Ghost stretched on his bed, his long legs extending in that particular greyhound way that always made me smile despitemyself. He yawned, showing impressive teeth, and fixed me with a look that seemed to say:You've already decided. Stop pretending you haven't.
He was right. He was always right, my ridiculous elegant dog.
I opened a reply window.
Mr. Besharov,
Thank you for your inquiry. I've reviewed your proposal and I'm willing to meet to discuss further details.
The Vasiliev Gallery, tomorrow at 2pm, works for my schedule.
I should mention that I prefer to assess projects before committing to them. Any meeting would be preliminary consultation only, with no obligation on either side.
Regards,
Auralia Hart
I sent it before I could second-guess myself.
Then I sat very still in my studio, watching the morning light shift across my worktable, and tried to convince myself I wasn't making a terrible mistake.
TheVasilievGalleryoccupiedthe ground floor of a converted warehouse in Chelsea, and it was exactly as hostile as I'd anticipated—brickwork painted aggressive white, concrete floors polished to a mirror shine that reflected the overhead lights directly into your retinas, the kind of space designed to make art look expensive and people feel inadequate.
I stood on the sidewalk outside, unable to make myself go in.
Four minutes. I stood there for four full minutes, counting my breaths the way Lis had taught me, running through mypreparation like a pre-flight checklist. Meeting with Maksim Besharov at 2pm. Hear his proposal. Make no commitments. In and out in thirty minutes maximum.
Thirty minutes was optimistic. I knew that even as I thought it. The fluorescent lighting visible through the glass doors was already making my eyes ache, and I hadn't even stepped inside yet.
I focused on my breathing. Kept it even. The rhythm helped, gave my brain something to count instead of catastrophize.
My clothes felt like armor today, which was the point. Black trousers with a crease sharp enough to cut paper. Black silk blouse, expensive enough that people noticed but understated enough that they wouldn't comment. A structured blazer with shoulders that made me feel less small, less vulnerable, less like someone who could be dismissed with a glance.
My hair was pulled back so tight my scalp ached. No loose strands. Nothing that could fall into my face or distract me with movement in my peripheral vision.
No jewelry except my grandmother's ring—a thin gold band with a tiny sapphire that had been worth almost nothing even when it was new. I twisted it compulsively as I stood there, turning it around and around my finger, feeling the familiar groove it had worn into my skin over thirteen years of anxious fidgeting.
Grandmother would have told me to stop procrastinating.
I pushed through the glass doors.
Inside, the gallery was exactly as awful as I'd anticipated. Worse, somehow, because anticipating something terrible never actually prepared you for the reality of experiencing it.
The light hit me first. Not natural daylight, which I could have managed, but that particular frequency of artificial brightness that galleries favored—supposedly to show art at its best, but really just an assault on anyone with sensory sensitivities. Thewhite walls amplified everything, bouncing light back and forth until there was no shadow anywhere, no relief, no place for my eyes to rest.
The quiet came next. Not silence—there was a low hum from the climate control system, the distant murmur of someone speaking in another room—but that pressurized quiet that made every sound feel amplified. My footsteps echoed on the polished concrete like judgments. My breathing seemed too loud.
The smell was neutral, which should have been fine but somehow made it worse. Nothing to anchor myself to. Nothing familiar. Just the vague chemical absence of carefully filtered air.
A woman at the reception desk looked up with the particular smile of someone assessing net worth. Her eyes tracked over my blazer, my shoes, my understated jewelry, performing calculations I couldn't follow but could certainly feel.
I opened my mouth to speak and nothing came out.
This happened sometimes. The words got stuck somewhere between my brain and my throat, tangled in the overwhelming input of a new environment. I knew what I wanted to say—I have an appointment with Maksim Besharov—but the sentence refused to form.
The woman's smile flickered. Not quite impatient yet, but heading there.
I tried again.
