Chapter 13 – Aurora #2
“Walk me through,” she says. “How many numbers, how many traps?”
I give her the broad strokes. Stipend line.
Studio line. Safety review line. Travel notice line.
She interrupts only to translate theory into practice.
“Safety review means we tell them where your stuff is going so they can move ropes and security and donors and their internal PR in case someone tries to make a scandal out of a painting,” she says.
“Travel notice means they don’t find out on Instagram that you went to Philly to see a show.
Studio line means you’ll have a door with a badge.
Stipend line means your landlord doesn’t get to write you an email with seventeen exclamation points this month. ”
“And the NDAs?” I ask.
“Standard,” she says. “Except for the part where they broaden ‘programs’ to mean anything they might one day want to do. It’s how foundations avoid being embarrassed in newspapers.
Which is also how abusers avoid being named.
” She leaves the sentence where it lands.
“Do you want me to bring this to a lawyer who hates men with money?”
“Yes,” I agree, because wanting help is not weakness and because wanting a lawyer is the only way to respond to a document that weighs more than any letter should.
“Copy,” she says. “I will bribe my cousin with dumplings and make him read it with his I hate capitalism, but I love contracts face on. Deadline?”
“They didn’t give one,” I say. “That’s the trick. No deadline, but we all know saying nothing for a week looks like a no, and saying yes today reads like obedience.”
She hums. I can hear her picturing headlines and board rooms and the way donors lean in when they think they’ve purchased proximity. “Do you want it?” she asks finally. “The studio, the stipend, the levers—do you want it?”
“I want to work,” I say. “I want to pay rent. I want to paint without thinking about how many hours I can keep the heat on in January.” I look at the red spiral again. It looks back. “ But I don’t want to be a pawn. And this reads like being put on a board.”
“You’re already on a board,” she says gently. “You just proved you can move like a queen. Take the part that helps you move. Make them pay you for the privilege of doing the right thing. Put your terms in ink.”
“And if their terms are hidden,” I say.
“Then we find them,” she says. “We either cut them out or we light them on fire.”
“We’re not lighting anything on fire,” I say.
“Not literal fire,” she says. “Political fire. Instagram fire. The quiet kind where we let them think they almost made a decision and then we make it for them.”
I smile because she makes it sound easy. It isn’t. But the feeling helps. “Where are you,” I ask.
“On a sidewalk outside a noodle place, wishing I had three mouths,” she says. “Bring the contract. Bring your scary face. I’ll bring pens.”
“Give me an hour,” I say.
“Take two,” she says. “Sleep in one of them. Try. And… hey, Jonah?”
“Texted,” I say.
“And?”
“Vague,” I say. “Out of town, maybe. Something came up.”
“That’s not Jonah,” she says immediately. “He’s a verbal raccoon. He doesn’t know how to do maybe.”
“I know,” I say. “It reads like management.”
“By whom?” A pointless question considering we both know the answer.
“By whom?” I echo, because I’m not saying his name into the air like an incantation.
“Okay,” she says, her voice sharpening. “We’ll pull him in tomorrow.
I’ll text his friend who owes me a favor and find out where he’s actually going.
If he got lured away with a check, good for him.
If he got redirected because someone doesn’t like his proximity to your face, I will turn into a wasp. ”
“Be gentle,” I admonish. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Wasping will be tailored,” she says, then softens. “Eat. Shower. Breathe. Read. I’ll see you at two.”
“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 at Dear Ms. Hale again.
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 type no statement at this time and 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 type Maybe.
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 with microphones 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.”