On the screen, the word PACKING appeared, accompanied by a groan of music, and everyone started streaming from the bar to watch. The crowd pushed me closer to the screen, closer to where Ray was standing, behind a clump of . . . grad students? Young art collectors? Two men, two women, all in their twenties, a tight-knit collective. Ray had his head angled toward the screen, but I could tell he was watching them. Why? They didn’t appear menacing, just shoddy in an expensive way. Rich kids trying to slum with their low-slung jeans and layered shirts. Or maybe I was judging them too fast. The bald guy wore shorts and orthotic sneakers. The redhead had her own look, like a teenager who’d dressed herself from a flea market, but her hair glowed with the luster of salon-grade shampoo, and no one did makeup like that unless they’d been trained by Hollywood. She seemed familiar, too, though I didn’t know why.

A stern female voice intoned, “Welcome to the first public screening of a landmark film by an artist who died too young.”

My goodness, Lynne Feldman was present. And speaking to this crowd. I’d always set great store by my chief curator’s tastes, which were as sharp and surprising as a Japanese pickled plum. So I was curious to see her endorse a mere grad student, albeit a grad student of world-renowned LAAC.

The screen popped and there they stood, Lynne the curator in her usual dark suit and scarlet mouth, silhouetted before Brenae Brasil, huge, facing forward now, every detail of her physique magnified. There was the young artist’s curly black hair, lifted by a headband, there her dark brows and full cheeks, her muscular body clad in T-shirt and jeans. Frozen, illuminated, and enlarged like this, Brenae Brasil had the air of an idol. She glowed. She symbolized. It was hard to imagine the real person behind the image, a twenty-two-year-old woman with private thoughts and fears, alone in her studio.

Lynne lifted the mic. “Tonight, we get to see one of the last projects Brenae Brasil completed before she died, a film that documents the week Brasil spent carrying a loaded gun on her person, twenty-four hours a day, to campus, to the grocery store, to the bathroom, to meals, to bed. A loaded gun,” Lynne repeated. “A female body connected to violence and self-defense, twenty-four hours a day, in public as well as in its most intimate moments. Critics”—Lynne paused and raised an eyebrow—“among them, me, have already nominated Packing for several awards, including . . .” She plunged into a jungle of complicated accolades that few people care about other than the ones pining to receive them.

Scattered claps and cheers greeted her remarks. Ray’s foursome was whispering together. The redhead looked coolly angry, then blank.