Speaker 1: I'm holding a plastic cup of licwmpino at the edge
Speaker 1: of the gallery's main room, half lessening to the constant
Speaker 1: rune of conversation, half wishing I ducked up for smoke.
Speaker 1: Ten minutes ago. The openings packed new voices to Mosses
Speaker 1: quarterly show for emerging painters. Normally, I'd be moving through
Speaker 1: the crowd, glancing at sight lines, mentally fixing a crooked frame,
Speaker 1: making small talk with old clients and new artists. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm awkwardly parked by the window, phone in my hand,
Speaker 1: pretending to study a sculpture made of Wilder wrenches. I
Speaker 1: hung myself that morning, telling myself not to check the
Speaker 1: time again. She's late again, Elena texted me an hour
Speaker 1: ago a pop up and stole w slashed her moss
Speaker 1: finishing last panel. Save me some of that free cheese.
Speaker 1: Love you. I stare through the window at the city
Speaker 1: evening sun falling off the top of the old warehouse
Speaker 1: across the street, watching the reflective movement of guests. There's
Speaker 1: a faint bass rumble from the sand piece in the
Speaker 1: next room. Someone's kid against all advisories, I notice start
Speaker 1: in between the legs and out on the floor. Too
Speaker 1: many people I know who will eventually realize I'm alone
Speaker 1: here for too long. I told Alina, I come solo.
Speaker 1: Helped to moss wrangle the event. This gallery is tiny
Speaker 1: but influential. The white wall's chip from years of frantic
Speaker 1: emerging artist activity. She els filled with whatever. He'd just
Speaker 1: quiet from Berlin on Mexico City last month. Still, this
Speaker 1: was an important night. Three of Elina's friends were showing
Speaker 1: for the first time, and a collector was rumored to
Speaker 1: stop by. We promise each other we'd show up for
Speaker 1: the scene, as she always said. But now I'm on
Speaker 1: my second plastic poor, keeping one eye on the door.
Speaker 1: The first to find me is Leslie, all bangs and
Speaker 1: red lipstick, waving a wine glass precariously over someone's minimalist sketch.
Speaker 1: Where's your better half, Jesse, don't tell me? She's running
Speaker 1: late again. Her voice is in low, but somehow it
Speaker 1: cuts through the whole room. I fumble for humor. Ye,
Speaker 1: no LENI anything for last minute prep. I'm just here
Speaker 1: keeping this seat warm. Leslie grins, then leans in, dropping
Speaker 1: her voice. You're a trusting man, letting her spend so
Speaker 1: much time with Tomos. I'd be at the random pop
Speaker 1: up in a heartbeat. If my partner was the friendly
Speaker 1: with him, it's meant as to tease a knock at
Speaker 1: Toumos's reputation. But let's s's not cruel. It's more like
Speaker 1: she's inviting me to play along. I laugh, heart oddly
Speaker 1: tight in my chest. It's all about exposure, right, networking opportunity.
Speaker 1: She kill me if I macromanaged. Leslie raises one eyebrow
Speaker 1: in shrugs, moving off to greet another artist. I turned
Speaker 1: back to my phone, unlocking it with a sweaty thumb.
Speaker 1: Nothing from Melinia except the earlier text, but three minutes
Speaker 1: ago to Moss post it on Instagram. Grainy boomerang, their
Speaker 1: faces half lit by purple neon, both smiling, clinking glasses.
Speaker 1: El Lenovicak keeps as going art as power hour at Sotto,
Speaker 1: prepping for greatness. Soto is a wine bar round the corner.
Speaker 1: I try briefly to reassure myself. Maybe this one by
Speaker 1: for posting soul drinks. Maybe the crews with them, and
Speaker 1: to pop up is nearby. Still it stings, the easy
Speaker 1: comfort of their pose, the way she didn't mention it
Speaker 1: when I'd asked earlier what her evening looked like. I
Speaker 1: call her voice mail, I text see you soon, Everything okay,
Speaker 1: and then ashamed to lead it before hitting sand behind
Speaker 1: the glass. The city is all reflection lights of the gallery,
Speaker 1: so wites moving behind me. I tried to play back
Speaker 1: what she'd said. Tomos wrote me into his pop upch
Speaker 1: and be more than twenty thirty minutes Max. It's been
Speaker 1: over two hours. I only know where she is because
Speaker 1: she's smiling in someone else's photo. One of her friends, Marco,
Speaker 1: sidles up, feigning casual Ilina coming to night, or as
Speaker 1: Tomos running his menty ragged as usual. I smile, thinly
Speaker 1: drained and give my rehearsed answer. She'll be here soon,
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure I believe it this time. When
Speaker 1: you've been together long enough, you start a catalog. The
Speaker 1: little white lies, the half true toll for convenience, the
Speaker 1: omissions meant to spre some one's feelings. Where artists, ambiguity
Speaker 1: is our second language. But to night, something feels different,
Speaker 1: like a lion is being drawn in a race before
Speaker 1: I can see it. By the time the gallery is
Speaker 1: half empty, I've checked Instagram texts and even scrolled to
Speaker 1: Moss's stories three times, just to see if my wife's
Speaker 1: in another frame. She isn't. No one brings it up again.
Speaker 1: The crowd disperses in twos and threes, and I pretend
Speaker 1: I have somewhere else to be. The city outside is
Speaker 1: cooling fast, jog is moving through the dusk. When she
Speaker 1: finally calls at nearly eleven, long after the show officially ended,
Speaker 1: I let it rin twice before answer in sorry, love,
Speaker 1: Tomos needed a hand packing the installation truck. You know
Speaker 1: how he is. Everything's so last minute. I want to
Speaker 1: say something smart, something warm, but all I manages. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope it went well. She doesn't pick up on
Speaker 1: my tone. Absolutely exhausted, but I got a lot done.
Speaker 1: See you soon. She hangs up first. It's past midnight
Speaker 1: by the time she comes home. Hair must paint on
Speaker 1: her jeans, but she's bright eyed already scrolling through messages.
Speaker 1: You should have seen the canvas to moss debut. People
Speaker 1: lost it. I want to ask if she have fun
Speaker 1: at Soto for if I should just learn to stop
Speaker 1: counting ours that don't belong to me. I say nothing.
Speaker 1: She kisses my cheek, offers me last night's left overs.
Speaker 1: And drifts straight into describing her night, only the pop
Speaker 1: up in the technical details, nothing about Sorto or the hour.
Speaker 1: My mind skips along the surface of our old routines,
Speaker 1: half listening for cracks. It wasn't always like this. There
Speaker 1: were years when our world was only us in a
Speaker 1: battered paints guard kitchen table. We met at an outdoor aurfare.
Speaker 1: Both of us broke awkward, infatuated with the possibility that
Speaker 1: two people devoted to their own messy projects could also
Speaker 1: become something together. I'd volunteered to help assemble pop up
Speaker 1: walls for a friend, pretending to be handier than I
Speaker 1: actually was, And Elena showed up mid morning, combat boots
Speaker 1: while brown hair, an armful of canvasses, mirrors of blue
Speaker 1: oil across her wrist. We argued about the measurements, made
Speaker 1: each other laugh, and when the rain started, crouched beneath
Speaker 1: a tent, huddling over cold panadas and even colder coffee.
Speaker 1: She told me she only dated other artists. I told
Speaker 1: her I only fell in love with rebels. The first
Speaker 1: years blurred together. Late night spent hanging her paintings in
Speaker 1: windall as clubs, chasing tipsy bis through cramped openings, running
Speaker 1: out of money, and then making a joke out of it.
Speaker 1: At two a m. We moved into a loft with
Speaker 1: thin walls and too much sunlight, neighbors who complain about
Speaker 1: the scent of turpentine and the relentless tap of my drill.
Speaker 1: Her paintings began to fill every available surface. Huge riders, abstracts, faces,
Speaker 1: I recognize, landscapes from trips we'd barely been able to afford.
Speaker 1: I hummed my own pieces above the couch, sculptural diagrams
Speaker 1: of what I thought a good relationship could be. Salvage
Speaker 1: would read things found at the side of the road.
Speaker 1: People in the scene called us the inseparables, not just
Speaker 1: in law, but a creative unit. Hosting after parties that
Speaker 1: turned into debates about color theory versus architecture, helping each
Speaker 1: of the whole, massive frames across the city, or a
Speaker 1: more exhausted sundays bickering about whose terran it was to
Speaker 1: make coffee. Our families were both small, scattered. Her parents
Speaker 1: would drive up from Oregon for her shows, her mom
Speaker 1: always arriving with something home baked. My own folks in
Speaker 1: Nebraskt syntax of encouragement before big curations, knock m Dad,
Speaker 1: Jesse set up here and s also no one else
Speaker 1: stairs rearrange a thing. We learned to lean into each
Speaker 1: other's strengths and call out each other's weaknesses, to trust,
Speaker 1: because it was easier than cheating. But the last year
Speaker 1: everything had tightened. Lina's ales dried up. She blamed the
Speaker 1: lasty curation climate, and I thought she was right. But truthfully,
Speaker 1: clients had gone us where, maybe for newer names, maybe
Speaker 1: because the market had shifted. I was passed over for
Speaker 1: commission at a major museum, which I didn't tell anyone
Speaker 1: for weeks, except eventually Elena. She put her arms around
Speaker 1: me whispered, we'll get the next one. We always do
Speaker 1: for Moss entered our orbit half way through that bad
Speaker 1: stretch of GALLEYOA, with a kind of charrisma that made
Speaker 1: people forget they'd already bought too much art or stayed
Speaker 1: out too late late thirties Spanish accent, wilder days for
Speaker 1: installations nobody thought were feasible. He made Alena laugh like
Speaker 1: few people could. The first time we met, he slapped
Speaker 1: me hard on the back and called my last exhibit
Speaker 1: gutsy trash, too honest to be commercial. I like it.
Speaker 1: He saw something in Elena's work, a spark, he said,
Speaker 1: and had her do a solo show within six months.
Speaker 1: I wanted Elena to have every chance that came her way.
