Known for interactive installations that question and refigure the quotidian in our lives, Giroux will juxtapose the heights of human architecture with earthbound human apparel to examine the connections between religion and commercialism in contemporary life. [Oh-kay. And the emperor’s new clothes are smashing, too.] Giroux has been the director of the MFA program in visual arts at LAAC for twenty-two years.

The guide included a late-1970s picture of Hal slouched on his elbows on an airplane wing in an airplane graveyard. The young Hal was bearded and bushy-haired and grinned with impish glee. He looked only a few hours older than his students, who posed around him, all white, all sporting long locks and tight flared pants, their faces adoring. The guide listed Giroux’s awards and a few earlier works and quoted an art critic who said, “Hal Giroux demands his viewers to reconsider their place in the world of objects. His made things are things made visible.” Blurbs were often overblown, but this one made little sense. The installation itself seemed a bit perky and obvious. Shoe, cathedral. Let’s take sacred iconography and smear it with the mundane or vulgar. It’s Piss Christ! It’s the Virgin Mary painted in elephant dung, only much less risky. I felt inclined to join Janis Rocque and Yegina in their scorn for Giroux, then reminded myself I had no real talent for scorn. I was much better at trusting the best in people. At being trustworthy. In two and a half hours, I’d leave for my interview and prove this. The suit made me feel like I could manage higher heels, though. I wondered if there were any in the heaps of shoes around the gallery, and if anyone would notice me borrowing them.

A white cup slid across the low wall that circled my desk.

“I got it extra frothy because that’s what the other gallerina liked,” said a husky voice. “I know you’re not the same person. But you can have it anyway.” I followed the French-tipped fingers holding the cup to a plump pale arm, a white sleeveless shirt, red hair. Layla smiled when I met her eyes, but it was a smile that splashed like salt, and it seasoned her words with sharpness.

I thanked her and took the cup, wincing at the heat, nearly dropping it. It thunked to my desk, making a tiny, creamy splash. I didn’t know what to wipe it with.

“Oops, extra hot, too,” Layla said. “My fingers aren’t very sensitive.”

“I’ll let it cool,” I said. The droplet glistened on the chrome.

Layla didn’t leave. She looked over at Pearson and Erik and shook her head. “Two-thirds of the shoes got delivered to LAAC by accident,” she said and sighed. “They should be on their way now.”

“That’s a shame,” I said in what I hoped was a proper intonation. “Will it delay you much?”