Chapter 17 – Aurora #2
“You haven’t said no,” she counters. “And you hate not deciding more than you hate consequences.” She’s not wrong.
She pushes my laptop toward me, flips it nice-side-up, and taps the trackpad until the screen flares to life with the press page I couldn’t get past at three in the morning.
“Word it how you want. But write it now before you start sanding your own edges off to survive the day.”
I set the invitation beside the laptop, fingers on the keys without touching them.
The empty email window blinks like a patient heartbeat on a monitor.
Subject line: Re: Artist Residency Pilot — Acceptance mpatel@
Subject: Re: Artist Residency Pilot — Acceptance her presence is non negotiable. She will sign any necessary NDA.
Any work (sketches, notes, studies) created by me during the residency remains my sole property; the Foundation receives no ownership interest.
The “safety review” process will not be used to delay or cancel exhibitions absent a clearly articulated, time-bound risk defined in writing and agreed upon jointly.
No press or social media content will be created by the Foundation regarding my site visit or residency without my written consent.
Transportation to/from the site occurs at a mutually agreeable time. I will not travel alone.
If these are acceptable, I can meet today at 10 a.m. to sign updated paperwork and discuss logistics. I appreciate the Foundation’s stated commitment that safety review is not creative control. I’m committed to the same: protecting vulnerable people is not optional.
Best,
Aurora Hale
Lila makes a satisfied sound that starts as a hum and ends as a growl. “Number three is going to give legal a rash,” she says approvingly. “Which means it’s doing its job.”
“Number one is going to make him mad.” I smirk, because saying it flat keeps me from dressing the sentence in fear.
“Number one makes me happy,” she says. “Which is what we’re prioritizing right now.” She hip-checks me with the gentleness you use when someone’s bones are bruised but not broken. “Send it.”
I read it twice. I change non negotiable to non-negotiable with the proper hyphen because if you’re going to pick a fight you might as well do it with correct punctuation. I hover over Send.
If I’m going to be a prisoner, at least I’ll choose the cell. The thought comes uninvited and plants its feet. I don’t love it. I don’t hate it enough to ignore it. Choice is a kind of oxygen. You can breathe on a boat even if someone else built it.
I hit Send before I can start talking myself out of it.
The whoosh is both too loud and not loud enough. I imagine the email falling into someone’s inbox like a coin in a glass: everyone looks; someone pretends not to.
“Good girl,” Lila says in the most patronizing voice on purpose, so I laugh instead of gag. “Now we make a list.”
“Already started,” I say, flipping my notebook to the page I wrote last night when the adrenaline finally learned to walk in a straight line. I show her: Pull Ward clinic grants → vendors → locks. Call Nia. Watch four blocks that smell like cedar.
“You are going to make a very dangerous old woman,” she says, delighted.
“Okay. Logistics. Clothes we don’t mind getting searched.
A bag with a zipper that sticks a little so men get embarrassed and stop.
Snacks because you won’t remember to eat.
Pens, because if they hand you a ballpoint that doesn’t work, I’ll stage a coup. ”
“You’re not staging a coup,” I say. “You’re staging me.”
“Same thing,” she says. She falters, then says the quiet part carefully. “And the other thing is him.”
I know what she means because not saying his name is how we keep him in a box big enough to hold him. “I’m not letting him in a room with me alone,” I say. “Not without a clock and an exit and your foot in the door.”
“Good." She points at the canvas I stretched last night and tuned into a doorway with a hand-shaped negative space. “Also, if you paint him again, you’re going to have to let me title it. I’m thinking ‘Man, Interrupted’.”
“Get out,” I say, grinning despite the ache between my eyes. “Go make your calls. Charm a lawyer. Threaten a senator with your eyebrows. I need twenty minutes to be alone with the part of me that still wants to nap on the floor and wake up in a world without foundations.”
She throws me a salute with two fingers and kiss-smacks the air like a cartoon bandit. “I’ll be back in thirty with food and a cousin who loves clauses. Text if he replies with anything other than ‘yes, ma’am.’ If he replies with ‘ma’am,’ send me his address so I can egg his window.”
The door closes behind her with the soft thud of wood finding home. The studio exhales. I do too, but slower. I pick up my coffee and take a sip that’s gone cold and thin, but it still helps. I set the mug down next to the invitation. The seal stares back at me like an eye. I look away first.
My phone buzzes. Reflex says Jonah. Hope climbs up my throat like a cat with knives. It’s a calendar notification from the gallery: Press follow-up holds. My hope hops down in embarrassment and pretends it was never up there. I text Jonah anyway.
Me: You alive? Lila and I are plotting crimes that require a muralist. Blink twice if you’re fine.
No dots. The message sits like a coin on a table no one’s touching. I pull up his last location in our chat—a pin he dropped three days ago at a diner in Red Hook with a note: “found a pancake that tastes like a cloud.” Useless and exactly like him.
I shower and wash the studio out of my hair, leaving the cedar library in the drain.
I put on jeans that look like I paid for them and a black tank under a blazer Lila bullied me into because it fits across my shoulders without making me feel like a fake.
I don’t paint my face into a mask. I cover the evidence of last night’s war with a little concealer and leave the rest.
By the time Lila bursts back in carrying a paper bag that smells like fried food and a scowling man with a soft briefcase, my heart rate has decided to act like a person’s and not a trapped bird’s.
“This is Mateo,” she announces, depositing the bag on the table and the man in the chair my bag usually occupies.
“He is my cousin, which means he loves me more than he likes you. He read your contract and did a frown at Clause Three that could wither ivy. Mateo, this is the artist we’re shepherding through a hedge maze. ”
Mateo offers a hand I can take or ignore.
I take it because hands are proof of good faith.
His grip is careful; his eyes are the kind that have lived with both man’s law and family gossip.
“The addendum you proposed is going to make them itchy,” he says without preface.
“Good. If they refuse, they’re lying about collaboration.
If they accept, they’ll try to work around it. We will close the holes.”
“You say we like you’re coming,” I say.
He shrugs. “I have nothing better to do than stop a foundation from thinking reasonable means whenever we feel like it. Also, Lila threatened to share a childhood photo I would prefer remain buried.”
“He’s very small, very naked, and very angry about a birthday hat,” Lila supplies. “Don’t test me.”
“Thank you,” I say, because whatever else today becomes, at least I’ll have a person in the room who will stab a sentence if it tries to rob me.
We eat over the invitation like tacticians over a map. Lila rips a fried lump in half and tucks one into my hand. “You’re pale,” she says. “Protein.”
“Oil,” Mateo corrects. He thumbs through a printed copy of the NDA that looks like it’s been living in a pocket of his mind since law school.
“If they tell you no photos once, nod. If they tell you twice, ask why. If they tell you three times, leave. Three times means there’s something on a wall they forgot to take down, and I don’t want you carrying their negligence in your bag. ”
“We’re not leaving,” Lila says. “We’re treating this like a bank visit. In. Out. Smile at the cameras outside. Spit in the ones inside when no one’s looking.”
“Game on,” I whisper.
I breathe once more and give the city back its air. “Your move, Mr. Ward,” I say under my breath, the way you tell a room you know what you’re doing even when the room is owned by a man who thinks he knows it better.