Petra has sent an email to Sarah Vance expressing interest in representing RB for future European exhibitions. Other galleries have reached out too, from Munich, Vienna and Amsterdam.
The circuit is expanding, and fast. But we're not doing another opening like that. Not with Roxy watching other womenapproach me, not with me ready to break the hands of anyone who looks at her too long.
"We need rules," Roxy says, reading the emails over my shoulder. "For future openings."
"Like what?"
"We stay together, no wandering off."
"Agreed."
"And if someone approaches either of us..."
"We shut it down immediately."
"Yeah."
She's quiet for a moment, her fingers tracing patterns on my chest. "I didn't like how I felt last night. Watching that woman touch you."
"How did you feel?"
"Like I wanted to hurt her, and I would have, Dom. It’s something I don’t think I can control."
"That’s normal for us.”
"I’ll keep saying it, we're fucked up."
"I know, long may it continue.”
We spend the next two weeks hunting. I scouted locations during our first days in Berlin, from an abandoned hospital in Köpenick to forgotten Soviet-era buildings, the ruins of old structures left to die after reunification.
We go to the hospital first. It's massive, five stories of concrete and broken windows, graffiti covering every surface. We slip in through a gap in the fence at 2am, Roxy's camera bag over her shoulder.
The interior is gutted. Walls stripped, floors covered in debris, the kind of emptiness that used to hold suffering. Roxyworks methodically. Photographs first wide shots of corridors, close-ups of peeling paint and broken glass, the moonlight creating shadows that look like spirits.
Then she sits on the floor and starts drawing.
I keep watch near the entrance, listening for footsteps or voices. But there's nothing. Just the sound of her pencil on paper and the distant hum of the city. She draws for two hours.
When she's done, she has three new pieces for the second portfolio of drawings of the hospital's death rendered in charcoal and graphite, the eerie nature made beautiful.
"This has been great," she says, showing me the work.
"Something new."
"We should do this in every city. Find the abandoned places, the forgotten spaces. Document them."
"We will, plus it puts more distance from us to the US. Other countries will create confusion."
“Its finally coming together, Dom. I’m so happy.”
The factory in Wedding appears three nights later. I find it during a daylight hunt, an abandoned metalworks facility near the canal, chain-link fence rusted through, windows broken like missing teeth. A place that's been forgotten by everyone except squatters and urban explorers.
We arrive in the early hours of the morning while the city sleeps as the scanner's been quiet for hours. The smell hits us first when we slip through the fence, industrial rot mixed with rust and old machine oil. Something chemical and wrong that makes my throat tight.
"This is great," Roxy whispers.
Inside, the factory floor stretches out like a church of abandonment. Massive machinery sits silent and corroded, conveyor belts frozen mid-motion, metal grinding wheels that haven't turned in decades. Moonlight streams through the broken skylights, creating geometric patterns on the concrete floor.