Speaker 1: I meant that even when it's done. When her schedules
Speaker 1: started filling with the gallery, prep with Tourmos and she
Speaker 1: got home late, smelling of wine and acrilic, I told
Speaker 1: myself opportunities like this were rare. That you support the
Speaker 1: person you love even as your own failures begin to
Speaker 1: weigh heavier. At first, Tomos was a fixed point in
Speaker 1: our life. The mentor she called for advice, the pigeon
Speaker 1: who seemed invested in her career. Eventually, it felt like
Speaker 1: there was a before and after before Tomos, After Tomos.
Speaker 1: I tried to keep the distinction blurry, jerking with Alena
Speaker 1: about her Spanish art godfather, letting her see I secure
Speaker 1: enough not to be threatened, even as a part of
Speaker 1: me wondered how much room I was supposed to make
Speaker 1: for someone else's vision of her. Our routines changed. She'd
Speaker 1: head to the gallery at noon and stay out late,
Speaker 1: texting me about events with new collaborators, pop up shows,
Speaker 1: or early meetings. I filled my days with installation work,
Speaker 1: bolding out private collections and avoiding the sense of being replaced,
Speaker 1: even marginally, by a well spinning just out of my sight. Still,
Speaker 1: we clung to some rituals. Sunday coffee runs to the
Speaker 1: bowdgirl staying up too late watching in ANTV, fighting about
Speaker 1: who left brushes in the sink. I would overlook the
Speaker 1: way she'd linger on her phone after midnight, telling her
Speaker 1: parents she was brain strumming with the team. I convinced
Speaker 1: myself these with the sacrifices of a working creative marriage,
Speaker 1: that mutual trust meant lying secrets, not because you wanted to,
Speaker 1: but because you had to. But secrets have a way
Speaker 1: of pressing against the thin membrane of routine, bulging out
Speaker 1: in places you can't ignore forever. Two weeks after the
Speaker 1: gallery opening, I noticed Alina's schedule was getting harder and
Speaker 1: harder to pin down. Going to the warehouse to moss
Speaker 1: as we're trialing a new lighting design for the spective project.
Speaker 1: Her note on the table read, her hands writing rushed
Speaker 1: and slandered, cup stacked in the sink, her phone chirping
Speaker 1: repeatedly with notifications. I started to joke that Tomos communicated
Speaker 1: entirely in emoji's and exclamation marks. That Tuesday, she came
Speaker 1: home at one in the morning, eyeliners made laughter still
Speaker 1: in her throat, I asked how the lighting testing went,
Speaker 1: and she hesitated too long, then pivoted into a wild
Speaker 1: story about one of the intense fainting during a blackout
Speaker 1: and Tomos having to save the day by plucking in
Speaker 1: his phone flashlight and running commentary were either the whole time.
Speaker 1: I asked, more curious than suspicious, She grinned, of course,
Speaker 1: that's all hands on deck for this one. You know
Speaker 1: that the answers seemed thin, but I'll let it pass.
Speaker 1: If I start accounting the things we let pass, I'd
Speaker 1: have to tally my own failures too. Gradually, the time
Speaker 1: she spent getting ready before casual studio meetings with tomostodout
Speaker 1: expense of perfume she used to only wear for big events.
Speaker 1: New lipstick necklaces I hadn't seen since I lost gallery calltogether.
Speaker 1: I told myself it wasn't for him. That maybe she
Speaker 1: decided to take herself more seriously as lead artist, or
Speaker 1: maybe after a run of bad months, she wanted to
Speaker 1: show up to work feeling powerful. Still, her phone became
Speaker 1: a new border between us, text sliding up at one, two,
Speaker 1: three a m. The moji punctuated messages to Moss's name
Speaker 1: on the lock screen. Once, on a quiet evening, when
Speaker 1: I was at my WORKNNCH, she giggled at something on
Speaker 1: her phone, then quickly silenced it. When I entered the
Speaker 1: room here in a good mood, I said, half flirting,
Speaker 1: just to mean from the gallery group chat, she replied,
Speaker 1: and set the phone aside. Most of the time I
Speaker 1: didn't question it. She was building a life. I thought
Speaker 1: I wanted for her, cultivating contacts, a new work, and
Speaker 1: if I seen left behind, I reminded myself that partnership
Speaker 1: wasn't always about symmetry. But the tension sat there, growing
Speaker 1: sharper with time. One night I sent her a text
Speaker 1: while she was out with the team, just to say
Speaker 1: thinking of you. Hours ticked by screen stayed blank, she
Speaker 1: replied late, apologizing sorry. Tomas was renting about in saw
Speaker 1: budgets again. Barely got a word in love you brain
Speaker 1: check on that movie Tomorrow. Our misconnection stacked up, and now,
Speaker 1: on the rare occasions we were both home before midnight,
Speaker 1: the air was taught both of us pushed to the
Speaker 1: margins of our own routines. I tried to ask about
Speaker 1: her projects. She'd give quick, half interest replies, then vanish
Speaker 1: into phone calls on the balcony or an early sleep.
Speaker 1: I kept reminding myself. Trust is built for moments just
Speaker 1: like this, when you want to indulge your worse suspicions
Speaker 1: but choose not to. But the choice was becoming harder.
Speaker 1: The first real crack came on a Saturday morning. Bilina
Speaker 1: announced she was heading off to a pop up screening
Speaker 1: at the Warehouse New Artists, Crazy Projections to Moss. Asked
Speaker 1: me to handle and stall, don't wagh up. While I'd
Speaker 1: planned on meeting a friend for coffee. Something in her
Speaker 1: tone lingered, hurried, a little forced. I decided, without much
Speaker 1: forthought to stop by the warehouse. I growled to americanos
Speaker 1: and a bag of Cossus texted. I dropped by to
Speaker 1: say hi to the team, expecting at worse groan about
Speaker 1: being an embarrassing spouse. But when I wheeled my bike
Speaker 1: into the block, the roll up gates were shuttered a
Speaker 1: lot empty except for two part cause I didn't recognize
Speaker 1: Through the frosted windows, I saw no lights, no signs
Speaker 1: of activity. I buzzed twice. No answer. Even the neighboring
Speaker 1: barrister he loved to people watch the artists coming and going,
Speaker 1: shrugged and said they hadn't seen any big group that morning.
Speaker 1: I stood there, coffee cups cooling in my hands, battling
Speaker 1: surprise and the urge to make excuses for her. Maybe
Speaker 1: she'd given me the run, addressed by mistake. Maybe the
Speaker 1: team had relocated. Maybe this is what networking looks like, elusive, moveable,
Speaker 1: never quite what it seems back home. I waited for
Speaker 1: a Leana to call. She didn't, not until late that afternoon,
Speaker 1: apologizing in advance. Things shifted, last minute budget cuts to
Speaker 1: Moss move the whole team to his apartment. Had to improvise.
Speaker 1: Didn't want to bother you. It didn't sound right, but
Speaker 1: she was smooth, capable of talking me out of my
Speaker 1: doubts before they could fully form. Later, idly scrolling Instagram,
Speaker 1: I noticed a tagged photo from Tomas, a roof top
Speaker 1: selfie since a cocktail in hand, a Lena posing in
Speaker 1: the background, no team in sight. Whatever the project had been,
Speaker 1: it was hardly a scramble in the warehouse. They both
Speaker 1: looked relaxed and hurried. I asked her about it that night.
Speaker 1: She shruggered, eyes, tired Tomos's idea of a pop up
Speaker 1: as a twenty minute brainswam followed by three hours of drinks.
Speaker 1: I told you, it's all performance with him. I didn't
Speaker 1: want to push. I told myself not to spiral. I
Speaker 1: tried to believe it was just awk old chaos, nothing intentional.
Speaker 1: That week she started making large withdrawals from our joint account,
Speaker 1: hundred's labeled gallery supplies. We never discussed it, but I noticed,
Speaker 1: and when I brought it up, she turned matter of fact,
Speaker 1: communal project. Everything's being pulled. You know how messy these
Speaker 1: budgets get. I asked for details, just to feel included,
Speaker 1: as she told me she couldn't talk specifics yet for
Speaker 1: Grant's secrecy. Her tone was brisk, a little impatient, not unkind,
Speaker 1: but final. It was a small thing, but it landed
Speaker 1: heavy and a guts Something about having to ask made
Speaker 1: me feel peripheral, like an investor whose money is taken
Speaker 1: for granted. We started eating dinners. All A caught her
Speaker 1: in the studio, me on the couch, both scrolling through work,
Speaker 1: silent or with headphones on. She'd cancel weekend hikes, O
Speaker 1: Missium visits last minute. Thomas needs me on a concept
Speaker 1: for the nexture. I stopped bothering to invite her after
Speaker 1: a while. Our evening's filled with silent, polite land minds.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just me noticing. One afternoon, Leslie texted missed
Speaker 1: the old trio. Hezelina disappeared into tom Uslin Forever. Another friend,
Speaker 1: Annie confided bluntly over beers, She's different, nap guarded, like
Speaker 1: everyone's just background to her until MOS's main plot. Did
Speaker 1: something happen between you guys? Iva Marco, who had always
Speaker 1: sided with the Lena and createds bats, mentioned foundedly that
Speaker 1: he'd seen Alena and her master gallery in the Pearl
Speaker 1: District looking pretty cozy on a night She told me
Speaker 1: she was prepping alone. Our friend Grip fractured, some becoming cagy,
Speaker 1: others acting over friendly, as if trying to draw out
Speaker 1: secrets for their own entertainment or amusement. I hated the
Speaker 1: feeling that we were suddenly gossip fodder, but couldn't stop
Speaker 1: myself from scouring every piece of hearsay for a hidden motive.
Speaker 1: The social media post multiply, most featuring a Lena and
Speaker 1: to mossgether events that seemed to materialize out of noble
Speaker 1: wine tastings, concerts, dinner parties had never heard about, each
Speaker 1: tied with things like cash, emerging artists, and hash galla emergie.
Speaker 1: I found myself studying the photos late at night, zooming in,
Speaker 1: inspecting their proximity, searching for the overlap between professional and personal.
Speaker 1: I began to question my own judgment. Did I sound
Speaker 1: like a jealous spouse? Was I only noticing patterns because
Speaker 1: I'd suffered my own career disappointments, because I was becoming
Speaker 1: less central to her daily successes. I told myself it
Speaker 1: was an't fair to assume the worst, that creative people
Speaker 1: have always worked shoulder to shoulder, that blurring boundaries didn't
Speaker 1: have to mean betrayal. Still, the suspicion grew. Sometimes my
Speaker 1: resentment surprised me at Elina, sometimes at Tomas, sometimes at myself.
