She moved through the studio slowly, stopping at each person’s work with the patience of someone who didn’t waste attention. When she reached mine, she didn’t speak right away. She just looked.
I waited, heart tapping.
Finally, she said, “These are different.”
“They’re still mine,” I replied.
“That’s not what I mean.” Her gaze flicked to me. “You’re closer.”
“Closer to what?” I asked, and instantly regretted it.
Élodie’s mouth curved, faint and sharp. “That’s the right question.”
She reached out and tapped one print with a single finger—my photograph of the door from my apartment, the one I’d taken after I saw him. The one that looked like nothing and felt like everything.
“Why this?” she asked.
I could have lied. I could have said it was about thresholds, about private spaces, about the city’s obsession with what was hidden.
Instead, I said the truth in the safest shape I could find.
“I’m thinking about access,” I said.
Élodie’s eyes narrowed slightly, like she approved and didn’t want me to know it. “Good,” she said. “Access is always the point.”
She stepped back, folding her arms. “And last night?”
My pulse tripped. “Last night?”
Élodie’s gaze stayed on me, unblinking. “You went.”
It wasn’t a question. Of course, she knew. She’d probably encouraged half the program to attend, if only to see who followed her orbit and who didn’t.
“Yes,” I said.
“And?”
“And what?”
Élodie shrugged one shoulder. “Did you see something worth seeing?”
I stared at her, my mind suddenly blank. I wasn’t used to being interrogated about my personal life by a woman who treated art like religion.
I swallowed. “I met someone.”
Élodie’s expression didn’t change, but something behind her eyes sharpened. “Did you?”
“It was brief,” I added quickly, because I wasn’t sure what I was admitting.
Élodie held my gaze for a moment that felt like a test. Then she looked back at my prints. “Brief things can have long shadows,” she said, and moved on.
I stood there, cheeks warm, feeling like I’d just been seen too clearly by someone who didn’t even know what she’d seen.
The rest of the afternoon blurred into work. I tried to focus on editing, on sequencing, on my artist statement—which was currently a pathetic paragraph that sounded like it had been written by a robot.
I am exploring liminality. I am interested in thresholds.
I deleted it, started over, deleted again.
