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Dear Shira, Thank you for submitting your work to our gallery! We’ve reviewed your work and loved it—your take on the memory candle is startlingly bright and original and like nothing we’ve exhibited before. We would love to discuss representation and an exhibit with you—are you available for a Zoom chat next week? Or, if you happen to be in person in the Philadelphia area (I know you mentioned you were moving, but I’m not sure when) we’d love to take you out to dinner…

From Leo David’s email inbox, September:

Hi Leo, We never met in person, but my name is Elizabeth Arnold—my husband and I purchased the home you renovated at 118 York Street. When we were looking at home listings, we were always wary of homes that had been flipped, and yours was no exception, but our real estate agent persuaded us to take a look anyway, and I’m so glad he did! The work you did really brought out the historical character of the house, and I love the little touches you put in…

Texts between Shira Levinson and Leo David, September:

Shira: Happy birthday!

Leo: Thanks!

Shira:…

Leo:…

22

Year Seven

Shira had almost a week between quitting her job and boarding her flight across the country, so she decided to use those six days as a kind of farewell to Los Angeles. She met her old work friends and art friends for final rounds of drinks, giving one another toasts and promises to stay in touch that she knew even as the glasses clinked were probably going to be broken. She went for final walks in Griffith Park and waved farewell to the California condors at the LA Zoo. She took final trips to the Getty and the observatory and the La Brea Tar Pits to marvel at all those creatures whose skeletons had stood the test of time. Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

One of her last farewell trips was to LACMA, the art museum. She’d loved coming here as a gallery assistant, taking a break from the dog-eat-dog gallery world to listen to her footsteps echo in these grand halls, taking in works that had stood the test of time, even if it was not quite as much time as a mammoth skeleton had endured. For some reason, she’d always liked the way museums smelled. Pristine, clean, not like the paint and turpentine of her studio. Art divorced from the messy processes of creation.

And then, of course, it got really messy. She rounded the corner away from Jeff Koons’s Balloon Dog (overrated, she’d always thought) and came face-to-face with a rotating exhibition. Staggeringly big, gloriously beautiful paintings, explosions of color and light and hope and despair. At first they looked abstract, but then, as you focused, you could see the people in them, their bodies contorting into impossible positions, wings and beaks and feet bursting forth as they finally, finally flew.

One of the reasons Shira had liked working in the art world was that feeling when a piece of art spoke to her, when she looked at something and it was like the something was looking back into her, pulling out a feeling or an idea she knew but hadn’t known she knew, and putting it on a canvas or a stand. She took a few steps closer to read the name on the exhibit card.

Danica.

She blew out a breath of air, taking an instinctive step back. It had been long enough since their friend breakup that she was beginning to suspect seeing Danica’s name, especially when unexpected, would never not feel like a small electric shock or a light kick in the stomach. But that was it for now, she was surprised to realize. No wave of pain or anger. No—

“Is this piece speaking to you?” someone said, way too close to Shira’s ear. She turned, expecting to see a docent or tour guide, someone excited to share everything they knew about the art and the artist, but no.

It was the artist herself.

Danica clearly hadn’t recognized Shira from the back, maybe because Shira had let her hair go curly after leaving the gallery; her eyebrows jumped up nearly to her hairline upon seeing Shira’s face. Shira knew this game well: Sidle up to someone looking at your work; figure out how they’re feeling about it; cry if they hate it, but reveal yourself as the artist if they love it and bask in the glow of their praise.

No basking here. Danica looked a little like she might throw up. Shira remembered that look well; she’d held Danica’s hair back over the toilet multiple times in college. It felt a little bit like she was doing that again now, like she was hunched over on the floor and something was compressing her chest, and okay, maybe it wasn’t anything like that at all, maybe it was like a heart attack.

It wasn’t like they could pretend they hadn’t seen each other. Shira nodded with some effort, fighting back the ingrained urge to smile, smile, don’t forget you have resting bitch face. “Hi.”

“Hi,” Danica said back. Shira stared at her. She stared at Shira. Shira wondered if this was the beginning of a staring contest, one with mortal consequences for the loser.

What should she do? Part of her wanted to tell Danica right here, right now, that she’d never stolen her idea and she wished Danica had given her the chance to tell her that when it mattered. Another part of her wanted to yell at her, to tell her how much Shira hated her for grabbing the wheel and crashing her life into a wall for a stupid reason. And another part of her, the part of her that still wished they were friends like they’d once been, wanted to pull her into a hug and tell her old friend how proud she was, how excited she was, that she was reaching heights they’d once only ever dreamed of.

Shira could, if she wanted to. Danica was still staring at her, frozen, lips slightly parted as if she were trying to play dead.

Shira turned away first. Forfeited the staring contest. Because what would be the point of any of it? What was done was done. And Shira was surprised to feel a great big breath of air entering her lungs, filling her up, making her light. Freeing her. “The painting is beautiful,” she said, and then she turned on her heel and walked away. Those would be the last words she’d ever say to Danica, she thought. And that was okay. She was okay.

She didn’t wait to see if Danica called her name. She didn’t care. And, on the way out of the museum—which wasn’t right away; she still had exhibits to see, and she wasn’t going to let Danica scare her off—she unfollowed Ellery and Nora on social media and deleted their numbers from her phone.

It was just getting dark as she exited, which meant the light installation was beginning to sparkle outside the museum, guests oohing and aahing at the way the lights glittered like the stars that light pollution kept them from seeing. Shira let the light blaze in her vision, blotting out everything else, and then she turned to go home.

Not home. Home wasn’t here, not anymore. Because the next day, before she flew out, she left her apartment key on the clean, bare kitchen countertop, taking a deep breath as she surveyed the expanse of empty space that had once been cluttered by furniture she’d picked up off the curb and piles of books stacked all over the floor in lieu of bookshelves. Most of it had been unloaded on Facebook Marketplace for a couple of bucks; the few things she couldn’t bear to part with were making their very slow, very expensive way across the country toward her parents’ house. That included her work clothes: She hoped their trip wasn’t too slow, because she’d need them in January when she started the new marketing job a member of her synagogue in LA had helped her procure.

“Excuse me.” She shook the thoughts out of her head, returning to the present, where she had to stand up from her aisle seat to allow the middle-seater in. The plane air-conditioning hummed overhead, already making her shiver. Once the person next to her sat down, she followed suit, glancing over at him. He wasn’t playing Washing Dishes at the End of the World or its less well-received sequel; he was swiping a dating app on his phone. Shira hoped her profile wouldn’t pop up. She hadn’t opened it in ages. Too busy. Way too busy.

She pulled out her phone, though. Considered opening up the dating app and presetting her location to Philadelphia. Opened up her messages app instead. Scrolled down, down, down. Her thumb hovered over her last message with Leo, which was a Thanks! from him after she’d wished him a happy birthday back at the end of September. Nothing since then.