Speaker 1: When I finally confronted her, it wasn't dramatic, just a
Speaker 1: point a comment while clearing our share workspace after a
Speaker 1: particularly cold dinner. You are gone most nights. I barely
Speaker 1: know what you're working on any more. She closed her laptop,
Speaker 1: set aside. Jesse, I can't drop this project. Tomos's gallery
Speaker 1: is everything for me right now, A big show, a
Speaker 1: possible grunt. I need you to understand the pressure I do,
Speaker 1: I said, though I wasn't sure I want you to
Speaker 1: a space, but lately it feels like you are keeping
Speaker 1: me at Her face hadn't a defensive then wounded. I
Speaker 1: thought you wanted this from me. You pushed me to
Speaker 1: dream bigger, But now I do, and you act like
Speaker 1: I'm betraying you. That's not what I mean it, but
Speaker 1: she shook her head, already done, gathering her phone in
Speaker 1: some sketch books, heading for the balcon I watched her
Speaker 1: through the glass, back lit by city sodium, her breath
Speaker 1: fog in the air. I tried to remember the last
Speaker 1: time she'd smiled at something I'd made, or the last
Speaker 1: night we called into bed truly together, not just two
Speaker 1: artist sharing rent and obligations. For days after, we barely spoke,
Speaker 1: passing like ghosts at the edges of our own lives. Still,
Speaker 1: every time I caught myself growing colder, I made excuses
Speaker 1: for her. A high pressure art world to Moss's relentless
Speaker 1: work schedule, maybe even the simple fact that marriages go
Speaker 1: through rough patches, especially when one partner is feeling left behind.
Speaker 1: But the distance between us was becoming impossible to bridge
Speaker 1: with rationalizations. That Friday, I resolved to try one last
Speaker 1: time to recover whatever spark had gotten loss between grant applications,
Speaker 1: late night installs, and tomosses of a rising profile. I
Speaker 1: suggested a weekend trip to the coast, to just a
Speaker 1: spontaneous escape like we used to deep before dead lines
Speaker 1: and unreturned calls. For the first time in weeks. She
Speaker 1: seemed receptive. That sounds nice, a, Lena, said, her voice
Speaker 1: off as I surprised at her own answer. I breathed easier,
Speaker 1: already imagining us laughing over greasy fish sandwitches, fighting about
Speaker 1: which way to turn at an unsigned intersection, losing ourselves
Speaker 1: in a kind of cheap hotel that doesn't take reservations.
Speaker 1: The morning before our trip, she left thoroughly, not on
Speaker 1: the counter. Long day at the gallery meeting till Moss
Speaker 1: has soughto after. I'll try to make it home early.
Speaker 1: Can you pack my camera? It felt like a step back.
Speaker 1: I set the camera by the front door, along with
Speaker 1: her favorites garlf she'd must place days before, and made
Speaker 1: myself busy lining up last minute details, charging batteries, packing snacks,
Speaker 1: filling the car with gas. The afternoon passed in a
Speaker 1: slow drip of anticipation. I texted twice, all set for
Speaker 1: tomorrow and what time should I pick you up? No
Speaker 1: answer that night. She called round midnight. Her voice was brisk,
Speaker 1: till mows, and I looked at some venues for the
Speaker 1: next project. Sorry you didn't see or takes bad service.
Speaker 1: I'll be back soon, I pressed gently. It is everything
Speaker 1: okay with the gallery. You saund tense, fine, just tired.
Speaker 1: Sorry if I'm distracted. She came home even later, a cheek, flush,
Speaker 1: hair up in a way I hadn't seen for months.
Speaker 1: She barely looked at the back, eyed patched for her
Speaker 1: brushing past me to the bath room while she showered.
Speaker 1: I checked our joint account on a hunch, stomach twisting
Speaker 1: at the string of new supply withdraws. I called the
Speaker 1: Galleries midline, got a generic fore check to Moss's Instagram
Speaker 1: another post, this time from across the city. Lena in
Speaker 1: the background, wine glass lifted captioned under wraps visionaries at work.
Speaker 1: Maybe it was nothing, Maybe it was everything. I couldn't
Speaker 1: tell which explanation it was more insulting. The next morning,
Speaker 1: backpacks loaded, coffee in hand. Just as we were about
Speaker 1: to walk out the door, she interrupted me, I need
Speaker 1: to cancel. There's an emergency at the gallery, funding mess,
Speaker 1: possible grant loss to Moss needs me to meet with
Speaker 1: sponsors this weekened. But she was already in zipping her back,
Speaker 1: placing clothes back in drawers. Sorry, Jess, I can't let
Speaker 1: this fall apart. You know how important it is. Our
Speaker 1: tone was perfectly flat, not cold, precisely, but focused on
Speaker 1: something I couldn't see. She kept packing, humming tuneously under
Speaker 1: her breath. I tried to salvage it. Maybe I can
Speaker 1: come a long help out, make myself useful. She hesitated,
Speaker 1: then shook her head. It'll just be to Moss and me.
Speaker 1: We have to handle this one alone. She barely looked
Speaker 1: at me. I'll stay at the hotel near the gallery,
Speaker 1: long hours, late nights, easier than commuting. I'll text you
Speaker 1: if I can. She was out the door in fifteen minutes,
Speaker 1: bags over her shoulder, foam pressed to her ear. I
Speaker 1: stood holding my coaquys the day's plans dissolving around me
Speaker 1: like watercolor in the rain. The apartment felt like a
Speaker 1: stage set that after the audience has gone, the set
Speaker 1: pieces all present, but the warmth, the possibility absent. I
Speaker 1: wandered room to room, picking up old shore catalogs, running
Speaker 1: my fingers over the edges of her paintings, half hoping
Speaker 1: to find something, anything, that would force a conversation neither
Speaker 1: of us could avoid any more. In the bathroom, her
Speaker 1: side of the counter was bare, the perfume bottles she
Speaker 1: wore for openings missing. The necklace with the chip tuck
Speaker 1: was pentent gone. Maybe she packed them for the week end.
Speaker 1: Maybe it meant nothing. I sculled through my contacts, considered
Speaker 1: texting Marco or Annie, then decided against it. Instead, I
Speaker 1: bite to the DELI idled outside her favorite antique shop,
Speaker 1: wandered the aisles of hardware stors for projects I had
Speaker 1: no intention of completing. Around three in the afternoon, while
Speaker 1: waiting in line for coffee, I bumped into Julia, friend
Speaker 1: of ours, a writer who'd been at our wedding and
Speaker 1: was always up for gossip. She looked surprised to see me. Hey, Jesse,
Speaker 1: I thought you'd be at the Lunar too, saw and
Speaker 1: Tomos this morning checking in be creative retreat. My mind
Speaker 1: went blank for a second. No, I'm just running errands.
Speaker 1: Which hotel did you say? The Luna? You know, the
Speaker 1: one with those pisocoeramic dogs in the lobby. I figured
Speaker 1: you gods were doing a stacation of something. She looked
Speaker 1: happy to Moss, brought like three suit cases. I managed
Speaker 1: sounds like a scene, smiled and excused myself. The Luna
Speaker 1: was nowhere near the gallery. Neither of them had ever
Speaker 1: mentioned it to me. As soon as I got outside,
Speaker 1: I pulled up our bank CAUP. There, clear as day,
Speaker 1: a transaction room charged for two nights Lena's name, but
Speaker 1: there was another name prefilled on the reservation to Mossel.
Speaker 1: Even the loyalty program points went to him. I texted Elena,
Speaker 1: trying to keep my tone neutral, hope your day's going well.
Speaker 1: Out of curiosity, is the Luna hotel near the gallery?
Speaker 1: Never seen it on your list before? She didn't reply,
Speaker 1: not for hours. When she finally called, her voice was brutal. Jesse,
Speaker 1: are you checking up on me now? I said, I'm working,
Speaker 1: didn't I? I inhaled try to keep my voice steady.
Speaker 1: Some one mentioned you and to Moss was staying at
Speaker 1: the Luna that's not near the gallery. Why not just
Speaker 1: come home at night? She snapped, Are you for real?
Speaker 1: You're jealous? What because I'm finally getting truction and you're
Speaker 1: stuck mounting other people's work. I tried to interrupt, but
Speaker 1: she burrowed a head. It's just for work, Jesse. I
Speaker 1: needed a quiet place to focus, away from home, away
Speaker 1: from all your questions. To Moss booked the room. It's
Speaker 1: for his account. You always said I should go all
Speaker 1: in for my career. Now you don't like what it takes.
Speaker 1: I felt myself shrinking, the argument already lost, I managed.
Speaker 1: You could have just told me. The silence so thicket ached.
Speaker 1: She ended the Kollnogaby. This time on Sunday morning. After
Speaker 1: sleeping fifthfully on the couch, I decided I needed proof,
Speaker 1: not just hunches, not just secondhand reports or tense phone calls.
Speaker 1: I biked to the gallery, walk through the sun bleached
Speaker 1: alleys to the back entrance, heart thudding. There was only
Speaker 1: the cleaner mopping the entry, no art being installed, no
Speaker 1: group gathering on the whiteboard near the office, and note
Speaker 1: until Moss's handwriting off his clothes until Monday, see you
Speaker 1: for big prep. I let myself into the main room,
Speaker 1: using the backup kise both the Lena and I had
Speaker 1: for volunteer shifts. The air was musty, and the only
Speaker 1: recent activity was a half eaten sandwich on the window
Speaker 1: ledge its rapid Dated Friday, I texted Annie asking if
Speaker 1: she'd heard any updates about their urgent funding crisis at
Speaker 1: the gallery. She wrote back to Moss funding crisis, not
Speaker 1: that I know if. He said he's in deep planning
Speaker 1: mode for the summer show, but nothing about emergency meetings.
Speaker 1: Later that night I checked her Moss's social fees, carefully
Speaker 1: staged photos of topers, a half hidden hand holding chop
Speaker 1: sticks across the table, a wineglass reflected in the hotel
Speaker 1: room mirror. I felt sick. Every friend who knew or
Speaker 1: guess acted differently now. Some like Leslie offered forced cheer,
Speaker 1: inviting me to your hangout, or taken the new mural downtown.
