CHAPTER FOUR — THE CLEARANCE (2)

She had not called me.

LAYLA

I did not sleep either.

This is the thing nobody tells you about being afraid: it's boring. You just sit there. Mr. Whiskers, a cat with a tumor and a diamond cone, judged me from the bed like I was the disappointment in the relationship. At six a.m. I made coffee that tasted like regret. At seven a.m. I propped the old painting against my wall, next to my own Ember and Dawn, and stood between the two of them like I was about to referee a custody fight.

They were the same painting.

That's not a metaphor. It was the same composition. A woman made of fire at the edge of morning. In mine, she was alone. In the old one, she was not—there was a crowned figure on his knees before her, hands out like he was drowning, like he was praying.

I have a degree in this. I spent four years staring at dead Europeans and their symbols. So I know what a crowned figure means, and I know what a woman made of fire means, and I know what it means when a five-hundred-year-old canvas has the exact same brush logic as the thing I painted last month in Queens on a hundred dollars' worth of canvas.

It means I'm being set up. It means someone is very good at setting things up. And it means the nice silver-haired woman who called me "darling" at two in the morning knows things about my art that I have never told another living person.

My phone buzzed. An email. Formal. On thick-letterhead paper that an email should not be allowed to have.

The Moone Collection — it had been printed, then scanned, then emailed, like even their spam wanted to feel physical. Dear Ms. Hayes. Following our pleasant introduction, the Moone Collection would be honored to formally extend a representation offer. Museum placement. A retrospective. Galleries on three continents. Please allow us to host you for a private viewing. We should very much like to show you what we have — and what we could make of you.

At the bottom, in her handwriting: Call me when you've stopped being afraid. Fear is just confusion looking for a better opinion. — C.

I put the phone down.

Here is the thing every indie artist in New York dreams about. A patron. A museum. Three continents. My rent, my loans, my forty-year-old studio life, solved in a single letter with a crescent moon on it. This is the thing I wanted. This is the thing I have wanted since I was sixteen and learned that being good was not the same as being seen.

And I wanted to throw the letter in the trash.

I called Max instead. Max is my best friend, a sculptor, gay, and the only person in New York who tells me the truth and then helps me hide the body. He picked up on the second ring, mid-chisel.

"Don't sound like that," he said, before I'd said a word. "What did the ice king do now."

"He didn't do anything," I said. "That's the problem. He hasn't called. In three days. I have a museum offer from a silver-haired woman who looks like she was carved by gods, I have a five-hundred-year-old painting of myself on my wall, and the man who paid my cat's vet bills has vanished into his tower like he remembered he's actually a ghost."

There was a pause. A very careful Max pause.

"Babe," he said. "Are you about to tell me you like him."

"I'm about to tell you I'm confused," I said. "There's a difference."

"No, there isn't," Max said. "You're confused because you like him and also because he is, and I quote, a 'mystery girl' fan account with forty thousand followers. Layla. Honey. This is not a man. This is a weather system with a checking account." He chiseled something. "But here's the thing. A weather system doesn't pay off your student loans. A weather system doesn't make sure your cat has diamonds. A weather system—"

"Okay," I said. "I get it."

"Do you?" he said. "Because I watched you turn down a normal boy three years ago because he 'made you feel small.' And now a boy who could buy the planet makes you feel like the only person in the room, and you're terrified. That's not confusion, babe. That's the good kind of scared. The kind you're allowed to fall for."

I didn't answer.

"Layla," Max said, softer. "If the museum offer feels like a trap—don't take it. You don't need a museum. You've got a forty-foot wall in a tower and a man who cancels mergers to watch you paint. That's the real patron. Don't go looking for three continents when your whole life just moved to the top of the sky."

I hung up. I looked at the two paintings on my wall.

And then my door knocked.

Not the polite knock. The knock that ends a conversation before it starts.

I looked through the peephole. Of course it was him. Of course it was Dorian Varga, in a black coat that cost more than my annual rent, standing in the hallway of a building where the elevator smells like cabbage, looking like he had personally been carved from the same cold that made the north pole.

I didn't open it. I stood behind it. Like that was a thing that could protect me.

"Open the door, Layla," he said through it. His voice was low. It always is.