Rae came back with the clipboard still in her hands and her snacks still on top.
“Good god with your trail mix,” Phil said to her. “There’s smoked Gouda, jamón, and Marcona almonds over there, and you’re eating bird shit.”
Rae was all business. “Ten minutes, and you guys have to clear the room.”
Thomas leaned down toward my ear and mumbled “bossy bitch” under his breath, and I couldn’t help but laugh.
In preparation for our exodus down to the party, I went to the bar cart and poured myself a double shot of whiskey. Phil saw what I was doing and said, “Make it two, Joey.”
I handed him the drink and fixed another one for myself.
Phil raised his glass and said, “To brilliant women. And the men who put them in cages.”
I mumbled, “To art.”
Shelly was in the middle of applying mascara to October’s eyelashes, but October managed to look over at me when I said that.
The whiskey never kicked in. No doubt I appeared aloof and composed to everyone around me. That’s my superhero skill in life. But inside I was a basket case. I wanted the exhibit to be a success. I wanted to fit in. I wanted October’s friends and colleagues to like me. And I wanted the mechanics of the cage to function without issue. All of that, combined with a roomful of strangers I assumed knew more about art than I did, triggered fear, anxiety, and feelings of inadequacy rooted so deep in me I wished I could summon the numb, checked-out Joe Harper to represent me for the night.
Downstairs, people were starting to arrive. Many were from the tech world, Phil told me: young, obscenely paid, and dressed like kindergarteners. Lots of colorful hoodies, sneakers, and slouchy jeans. I had on black pants and the black striped shirt I’d bought for Cal’s dinner party and felt overdressed.
“They look like they don’t have pots to piss in,” Phil said, “but they’ll pay thousands for these pieces, just watch.”
Thomas and Phil seemed to know many of the guests, and they introduced me to a handful, including the woman who ran the organization for which we were raising money. Her name was Julia, and she told me I was the spitting image of an actor from a TV show on HBO. When she walked away, Thomas claimed she had been flirting with me.
Thomas led me around the gallery, telling me about all the other pieces being auctioned off. Two in particular moved me. One was by a striking, livewire of a woman from Seattle named Jennifer, who became wide-eyed and animated when Phil told her I worked with October—I thought it said a lot about Phil that he used the word “with” as opposed to “for.”
Jennifer told me she was a fan of October’s work and asked me rapid-fire questions about the birdcage. She was outgoing and cool, and her piece was cool too—a large-scale square panel made of wax, paint, and gold leaf on wood, with a round, celestial form in the middle of the square. When I narrowed my eyes hard at it, I felt as if I were looking at deep space and the light of the moon, or a portal into a distant, dreamy galaxy. There seemed to be as much hidden underneath as there was on the surface, and I could relate to that.
The other piece that caught my attention was a wall hanging made of dark ropes knotted together and then hung on polished walnut rods in an intricate pattern of lines and curves that, depending on where I stood, reminded me of a guitar or a woman’s body.
I overheard two young women gossiping about who October’s boyfriend was. One even asked Thomas if Chris Callahan was going to be at the reception, and she asked it in a tone that made me think it was the reason she’d come. Thomas told the girl he didn’t know, even though he did.
Cal had actually texted me a few days earlier to say he’d looked into making it home for the event, but he had a show in Berlin on Wednesday and one in Amsterdam on Saturday, and even if he’d chartered a plane, he said getting back to the Netherlands in time would have been impossible.
Bummed I can’t be there.
I’m sure you two will kill it.
Good luck and send me a pic of my girl.
Fifteen minutes before the installation opened, Rae