Speaker 1: Others like Marco, was suddenly busy whenever our group text buzzed,
Speaker 1: slow to answer, sometimes not at all. Walking through the city,
Speaker 1: I tried to retrace Selina's last week, noticing for the
Speaker 1: first time how our old horns had faded from her stories.
Speaker 1: The flea market where we'd always argued over which painting
Speaker 1: to bite, the park worshiped sketch, while I read she
Speaker 1: hadn't wanted to visit either. In months at home, our
Speaker 1: apartment had shifted around me, canvases stacked in corners, my
Speaker 1: own tools stored away as if to clutter for someone
Speaker 1: else's eyes. Every detail seemed to whisper confirmation, yet none
Speaker 1: of it demanded to prove. I could put my hand
Speaker 1: on and say, this is it, this is the betrayal.
Speaker 1: At night, I lay awake, imagining different outcombs. Maybe she
Speaker 1: was struggling with pressure. Maybe she wanted to break out
Speaker 1: of our old routines. Maybe Tomos was just the latest
Speaker 1: in a long strain of art world at breaks that
Speaker 1: wouldn't stick. Or maybe I'd failed her as a partner,
Speaker 1: focused too long on my own stalled ambitions to see
Speaker 1: what she needed. Each theory flickered, but none lived long.
Speaker 1: Under daylight. I wanted it desperately to buy back the
Speaker 1: old narrative too. Artists against the odds, no boundaries, total honesty.
Speaker 1: Reality was slipping somewhere between suspicion and denial. When Alina
Speaker 1: came home Monday, she looked changed, he hair swept back,
Speaker 1: new wearings. Speaking in a register just up of a whisper.
Speaker 1: She set her back down, scanned the apartment as if
Speaker 1: expecting to find it, rearranged everything Okay, I asked, voice level.
Speaker 1: She hesitated, then nodded, briskly, tired, that's all. Can we
Speaker 1: have a looky night? We sat silently in front of
Speaker 1: a documentary about pop ard icons neither of us really liked.
Speaker 1: I watched her as she scrolled through email, responding only
Speaker 1: to Tomos's rapid fire texts across the coffee table. Our
Speaker 1: hands almost touched, but did it a few days later,
Speaker 1: she told me, almost as an afterthought, Thomas and I
Speaker 1: landed a finalist spot for a big grand cantalk details yet.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry if I've been distant. I just wanted it
Speaker 1: to be a surprise, a quick smile, a half hearted promise.
Speaker 1: Let's celebrate soon. For a heartbeat, it seemed possible we'd
Speaker 1: find our way back. We hosted a small dinner, her
Speaker 1: parents visiting, after rising and falling awkwardly as wine was
Speaker 1: poured and bottles cleared away. At the meal's end, Elena
Speaker 1: looked at me across the flickering candle, her eyes almost soft,
Speaker 1: and for that one shallow evening, I believed she was
Speaker 1: still mine. But as soon as everyone left, her energy changed.
Speaker 1: She cleared the table quickly, already grabbing her phone, announcing
Speaker 1: she'd be out all day for her final grant planning
Speaker 1: with Tomoss the next morning. Suit case already packed, she
Speaker 1: nodded at me over a mug of coffee. I'll stay
Speaker 1: at the Luna again. It's only for the week, and swear.
Speaker 1: Tomos says he needs me to rework install schedule. Don't
Speaker 1: wait up. I heard the door click shut, the lock
Speaker 1: slotting into place. The apartment emptied itself around me, her
Speaker 1: absence a final brushtrook. This time, I didn't step out
Speaker 1: for Errand's or idle with anxious texts. I sat unmoving,
Speaker 1: absorbing the silence, the knowledge that whatever had lived at
Speaker 1: the center of our shared life had shifted, fissured, receded
Speaker 1: beyond my reach. The city outside moved on and caring
Speaker 1: as I counted and recounted the evidence, laughter in half
Speaker 1: lit bars, unexplained messages, weakened stolen by crisis and the
Speaker 1: growing certainty that the betrayal was not a single event
Speaker 1: but a long, patient campaign. I waited for the moment
Speaker 1: the truth would finally fully reveal itself, dreading and needing
Speaker 1: at an equal measure. On Saturday, I wandered through the
Speaker 1: apartment again, searching for what I couldn't have said, a
Speaker 1: sign that this was all in my head, of some
Speaker 1: obvious cly glaring at me from the disorder of our life.
Speaker 1: I re arranged the shoes by the door, stared at
Speaker 1: the blank square Worrellina's keys usually Han opened her studio
Speaker 1: closet and tried to convince myself that nessy piles of
Speaker 1: canvas and empty wine bottles men should simply been burning
Speaker 1: the candle too long. At ends there were new things
Speaker 1: mixed in a silk scarff folded precisely, sample paint jaws
Speaker 1: tagged with Tomos's gallery logo, a business card for a
Speaker 1: boutique caterclip to her pinbod. I pressed the card beneath
Speaker 1: my thumb, wailing significance into the details. The silence thickened
Speaker 1: as the afternoon stretched on the cities. Muffled energy rose
Speaker 1: and fell outside the windows. I found myself circling the
Speaker 1: kitchen island, eyeing the row of half finished mugs played
Speaker 1: scrape clean only on one side. It dawned on me
Speaker 1: with a kind of distant horror that I hadn't spoken
Speaker 1: a real sentence aloud all day. I dialed Annie. She answered,
Speaker 1: her voice tentative, as if she'd been bracing herself for
Speaker 1: this call. Hey, Jess, what's up? Nothing much, just bored,
Speaker 1: I guess. I pictured her in her tiny studio pins
Speaker 1: drawing in the late light, poham propped on a coffee can.
Speaker 1: She hesitated, then filled the silence I heard from Lussie.
Speaker 1: She said, Tomos's planning some big expision, secret line up,
Speaker 1: gallery lock down for the weekend. Sounds like a madhouse, yeah,
Speaker 1: I said, voice flat. Alena is in a deep apparently
Speaker 1: there at that hotel. Annie exhaled. Maybe this is all
Speaker 1: just professional, Maybe they're on to something huge. Olena's been
Speaker 1: busting her as for this. I didn't reply. I heard
Speaker 1: the scrape of a stool against the floor of the
Speaker 1: anxious ship of coffee. Jess, can, I ask, are you okay? Really?
Speaker 1: I swollowed, nodded out of habit. I don't know don't
Speaker 1: answer that she waited, but I folded, thanking her for
Speaker 1: nothing in particular, and hanging up before my questions got
Speaker 1: too complicated. Unable to stay in the apartment, I found
Speaker 1: myself drifting towards the luna in the late afternoon, telling
Speaker 1: myself I just wanted to see the place. I biked
Speaker 1: slowly through the city, taking detas for streets we used
Speaker 1: to walk together, the map of our routines now skewed
Speaker 1: and out of reach. The luna was glass and would mauden,
Speaker 1: but trying too hard for retro coll As lobby pulsing
Speaker 1: with the Cynthia's haund truck of curated Saturday afternoons, I
Speaker 1: locked my bike across the street and sat with a
Speaker 1: take up coffee, watching guests spell through the doors. I
Speaker 1: half expected to see Elena's step outside to smoke or
Speaker 1: call a car, but the hours drogged by without a glimpse. Finally,
Speaker 1: feeling exposed and ridiculous, I docked inside for a pruten
Speaker 1: to look at the public heart in the lobby. A
Speaker 1: quick scan of the row of checking kiosks. The desk
Speaker 1: staff ignored me. On the wall behind the elevator was
Speaker 1: set a fresh water colors, Selina's style, but not her hand,
Speaker 1: I guess caught my attention. I picked up one of
Speaker 1: the gallery flyers by the Concierge Emerging Artists due a
Speaker 1: residency to Moss Loker and Elina Vickard to read his
Speaker 1: stolen progress. No guess. At this time, residual anger flared.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't just a retreat, It was an event,
Speaker 1: and somehow I'd been written out of the narrative entirely.
Speaker 1: Back outside, I checked my phone. One text from Molina
Speaker 1: at timestamp two hours earlier, deepened in stall mode. Sorry,
Speaker 1: can't talk, love you, nothing more, not even a question
Speaker 1: about how my day was going. Half way home, I
Speaker 1: called Marco, meaning only to vent on mayde Fish for
Speaker 1: some detail only he would know. Marco sounded distracted, background noise,
Speaker 1: hinting at a crowd. Can't talk long, men on the
Speaker 1: east side watching that mule come down. Everything okay, Just
Speaker 1: wondering if you've heard from Molina. He hesitated, then coughed,
Speaker 1: not really, I mean just to Moss posting stories all weekend,
Speaker 1: his put pushing the show hard here. I said, simply, yeah, look,
Speaker 1: people are talking, but I dunno, Jess. Maybe back off.
Speaker 1: A little pressure won't helpish, she stress about the show.
Speaker 1: I bit bat my hurt. Sure, sorry, enjoy your night, hey, Jess.
Speaker 1: Marco's voice dropped. If you need to crash or just
Speaker 1: talk it out, call me, Okay, whatever's happening, you don't
Speaker 1: have to handle it alone. Something about the way he
Speaker 1: said it made me wonder what he'd already decided that night.
Speaker 1: The city felt impossibly allowed outside my window, the base
Speaker 1: of parties and nearby balconies, the honk and crackle of
Speaker 1: ride chairs, the laughter that used to fill our own space,
Speaker 1: now coming from every whip but here I sat on
Speaker 1: the couch, started scrolling through to Moss's Instagram again, then
Speaker 1: Elina's profile. Her latest posts were all abstract close ups
Speaker 1: of canvas and pigment, cryptic captions and Spanish lines to Moss.
Speaker 1: Often courted at openings. I compared tags looking for Ovo
Speaker 1: lap Soto, Luna, private rooftop bars. Always their photos were
Speaker 1: just out of sync. Her hand in one frame, his
Speaker 1: glass in another. Two halves of a story snapped apart
Speaker 1: and pasted back to again. The next day dawned gray
Speaker 1: and flat. I lay in bed, staring at the vents,
Speaker 1: listening for the ritual of her keyscraping the lock, the
Speaker 1: weight of her bag dropped on the kitchen counter. Instead,
Speaker 1: I got nothing but the distant cline of the radiator
Speaker 1: and the echo of my own doubts. By late afternoon,
Speaker 1: my chest felt thick with us bent words. I poured
Speaker 1: a whiskey I didn't want set it next to her
Speaker 1: favorite mug, as if the ghost of our former rituals
Speaker 1: might guilt her into coming home early. When she finally
Speaker 1: texted hours later, it was mechanical, still slammed I'll be
Speaker 1: home to morrow, miss you. I stared at the words
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask, do you actually miss me? Were
Speaker 1: just the version of me that doesen ask questions. Monday
Speaker 1: came damp and raw. I went to work, eyes heavy.
