As I entered the streaming crowd, I couldn’t decide if I despised Hal for using his position to manufacture a grand apology that might inflict further pain on Brenae’s family, or grudgingly admired him for owning up to his mistake and honoring Brenae’s wishes to make the statement she wanted to make. I wondered if people were here to see the apology even more than the art.

When I reached the central room where Ray, Janis, and I had once waited for a tour of LAAC’s studios, there, in the hub of it all, a giant projection flickered, showing a younger, scrawnier Brenae sitting cross-legged in front of a tent in a living room with graffiti tags and dirt streaks on the walls. She was holding a stick over a tiny camp stove, a marshmallow on the end of it. With slow, deliberate motions, she turned the stick, then raised it and blew. The camera zoomed in: a close-up, as Brenae bit and burned herself, flinching. Then she kept eating anyway, the thick white goo clotting her mouth. It was as mesmerizing as it was hard to watch. This was the first film she’d made with Erik Reidl, and already he had packaged her: the tempted virgin consuming the forbidden fruit, the pain and pleasure in her face.

A placard announced that Camping would run on a loop with After-Parties, while Packing and Lesson in Red would only show once, at 8:00 p.m., introduced by the new LAAC director, and then Lynne Feldman and Hal Giroux. I had nearly an hour to kill before the main event.

A clanging noise interrupted my thoughts, and I turned to see a stream of dancers, a dozen of them, wearing fatigues and holding mirrors, swaying in tandem as they threaded their way through the crowd. They followed a woman in all white, her face covered with green makeup, pounding an army helmet with a hammer. Clang, clang. As the dancers passed out of sight, no one in the crowd actually responded to the performance; no one paused to remark on its meaning. There was so much art at LAAC, all around you, it was like leaves in the autumn wind.

A quick survey of the crowd didn’t reveal my friends. I was sure that Yegina and Hiro, and Janis and Dee were here, but I didn’t mind exploring on my own. I needed to be open and ready tonight; I had my recorder, my handheld boom, extra batteries. At the posted studio map, I paused and read through the graduates. One name popped out, and I froze. The noise of the room flattened to an incomprehensible babble. A crowd began to grow behind me.

Finally, I stepped aside and dialed a contact on my phone. Ray answered on the first ring.

“Are you home already?” He paused. “It’s only ten here.”