thousand people and make it feel like an invitation. Soft jazz comes from somewhere without a source. The chandeliers’ light hits skin and turns donors into the kind of people who think they do good because they’re lit well. The silent auction tables are stacked with promises:Hope Package,Recovery Grant,Innovation Incubator. A woman in a dress that cost a car tries a bite of something on a spoon and closes her eyes like the spoon solved any real problem.
The check-in desk is staffed by people whose smiles read as efficient. Lila cuts a line with an apology that doesn’t sound like one and says my name before the person behind the computer has to ask. They hand over a badge and a small envelope with a table number and a request card for “photo preferences.” Lila writesno step-and-repeat, two roaming onlyand slides it back like she signs treaties for a living.
We move as a unit. The first photographer snaps before I’m ready. Lila adjusts our angle and we give him the picture he wants without handing him everything. “Aurora!” a woman trills near my ear and then tells me her name without waiting for my interest. She grips my forearm with fingers that say she does Pilates and charity lunches. She says she loved the Ledger piece and that I’m doing “important work.” I saythank youwithout jumping on the wordimportantlike a trampoline. We keep moving.