Speaker 1: I made mistakes, mounting a client's neon sculpture, slicing my
Speaker 1: finger on a hidden wire. My mind played over the weekend,
Speaker 1: looking for evidence I could trust, to something to distinguish
Speaker 1: drama from disaster. My client, an older artist with appointed stair,
Speaker 1: asked if I'd goten enough sleep. I lie said, it
Speaker 1: had been a long week, nothing more. Walking home, the
Speaker 1: city's glass seemed in kind at every intersection, I felt invisible,
Speaker 1: ghosted inside my own life. Billina returned, late, suitcase bumping
Speaker 1: against the wall. I heard her unlock the door, pause
Speaker 1: in hailing, maybe bracing herself. Hey, she said, voiceoft, like
Speaker 1: she was stepping into a stranger's apartment rather than her own.
Speaker 1: Long weekend I managed. She set the bag down, eyes
Speaker 1: starting everywhere but mine. The skin glowed, cheeks a little pink,
Speaker 1: a set of tiny gold hoops in her ears. I
Speaker 1: didn't recognize. She moved to the fridge, fetched to Seltzer. Sorry,
Speaker 1: I wasn't in touch the install when late one artist
Speaker 1: had a meltdown, then to Moss, had to rearrange everything.
Speaker 1: I barely slept. It's fine, I lied, though nothingless. She
Speaker 1: lingered at the window, scanning the skylinelike she was searching
Speaker 1: for ideas. How was your weekend? I shrugged, quiet, got
Speaker 1: somewhat done, ran into Julia by the way. She mentioned
Speaker 1: seeing you until most checking at the luna. She thought
Speaker 1: it was a couple stickation. A flick across Ouena's face,
Speaker 1: an instinctive flinch, a hand half lifted to her hair.
Speaker 1: People loved to speculate. She spoke carefully, as if testing
Speaker 1: words for their weight. It was nothing, just logistics. I
Speaker 1: didn't push further. The exhaustion between us felt too old,
Speaker 1: too heavy to move. But while she showered, I checked
Speaker 1: our joint transaction history again. Multiple inner charges Briutique restaurant
Speaker 1: bills a floral delivery service with a two hundred dollar
Speaker 1: charge around the same dates our gallery supplies evidently covered
Speaker 1: more than just installation gear. I wanted to storm into
Speaker 1: the bathroom, demand to know who you'd been buying flowers for.
Speaker 1: Why I weakened away required secrecy, but I found myself paralyzed.
Speaker 1: The confrontation that had been building in my head all
Speaker 1: weak and faded at the threshold, replaced by a dull,
Speaker 1: tired ache. I sat on the edge of the bed,
Speaker 1: staring at her phone, where she'd left a charging There
Speaker 1: were notifications, mostly gallery emails, project checklists, stream of incoming
Speaker 1: texts from Tomas. Need you to review lighting plots, lunch
Speaker 1: to morrow. We've got this well one more ye, make
Speaker 1: this work come alive. See you soon. The screen locked
Speaker 1: itself before I could read more. My gilt surface he
Speaker 1: cling up my neck. I'd never SNeW it before, and
Speaker 1: the urge to dig deeper. Disgusted me almost as much
Speaker 1: as my need to know. Bilina emerged tal drying her hair.
Speaker 1: I tried for calm, Do you want to have dinner together?
Speaker 1: She looked surprised, then soft foremost relieved. Yeah, that would
Speaker 1: be good. That night we quietly. I watched her pick
Speaker 1: at roasted vegetables, swirling wine she barely sipped. She told
Speaker 1: a practiced story about gallery chaos, pausing only for questions
Speaker 1: she could answer without detail. I listened, nodded, told myself
Speaker 1: that maybe, just maybe, there was nothing to find except
Speaker 1: the distance that years an ambition can build. Maybe. But
Speaker 1: her laughter didn't reach her eyes, and whatever passed for
Speaker 1: relief in my chest was temporary and hollow. The air
Speaker 1: between us changed in subtle ways. Over the next week.
Speaker 1: Bilina moved through the apartment with silent efficiency, packing a
Speaker 1: fresh bag each day's sketch, books, extra chargers, her tablet, makeup.
Speaker 1: I began to notice small absences. How favorite sweater never
Speaker 1: appeared in the laundry. Her sketch has left no traces
Speaker 1: in our living room. A set of travel sized lutions
Speaker 1: replaced the chaos of her bathroom drawer. She worked later
Speaker 1: came untied, so sometimes in a shirt I was sure
Speaker 1: she hadn't left her. If I asked about her day,
Speaker 1: she'd answer her long one timos push is hard. He
Speaker 1: thinks I need to be bolder. There was always a
Speaker 1: story about stressed out in turn an impossible deadline, a
Speaker 1: collector demanding a last minute studio visit. One night, I
Speaker 1: brought up our council trip, trying for lightness. When are
Speaker 1: we going to make up for the lost course weekend?
Speaker 1: She smiled, quick and flickering. Soon, I promise, once the
Speaker 1: dust settles. When will that be? She exhaled, stared at
Speaker 1: a crack in the table. I don't know, Jess. It's
Speaker 1: the busiest season I've ever had. Not sure I'm handling
Speaker 1: it well. There was a gap one I could have
Speaker 1: filled with empathy, but I stayed silent. Her phone buzzed.
Speaker 1: She glanced at it. Thunder reply before I could see
Speaker 1: the name that Friday leslie conin me before gallery opening. Yes,
Speaker 1: I'm not trying to meddle, but is everything okay with
Speaker 1: you guys? Oilina seems elsewhere lately. She waited for me
Speaker 1: to respond, eyes gentle. I don't know, I said, honestly,
Speaker 1: swallowing the urge to lie. But we're both busy, Leslie sighed,
Speaker 1: I just hope you're talking. It's easy to let things
Speaker 1: fest out, especially in the scene. I thanked her, not
Speaker 1: knowing if I mend it, and spun through the opening
Speaker 1: like a ghost, neither prison nor missing enough to be mourned.
Speaker 1: That night, I found another charge on our statement Lynn Hotel,
Speaker 1: Sweet Reservation, a bottle shaw pain added to the bill.
Speaker 1: The thought crushed over me how ridiculous Selena's secrecy had been,
Speaker 1: how casual the lives must have become. I stayed up stone,
Speaker 1: still barely breathing, as outside the city shimmered in rain.
Speaker 1: I started sleeping less. I'd wake at dawn to the
Speaker 1: sound of her in the bath room, showering before sunrise,
Speaker 1: moving quietly but not carefully enough for someone with nothing
Speaker 1: to hide. I watched her from the pillow, wondering who
Speaker 1: she was the rest of the time. One morning, after
Speaker 1: she'd left, I wandered into her studio, something I rarely did, uninvited.
Speaker 1: Her work in progress was vast, abstract, rendered in swirling
Speaker 1: blues and goals I didn't recognize as her usual pallor
Speaker 1: in the corner beneath the paint stained window sketched a
Speaker 1: clay open. Most of the page was lined with notes,
Speaker 1: installation dimensions, lighting cues to Moss's name written and written
Speaker 1: in different hands, as if she had been practicing signatures
Speaker 1: not her own. Tapped inside the cover was a photo
Speaker 1: Lena smiling, holding out a gass of red, seated on
Speaker 1: the velvet lobby couch. The Luna's logo glimmered over her shoulder,
Speaker 1: Tomos beside her, hand on the small of her back,
Speaker 1: both of them radiant, comfortable, even intimate. My pulse studded
Speaker 1: at the base of my skull. I closed the book,
Speaker 1: shame flooding me. It felt like a break in, even
Speaker 1: though I'd found nothing. She hadn't already invited with her
Speaker 1: secrecy and silence. Monday afternoon, I decided I had to know,
Speaker 1: maybe from my own sanity, maybe because whatever hope I
Speaker 1: had was flickering out. I left work early, headed for
Speaker 1: Thomos's gallery, telling myself I was delivering shot hooks for
Speaker 1: an upcoming install I showed up unannounced, nodding briskly at
Speaker 1: the assistant at the front desk, and walked into the
Speaker 1: main exhibition room. They were there together, side by side,
Speaker 1: reviewing lighting patterns on a digital map. Tomos's hand hovered
Speaker 1: over Lena's shoulder, guiding her sideline their body's clothes. She
Speaker 1: laughed at something only he could have said. They didn't
Speaker 1: notice me right away. When Alina finally looked up, her
Speaker 1: face blanched, a silent beat passing between the part of
Speaker 1: us that still believed in old vows and the new
Speaker 1: rear that had already ridden them. The Jess heed she
Speaker 1: started to. Moss beamed unbothered. We're just about to try
Speaker 1: something wild with the main panel, you hear, to rescue
Speaker 1: us from ourselves. I nodded, keeping my face. Newdral had
Speaker 1: some hard word for the install thought. I dropped them off.
Speaker 1: Billina straight in, brushing invisible dust from her sleeve. Thanks, Jess,
Speaker 1: we're behind schedule. I handed her the box, but her
Speaker 1: hands shook slightly. Tomos kept his gaze on me, his
Speaker 1: smile of polished weapon. I looked at Elina. I'll see
Speaker 1: you at home. She hesitated, glancing at Tomos, stemmed back
Speaker 1: at me. Maybe we're late as it is. Don't wait
Speaker 1: up to Moss waved as I exited, a calling after me.
Speaker 1: We'll make you proud man. She's a powerhouse. I stepped
Speaker 1: out into the wet, blinking city light, my throat raw.
Speaker 1: The truth was in a single moment, not a scene
Speaker 1: in a lobby, not a name on a charge, but
Speaker 1: an accumulation of absences, alibis, and the gravitational pull between
Speaker 1: two people whose eyes never quite met mine at the
Speaker 1: right time, as the weak ground on artist who knew
Speaker 1: both of us, grew silent, avoiding my gaze. At expicion
Speaker 1: events invited me to group shows with carefully neutral language.
