“Two,” I echo, and hang up because if I keep her on the line she’ll stay until I forget how to be alone.
The loft returns to its hum. The contract sits on the table where I can’t not see it. I carry it to the desk because putting it out of sight would make it a ghost and I don’t want ghosts; I want problems where I can point at them. I tuck the letter back into the envelope, so I don’t have to look atDear Ms. Haleagain.
I put the card on top of the envelope without thinking. The black looks tidy there, like a label. I move it under, then away, then back again because being honest means admitting I want both things—money that lets me breathe and autonomy that lets me sleep.
I make eggs because eggs are cheap and eggs make brains behave. I eat them standing up at the sink like a person avoiding decisions. When I finish, I wash the pan by hand because using the dishwasher for a pan is like using a crane to move a chair. The mundane task helps. It doesn’t fix anything. It just makes my hands do something that isn’t clenching.
My sketchbook is on the shelf where I left it. I pull it down to see whether my hand will tell the truth if my mouth won’t. The pencil finds a line before my head does. A stair. Of course. Two risers, a landing, the short wall you can use to hide for a breath before you walk into a corridor that smells like cedar. I put the pencil down like it’s a knife.
My email pings. The museum wants to confirm a time for the walkthrough tomorrow, and the press wants a quote about “the importance of institutional partnerships.” I typeno statement at this timeand hit send before I can dress it in words that will get used against me. Another ping. A reporter I like asks if I’ll participate in a panel on “Art and Ethics: Naming the Line.” I typeMaybe. Send topics.That one I might do. I like talking about lines when I get to draw them.
A shadow moves across the glass of the front window and my body acts like a dog raised on alarms. I hold my breath. It’s only the mail carrier’s reflection. He doesn’t look up. The shuttered bookshop downstairs has been closed for a year, its windows painted with a half-peeled mural of foxes reading books. People still stop and take pictures when the light hits it right. It feels like a ghost talking to a wall.Fitting.
I try Jonah again.Me:Call me later? I can meet after two.The dots appear.Jonah:Will try. Promise.The words feel like him and not like him at the same time. People can be coached without using a script. They can also be bought lunch and told they’re brilliant for an hour. Either way, they stop showing up where you expect them. I don’t like the way my stomach twists when I think about someone moving him like a chess piece. He doesn’t belong to me. That isn’t the point. The point is I hate visible fingers.
I go to the corner and peel the cover off the small canvas with the red spiral because not looking at it won’t make it less exact. In this light the graphite under drawing shows through the paint. The band along the base reads as texture unless you’ve walked where I walked and then it reads as a hall. He saw it. Of course he did. He read it with his body in the room, not his eyes on a screen. He built the room that taught me the line. I didn’t put that in the Ledger piece. I didn’t put it in any piece. I put it here in oil because this is where I know how to tell the truth without naming names.
Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe truth without names still reads as a map if the wrong man has walked the same corridor.
My chest tightens because I can imagine the line that runs from a piece like this to a press cycle to a hallway with a reporter and a girl who doesn’t want to be seen being photographed in a place that keeps her alive. I know how fast men withmicrophones can move. That’s what this contract is—an attempt to slow the men down. And also an attempt to put my ankle in a loop that looks like a bracelet.
I sit on the floor. Contract in one hand. Card in the other. Two objects. Two choices. There’s a third choice which would be to ignore both. I could decline and keep painting and let them move their ropes where they want and say no to press and keep the cloth over the camera and pretend that if I stand still enough, the net won’t move. I know better. Stillness reads as permission in rooms that want you quiet.
I set both things down and look at my hands. The paint stain under the nail is gone. I miss it. I pick up the card again and press the corner into my palm. My body remembers the threat-response rhythm and settles a notch. I hate that it helps. I hate that the number feels like a tool.
I stand, walk to the desk, and put the contract into a folder on the desk, in plain sight, where I can’t pretend this isn’t happening to me and around me.
The phone lies on the table like it didn’t just produce an envelope that weighs more than breakfast. I flip to the unknown number that isn’t unknown anymore. I didn’t save it as a name. I left it as digits because names give things a shape and I wasn’t ready last night to admit this thing had one.
I hover because hovering makes me feel like I’m in control for one more breath.
“I want answers,” I say to the room.
I press dial. The ring is clean. On the third, the line clicks.
“Aurora,” he says. The evenness is the same. It sounds like a pulse steadied by a hand at a wrist. I close my eyes for half a second because that’s all I’ll allow myself.
“We need to talk.”
Chapter 14 – Cassian
From the bay window, the Residency House looks out over the water the way an old captain watches a dock. I chose this wing for two reasons: the cameras don’t cover it, and no one wanders here without a key. The staff calls it the library suite because of the paneling. I think of it as an operating room disguised as a sitting room. Lamps throw islands of light across dark wood. The fire is low by design, heat without drama. The table is an old oak slab with two chairs, the contract flat as a body between them. Two glasses breathe on coasters. I rolled my sleeves because I hate cuffs when I work.
Her voice on the phone has been riding my pulse since morning.We need to talk. Today.I told her where. Negotiation, not seduction. My head keeps repeating it like a rule I mean to follow.
The clock above the mantel ticks like a heart you can hear when a room is too quiet. I walk through the plan again, the way I used to prep an emergency team.Objectives:clarify the contract; make it explicit that the safety review is a shield, not a collar; draw a line between her canvases and real places without giving her a map; get her consent to a schedule that lets me keep cameras and donors pointed away from doors that can’t be seen.Constraints:her pride, my temper, and the fact that telling her the truth means telling her I was the one who walked her into a life of privacy she didn’t ask for.Risks:she leaves; she goes to the press; she lights a match that burns longer than my money.Mitigations:restraint, delay, and a path that looks like her idea.
The door latch clicks. The knob turns and then stops. She steps in with a movement that uses less space than her body could take, wearing a dark coat over street clothes. Rain beads on her hair along the part. She closes the door withoutlooking back and then looks anyway, a quick glance that clocks the hinges and the catch and the distance to the table and the window. She does it like she’s used to doing it and hates that she’s used to doing it.
I don’t move toward her. “Thanks for coming.”
“You saidclarify,” she says. She stands inside the threshold a moment longer than social scripts allow. Her eyes move across the table, the glasses, the two fountain pens laid parallel to the contract, and the chair for her pulled back five inches, that serves as an invitation without a hand. She shrugs out of the coat and hangs it on the stand by the door without taking her eyes off me. Water spots the floor next to the base. She doesn’t apologize for it.
“You wanted answers.” I gesture toward the table. “Let’s start with those.”
She crosses the room and sits, back to the shelves so the window is on her periphery, not blindside. She doesn’t touch the wine. “I want to know why a grant comes with a gag order,” she starts. “And why a residency comes with a tracking plan.”
The contract lies under the lamp like a lit field. I put my palm flat on the top page to keep it from curling. “It doesn’t,” I clarify. “The NDA is standard. The safety review clause is coordination, so we don’t put people in danger by putting your work in the wrong room.”