Speaker 1: Annie called just once, wanting to check in. Jess. I
Speaker 1: worried Tomos's air history with women, he Mentor's gallery talk
Speaker 1: travels for Are you sure this is just business? No,
Speaker 1: I said, at last, feeling the servanty land. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure at all. That Friday, I found myself walking past
Speaker 1: the gallery again, needing to see it, as if proximity
Speaker 1: could chick free whatever truth was left to discover. Through
Speaker 1: the front window, I caught sight of Tomos and Alina
Speaker 1: in the back, hunched over a canvass, their heads close,
Speaker 1: hands moving in tunderm across the frame. I walked on
Speaker 1: the city's dusk, swallowing me whole, finally understanding that the
Speaker 1: breach was not an accident. That rust had not been
Speaker 1: carelessly lost. It had been surrendered piece by piece, long
Speaker 1: before I let myself believe it. I didn't want to
Speaker 1: return home after passing the gallery and seeing them together,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't make myself linger in the street any longer.
Speaker 1: I made it back just before midnight. The city was
Speaker 1: still humming, but our building was silent, before echoing as
Speaker 1: I climbed the stairs. I unlocked our door with numb fingers,
Speaker 1: listening for movement, not sure if a dreaded finding a
Speaker 1: lean in their or the cold diffidence that she wasn't
Speaker 1: coming back at all. She'd left the light on in
Speaker 1: the hallway, but the rooms were empty. A faint and
Speaker 1: familiar proofume seemed to hang in the kitchen, on the
Speaker 1: shalkboard next to our first crowded for years with scribbled reminders, lists, jokes.
Speaker 1: She'd drawn a heart, half a raised as if she'd
Speaker 1: hesitated half way through. There was no note, no call,
Speaker 1: Sleep didn't come. I lay on the couch with the
Speaker 1: blanket and headphones, replayed the gallery scene until every gesture
Speaker 1: and look became mutable, paper thin, impossible to trust. I
Speaker 1: searched txts again, read old threads between us, shared jokes,
Speaker 1: mundane errands, confessions send late at night, and then compared
Speaker 1: them to the cautious, clipped exchanges of the last few weeks.
Speaker 1: I scrolled so far back I landed on our first
Speaker 1: save photo together, both of us laughing in the glow
Speaker 1: of basement show lights, wild, hungry, certain of tomorrow. But
Speaker 1: tomorrow was now just a series of days that kept
Speaker 1: sputting off into unrecognizable directions. Billina came home just after
Speaker 1: three eh I'm quiet, deliberate, careful about her keys. I
Speaker 1: didn't turn on the lights. We'll get up. I heard
Speaker 1: her linger at the door, heard the zipper of her bag,
Speaker 1: the sound of her chain in the bathroom, water rushing.
Speaker 1: She didn't come into the living room. After a while,
Speaker 1: I heard her climb into her studios, low daubed, and
Speaker 1: then nothing in the gray hout before dawn. I finally slept.
Speaker 1: When I woke, there was a chill haze through the windows.
Speaker 1: I shuffled to the kitchen, found the coffee pot already
Speaker 1: cleaned and left out to dry. Her invisible labor still
Speaker 1: washing over my life. I pressed my hands on the
Speaker 1: cold granite, staring at the chart of mug rins and pins,
Speaker 1: batters that mapped our ears together for a moment, urged
Speaker 1: to smash every cup we own. Flasks threw me violent
Speaker 1: and amus I let it go. She emerged into the
Speaker 1: kitchen a little after eight, heron a nott skin, puffey eyes.
Speaker 1: Already wearing a shield of practiced indifference, she nodded half
Speaker 1: a smile. Morning I offered fat as the coffee aport hey.
Speaker 1: She watched me over the rim of her mug. Were
Speaker 1: off night, didn't sleep much. Me neither I stand off casual, brittle.
Speaker 1: She looked away. After a moment, checked her phone. I
Speaker 1: could feel the whole day stretching ahead, neither of us
Speaker 1: wanting to speak. First, I pretended to read email while
Speaker 1: she tapped up messages, probably to Tomas, probably about things
Speaker 1: I wasn't meant to know. Eventually, she gathered her keys
Speaker 1: in a sketch book. I have to be at the
Speaker 1: gallery at ten in Stall for the grand show. I'll
Speaker 1: see you to night, Yeah, I heard myself say, because
Speaker 1: anything else would have required too much honesty or its opposite.
Speaker 1: She hesitated in the doorway, said nothing and left. All
Speaker 1: day I moved through the city like a prop installing
Speaker 1: a small show for a local office, answering polite, impersonal questions,
Speaker 1: faking professionalism. On the train home, I caught my own reflection, drawn,
Speaker 1: eyes heavy, and didn't recognize the way my jaw was set,
Speaker 1: as if bracing against an unseen blow. I knew I
Speaker 1: was losing her. Maybe I'd already lost her long before
Speaker 1: any affair had started. That knowledge flickered behind every thought,
Speaker 1: but it still didn't prepare me for the moments that followed.
Speaker 1: When I got back to the apartment, the entry smelled
Speaker 1: of turpentine and citrus. Olino was there, shuffling free boxes
Speaker 1: of old catalogs in the living room, sorting what belonged
Speaker 1: to him on the rug pile, stucking up. She didn't
Speaker 1: look surprised to see me. Her movements were clip determined,
Speaker 1: as if the oly way to survive was by keeping busy, dividing, organizing,
Speaker 1: not feeling. I thought i'd stop picking through some of
Speaker 1: the old show staff, she said, kneeling near a pile
Speaker 1: of handbills and postcards from our earliest expicions, trying to
Speaker 1: make space for what, just to clear things out, I guess,
Speaker 1: for the new work, for whatever comes next. There was
Speaker 1: no malice in her tone, but no comfort either. She
Speaker 1: moved with a weary efficiency of someone expecting upeval. I
Speaker 1: sat on the edge of the couch, palms flat to
Speaker 1: my knees. Are we going to talk about what's happening?
Speaker 1: My voice was quiet, but each word felt loaded, spilling
Speaker 1: into the room with a sharp finality. She stopped sorting
Speaker 1: for a long moment. The only sound was traffic two
Speaker 1: floors down, the steadiness of our neighbors baddly played piano.
Speaker 1: I am trying, she said, finally, not meating my eyes.
Speaker 1: I just so. I don't know where to start, jess Well,
Speaker 1: I answered, that makes two of us. Things didn't improve
Speaker 1: as the week were on. If anything, the silences deepened,
Speaker 1: got slicker, less, easily punctured. When she was home, she
Speaker 1: was half elsewhere, fallen in her lap, sketch on her knee,
Speaker 1: answering in short lines, brushing off tempt at connection. It
Speaker 1: felt like living inside a still life, beautiful on the surface,
Speaker 1: dead in the center. I picked up more work out
Speaker 1: of the apartment, counseling, dinner at home, three nights running.
Speaker 1: I tried to avoid Leslie and Marco, to dodge the
Speaker 1: grief behind Dannie's concerned texts. Whenever I was alone, I
Speaker 1: felt the shape of Olina's absence in my chest, jagged
Speaker 1: and growing. One evening, I came home to find her
Speaker 1: perched on a stool by the sink, tearing the edges
Speaker 1: off pieces of paper, dropping them into the trash with
Speaker 1: methodical position. On the table sat a bottle of wine,
Speaker 1: half finished, label and familiar, probably a gift from Tomas.
Speaker 1: The room smelled faintly of her old perfume, the one
Speaker 1: I had only ever seen her way to events that
Speaker 1: mattered to her. She looked up when I entered, eyes
Speaker 1: were in red. We should probably have a real conversation.
Speaker 1: She swirled the wine, avoiding my gaze, her voice chipped
Speaker 1: and breaking. I sat down across from her. Here we should,
Speaker 1: She traced a line on the table. Ears of paint
Speaker 1: stains hidden them from late night studio sessions around us.
Speaker 1: The apartment pressed close. I know you don't trust me,
Speaker 1: she said, barely above a whisper. I hesitated, I don't
Speaker 1: know what I feel any more, Elena, that's the real problem.
Speaker 1: She winced, but didn't argue. I tried again, Are you
Speaker 1: in love of Thomas? Her hand clunched around her glass.
Speaker 1: It's not I don't know what I am. He makes
Speaker 1: me feel alive, like i'm matter. But I don't know, Jess,
Speaker 1: I don't know. Are you sleeping with him? Silence filled
Speaker 1: the gap. She shook her head slightly, but there was
Speaker 1: no conviction behind it. It's complicated. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: lie any more, Jess. Yes, ay, Yes, it happened. Each
Speaker 1: word sounded for us, deliberate, as if she'd rehearse them
Speaker 1: and still couldn't make them come out right. I hadn't
Speaker 1: expected the bluntness not to night. I leaned back as
Speaker 1: the distances could deaden the blow. My mind fizzed blankly.
Speaker 1: How long, I asked, my own voice strange in my ears.
Speaker 1: She set the glass down with a shaky hand. Since
Speaker 1: the first in stall weakened six months, maybe longer, depending
Speaker 1: on where you start the count. Something broke loose in sight,
Speaker 1: me cold and free. I press my tongue to my teeth,
Speaker 1: holding back henny words that could tip this too far
Speaker 1: into screaming. The phone vibrated between us. She stared at it,
Speaker 1: then turned it face down. In the silence that followed,
Speaker 1: a thousand memories rushed up, huddled breakfasts, the way she
Speaker 1: used to draw circles on my arm when she was thinking.
Speaker 1: Every night we never spent intertwined in the dark, inventing
Speaker 1: futures together. They all seemed like artifacts, now, relics from
Speaker 1: a world whose rules had suddenly brutally changed. She reached
Speaker 1: from my hand and then froze, letting it full awkwardly
Speaker 1: to her side. I don't want to lose you, Jess.
Speaker 1: It sounded hollow, as if she was reciting a line
Speaker 1: from an old play one should stopped believing. The night
Speaker 1: before closing, I shook my head. You already have You
Speaker 1: just didn't tell me. For a long time, neither of
Speaker 1: us moved. I could hear someone on the street, the
Speaker 1: hum of a distant train, water in the pipes. The
Speaker 1: world spun on as if none of this mattered. The
Speaker 1: next day, where it was already spreading, Mutual friends texted
Speaker 1: to check in their turn, skating between curiosity and pity.
Speaker 1: Social invitations fell silent. Some events going on without us
Speaker 1: are those quietly postponed or shifted to group chats. I
Speaker 1: was no longer part of Elina spent whole days at
Speaker 1: the gallery, her absence so thorough it felt methodical. At night,
Speaker 1: she'd return, moving carefully around the apartment, as if afraid
Speaker 1: to wake the ghost she'd let out of hiding. Our
Speaker 1: share calender bloomed with conflicts, her as an available show
Speaker 1: prep and MEA's install off site. Even to practical ties
Speaker 1: began to shred. She started moving things from our closets,
Speaker 1: sorting out supplies into separate bins, stacking exhibition catalogs by
Speaker 1: which of us had more claim. I let her, too
Speaker 1: tired to fight for anything but my studio, notebook and
Speaker 1: a few favorite tools. I told my own family by text,
Speaker 1: things are changing. Don't call right now. My mother replied
Speaker 1: with a string of per hand emojis. My father just
Speaker 1: as simple. Sorry, kid Olina's parents called her directly. I
Speaker 1: overheard her voice on the balcony, taught with apology, promising
Speaker 1: it wasn't anyone's fault, insisting no, don't drive up than fine.
Speaker 1: It became clear that the cityacity would not slow down
Speaker 1: for a heart break. Every block carried reminders, but nothing
Speaker 1: paused to offer comfort. I began to avoid our favorite haunts,
Speaker 1: detering and stood through on familiar neighborhoods, eating at anonymous diners,
Speaker 1: filling empty hours with mounting jobs for strangers. Elena, for
Speaker 1: her part, seemed to fade and harden at once. Her
Speaker 1: edge is sharper, her eyes distant, even her laughter at
Speaker 1: the gallery's weekly posts sounding force when I overhearried it
Speaker 1: through friends stories online. One day I passed Annie on
Speaker 1: the street. We stopped, both awkward, the waiter shared history,
Speaker 1: making conversation feel like a tess. She asked how I was,
Speaker 1: and I said, getting by. She nodded hugged me quickly.
Speaker 1: Her sympathy was genuine, but not enough to bridge the
Speaker 1: gulf now open in our circle. Annie hesitated, then said quietly,
Speaker 1: for what it's worth, Tomss does this. I'm sorry, Jess,
Speaker 1: you don't deserve it. I nodded my thanks and didn't
Speaker 1: say more. That night, for the first time, I slept
Speaker 1: in my work studio, surrounded by a mount of frames
Speaker 1: and piles of cables. I stared at the ceiling, listening
Speaker 1: to the creek and Papa, settling the ghosts of our
Speaker 1: shared ambition now reduced to nache in my joints. We
Speaker 1: spoke only when practicalities forced us would be home when
Speaker 1: what bills were due. Had to divide our art collection
Speaker 1: without making it a warzone. It only got messer A
Speaker 1: week after our last conversation, ali En and told me
Speaker 1: she needed time, space to think, space to get clear.
Speaker 1: She had already signed up for a week on residency
Speaker 1: out of the city, presumably with Thumos. She started sleeping
Speaker 1: at the louna even all night. She didn't have an
Speaker 1: install shift scheduled, citing long hours and stress. The apartment
Speaker 1: dinned out. Her clothes migrated first, then her painting supplies,
Speaker 1: her battered copy of the poems we used to read
Speaker 1: after long openings, her favorite mugs, the Gaussy Coat, and
Speaker 1: she insisted on even when they blocked out too much sun.
Speaker 1: She returned only for clothes, tools, things she'd left behind
Speaker 1: in corners I hadn't seen since we moved in a
Speaker 1: patroll felt like mine into a duffel bag, sleeping more
Speaker 1: and more at work, eating at odd hours, existing in
Speaker 1: the negative spaces of a life we'd built now crumbling
Speaker 1: around us. Then one Monday, Lena texted, can we meet
Speaker 1: at home to night? No flourish, no explanation. I arrived
Speaker 1: to find her already seated at the kitchen island. Here
Speaker 1: had done in a rush, twist hands, cup of random mug.
Speaker 1: She started talking as soon as I entered. I owe
Speaker 1: you the truth, Jess, all of it, no more excuses.
Speaker 1: I nodded, standing in the doorway, unwilling to drink the
Speaker 1: distance between us. She stared at the chip counter, tears brimming.
Speaker 1: It was me, I broke this. I wanted something, anything
Speaker 1: to shake things up. To Moss made me feel new,
Speaker 1: alive in a way I hadn't in years. But it
Speaker 1: wasn't just about him. It was about running away from
Speaker 1: every failure, every disappointment between us, and pretending arg could
Speaker 1: fix hotbreak. I waited, She pressed on, but I can't
Speaker 1: move through this any more, not lying, not stringing you along.
Speaker 1: To Moss and I, it is not just sex or
Speaker 1: otto adrenaline. It's everything that used to feed me. But
Speaker 1: I know that means I've lost something I can't ever
Speaker 1: build with you. I struggled to find my breath. She
Speaker 1: covered her face with one hand. I'm sorry, Jess, I
Speaker 1: don't know how to be the partner you need, or
Speaker 1: if the puson's still in here, I need to go.
Speaker 1: I need to figure out what I am without hat
Speaker 1: any more. I almost told her to stay, but the
Speaker 1: word stuck in my throat. She stood shouldered her worn
Speaker 1: canvas back of the one we bought in madread after
Speaker 1: her faust group showed, then pause at the doorway. I'm
Speaker 1: sorry it ended like this. She left the door closed gently.
Speaker 1: I stayed in the kitchen for a long time, staring
Speaker 1: at the empty cup she'd left and the spoll of
Speaker 1: boxes labeled Elena Keep the evening lights slid across the
Speaker 1: war and wooden floor. I thought of what I should
Speaker 1: have said, at what I might have done differently, but
Speaker 1: nothing came. Later. I packed the rest of my studio,
Speaker 1: dividing with precision sketch books. Here three of our favorite
Speaker 1: show fliers there, one batted footo of us in a
Speaker 1: dusty frame. I texted Marker to ask if he had
Speaker 1: space for me to stay awhile he replied in minutes
Speaker 1: always spring beer. I dropped the apartment key into a
Speaker 1: dism the table, the metal sound sharp and lonely. For
Speaker 1: a moment, I closed my eyes, letting the silence thread
Speaker 1: and thread itself around me, not searching for meaning, animal,
Speaker 1: but simply existing inside the fact of it. I picked
Speaker 1: up my duffel, opened the door and didn't look back.
Speaker 1: The apartment was still unemptied as I left, a museum
Speaker 1: of a life already receding. I shut the door behind me,
Speaker 1: feeling the lutch slide into place, a small final click
Speaker 1: that sounded too loud in the dim hallway. The weighted
Speaker 1: duffel bag at my feet felt like an absurd prop
Speaker 1: packed too quickly and chaotically, clothes half my tools. A
Speaker 1: mug I must have tossed in on instinct. The photo
Speaker 1: of Elena admited an old opening, both of us grinning
Speaker 1: into the grainy light. I still clutched it in one hand,
Speaker 1: an my finger prints mudging the glass down the hall.
Speaker 1: Some one was watching a scumb through their open door.
Speaker 1: Laughter drifted out, tinney and strange, as if coming from
Speaker 1: somewhere under water. I walked the stairs, treading the smell
Speaker 1: of paint thinner and colder on my jacket. Stepping over
Speaker 1: the piles of restaurant fliers that formed a makeshift doorm
Speaker 1: at fer our floor, my feet felt leaden. The bag
Speaker 1: strap dug in, reminding me how quickly you could reduce
Speaker 1: a marriage, a home to just a handful of things
Speaker 1: that belonged to you and not us. I made it
Speaker 1: out to the street shoulders, hunch against the wind, blinking
Speaker 1: back the sting in my eyes. I kept my head down,
Speaker 1: hoping no neighbors would see me and risk awkward small
Speaker 1: talk about where I was going away. The walk to
Speaker 1: Marco's apartment was only twelve blocks, but it felt endless.
Speaker 1: At every crossing, the city flickered with all the invitations
Speaker 1: and warmth. I didn't have any more people piling into
Speaker 1: cabs for a lay show, couples laughing over splattered burgers
Speaker 1: at a Curbsi'd stand distant vibrations of live music leaking
Speaker 1: from a basement club. I wondered, not for the first time,
Speaker 1: how long it would take for all these sights and
Speaker 1: sounds to stop feeling like they had once been mine too.
Speaker 1: Marco opened the door before I knocked, as if he'd
Speaker 1: been waiting or maybe watching for me through the window.
Speaker 1: He didn't smile, not really, but clapped me on the back,
Speaker 1: pulling me into the familiar, disorderly wreck of his living room.
Speaker 1: His sofa was covered with laundry and progress, stacks of
Speaker 1: art magazines, an easel with an abandoned water color bleeding
Speaker 1: down its taped edge. Figured you bring more, Marco said,
Speaker 1: glancing at my bag. I shruggd. Don't really feel like
Speaker 1: owning much of anything right now. He nodded, an offering
Speaker 1: more than an answer, then gestured toward the fridge, beers
Speaker 1: in the door. Couch is yours, as long as you want.
Speaker 1: For a while, we just sat to me, sunk deep
Speaker 1: in the corner of the couch, mark a half, hovering
Speaker 1: as if waiting to see if I dissolve. There was
Speaker 1: a game on TV in the background, commentary rising and falling,
Speaker 1: but mostly the quiet filled up with nothing, which was
Speaker 1: all I needed. After he retreated to his own room,
Speaker 1: I sat staring at the narrow window at the city
Speaker 1: if he tucked under me in the tangle of a
Speaker 1: burrow blanket. My phone buzzed a few times that night,
Speaker 1: mostly group chat notifications, a couple friends reaching out after
Speaker 1: hearing the news. The tone felt cautious, not sure if
Speaker 1: it was ok to Jokorbi sador advice. I ignored them,
Speaker 1: letting the phone blink itself into darkness on the coffee table.
Speaker 1: By morning, the shock had thinned into a dull, persistent ache.
Speaker 1: I got up before Marco Stout, poured two mugs of
Speaker 1: instant coffee and sat by the window, watching as the
Speaker 1: city has pulled in front of me, Traffic streaming, old
Speaker 1: men hosing down their door steps. The dog walker stepped
Speaker 1: along by impatient mats. The world just kept going. It
Speaker 1: was nearly noon when I realized I'd have to go back.
Speaker 1: The apartment wasn't mine any more, but half my stuff
Speaker 1: is still there, art fact embedded everywhere in the landscape
Speaker 1: we'd shed. The thought made my hand sweat. I texted
Speaker 1: Elina in as few words as possible, need to pick
Speaker 1: up the last of my things. Let me know when
Speaker 1: you're out. She answered hours later, simple, Kurt, I'll be
Speaker 1: at the gallery all afternoon. Go ahead. I waited until
Speaker 1: I was sure she'd be firmly gone. The climb up
Speaker 1: to our apartment felt different now, my footsteps sachoing up
Speaker 1: the stairwell. When I pushed open the door, the sense
Speaker 1: of absence hit me. The space was stripped, but not clean.
Speaker 1: Boxes half packed, a stack of framed photos by the
Speaker 1: entry bench. The bowl where we used to keep our
Speaker 1: keys now empty. The walls were pale patches, ringed by
Speaker 1: the ghosts of art we taken down. I moved from
Speaker 1: room to room, scooping upp reminders a batter, tape measure,
Speaker 1: a few screwdrivers, three shirts I'd left scattered in the
Speaker 1: laundry heap. I stood in the kitchen, staring at the
Speaker 1: chip mug I couldn't remember packing. It was Selina's, not mine,
Speaker 1: A souvenir from a gallery trip to Santa Fe, a
Speaker 1: fine crack running down the handle. I left it on
Speaker 1: the counter next to her favorites, bachelor, unable to take
Speaker 1: another piece of her out of the place we both
Speaker 1: already abandoned. As I emptied the last few drawers in
Speaker 1: the bedroom, I found a set of our show passes,
Speaker 1: robber banded together, openings from nearly every year of our relationship.
Speaker 1: Messy handwriting, plus when scrolled, scratched out the names faded
Speaker 1: under greasy thumb prints. I hesitated, then slid them into
Speaker 1: an envelope, adding it to the back. One thing to
Speaker 1: remember that not every moment was sour or spoiled. Back
Speaker 1: in the living room, I found the collection of our
Speaker 1: joint photo albums. I paged through the one from that
Speaker 1: long ago trip to Florence as by the Arno faces
Speaker 1: slick with sun and cheap wine crowding each other out
Speaker 1: of frame. Flipping the page. I paused at one taken
Speaker 1: back in our first year Togethervillian up on a rickety
Speaker 1: lad painting back drops for the first real show we'd
Speaker 1: ever mounted together, calling down to me to stop making
Speaker 1: her laugh or she fall A laugh threatened to escape
Speaker 1: from my chest, but caught halfway becoming a sharp bake.
Speaker 1: I put the album back, deciding some memories only surviving
Speaker 1: place not in transit. Outside in the hall, I stopped
Speaker 1: and looked at the chalkboard by the door, her half raised, hot,
Speaker 1: still visible, smudged by time and someone's careless hand. I
Speaker 1: reached for a piece of chalk in the tray and
Speaker 1: scrawled a simple thank you beneath it, as if she'd
Speaker 1: ever see your care as if it meant anything now.
Speaker 1: Then I caught myself or of the line out before
Speaker 1: it was fully formed. Danstairs, I hailed a right chair
Speaker 1: back to Marco's My new temporary world, condensed to a
Speaker 1: single duffel and a head full of static. The driver
Speaker 1: didn't make s more talk, and I was grateful for it.
Speaker 1: Along the route we passed the Luna Hotel. Something inside
Speaker 1: me wanted it, just for a second to look up
Speaker 1: and catch a glimpse of Elena through one of the
Speaker 1: high gold tinted lobby windows. But I kept my eyes forward,
Speaker 1: focusing on the traffic, the lights, the city ceaseless shuffle.
Speaker 1: The days blurred around me. There was no clean break,
Speaker 1: just a slow leak of information, invitations trying up, people
Speaker 1: aligning themselves with Helena's side, orgies aside, but mostly with
Speaker 1: their own comfort. I overheard at a group show that
Speaker 1: Tomoss and Elena's cooperation had officially gone public, their new
Speaker 1: installation getting a prime rite up in a city magazine,
Speaker 1: conveniently omitting my name. Our shared past. The reality of
Speaker 1: a circle shadowed. Every so often, mutual friends would service.
Speaker 1: Leslie said a check in text, if you feel like
Speaker 1: seeing art again, let me know any reliably kind called
Speaker 1: one evening to tell me it will get easier, I promise.
Speaker 1: I wasn't sure if I believed her, but I tried
Speaker 1: to be gracious. I sorted my inbooks for freelance gig requests,
Speaker 1: filled my days with mounting exhibitions for strange as art
Speaker 1: I didn't care about, just shaped and colors, no longer
Speaker 1: fraught with personal meaning. Thills and logistics continued to arrive.
Speaker 1: I fielded a short clinical email from Alena's bread she detached,
Speaker 1: dividing up the storage. She nit studio rent and digital
Speaker 1: subscription fees. Wed demasted. In the background, the legal necessities
Speaker 1: began to settle themselves. She'd stay in the apartment, I'd
Speaker 1: keep my studio lease, the rest of our joint possessions
Speaker 1: to be broken through a friendly throag party. One late afternoon,
Speaker 1: after a day of windowless and stole labor, I made
Speaker 1: my slow way home for heads of exhaustion running through
Speaker 1: my arms. My phone led up with a miscall from Alina.
Speaker 1: Not a text, but a call, first in days. I
Speaker 1: stared at the screen for a long time, half dreading,
Speaker 1: half longing to pressrede al. In the end, I let
Speaker 1: us sit, watching the screen darken, and now later a
Speaker 1: message arrived. I picked up a few packages of yours
Speaker 1: at the apartment. Let me know if you want to
Speaker 1: gather them where I can leave them with Marco. It
Speaker 1: was stunning, suddenly to realize how cleanly our life had fractured.
Speaker 1: The tone brisk and transactional, but underneath it I felt
Speaker 1: a weird relief, a signal that perhaps the two of
Speaker 1: us could survive. The logistics, if not the sentiment of
Speaker 1: untangling our share days. That may be the only way
Speaker 1: forward was to leave the rest unspoken, preserved in the
Speaker 1: untraveled rooms of a life now finished. Still, there were
Speaker 1: other consequences I hadn't expected. One afternoon, on a work gig,
Speaker 1: I ran into Tomosa's supply shop. He flaked his card
Speaker 1: on the counter, offered me a too familiar smile, all
Speaker 1: performance and practice, dees, jess heard, you're a free agent now,
Speaker 1: Sorry it shook out this way. I stared straight ahead,
Speaker 1: ignoring the open hand he pretended to offer. I thought
Speaker 1: about saying something about all the lies, about his charming
Speaker 1: way of making you feel seen and then getting you
Speaker 1: in the same smiling breath, But in the end I
Speaker 1: only said take care. It sounded final. He nodded, no challenge,
Speaker 1: already moving on. In the weeks that followed, the city
Speaker 1: and oughtwells shifted imperceptibly around me, my absence from Alina's
Speaker 1: new orbit becoming its own quiet presence. Then news I'd
Speaker 1: helped built shows I dreamed up with her now belonged
Speaker 1: to a different mythology, Hers and Thomosis and whoever cared
Speaker 1: to claim the story the only proof that I had
Speaker 1: once mattered. There was in the gaps, in the ghosted
Speaker 1: invitations that never quite arrived, in the sideways glances of
Speaker 1: people left insure, whose hot break was safestter knowledge. Yet,
Speaker 1: in the cold light of morning, as I scented a
Speaker 1: raw frame or wipe great from my hands, I found
Speaker 1: myself less hollow than I'd imagined. Grief, it turned out,
Speaker 1: was in a permanent state, but a passing fog, burned
Speaker 1: off by work, by time, by the stubborn pulse of
Speaker 1: life outside your own head. Even as the days built up,
Speaker 1: all that was left between Elena and me began to
Speaker 1: take on a kind of abstract clarity, the end of
Speaker 1: a story neither of us would ever retell the same way.
Speaker 1: After one final run back to the apartment, escorting a
Speaker 1: mutual friend to collect a lost stash of canvases, I
Speaker 1: lingered a moment in the bare living room. The place
Speaker 1: was transformed, open, almost echoing, unrecognizable as the scene of
Speaker 1: our years together. Only a small fragment remained on one
Speaker 1: high shelf, Tucked behind a stack of left of a
Speaker 1: pink cans, was the old photograph from our very first
Speaker 1: gallery night. The shop marker had taken before either of
Speaker 1: us knew what we were dearing. Elena and me side
Speaker 1: by side, corkscrews of wine in hand, both laughing with
Speaker 1: our whole faces at some joke. Already lost her memory,
Speaker 1: we looked impossibly young, almost foolish, in our hope. I
Speaker 1: held it for a while, running my thumb over our faces,
Speaker 1: then slated carefully into my back. I looked round the room,
Speaker 1: feeling nothing sharp, just as soft ache and a kind
Speaker 1: of resignation. The heart was still there, yes, but it
Speaker 1: no longer felt like an open wound. I pulled the
Speaker 1: door clothes for the last time, listening as the locks
Speaker 1: snaked into place behind me. Outside the city was blue,
Speaker 1: with dusk, people folding in and out of all patterns.
Speaker 1: I stood on the steps for a moment, the photograph
Speaker 1: warm in my hand, ere flickering was irons and laughter
Speaker 1: sent from a food cart drifting up the block. I
Speaker 1: felt suspended, not quite belonging anywhere, not yet starting anything new.
Speaker 1: I took one long breath, squared my shoulders, and began
Speaker 1: to walk as the streets slid behind me, a press
Speaker 1: forward into the shifting evening, the whole city wide open
Speaker 1: and waiting. My old life sealed off behind the door
Speaker 1: I would never unlock again, and that is the end.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening and I will see you in
Speaker 1: the next one.