Layla leaned against my desk.

“Do you know about the RSVPs?” she said. “Hal wants to see the final numbers.”

I handed her the folder with the list in it. “I’m guessing the checkmarks are yeses.”

Layla scrutinized it for an uncomfortably long time. I had the impression she was working up the right words to say to me.

“Have you temped in a gallery before?” said Layla, making a note on the list.

Yes? No? “I’ve just been interning,” I said vaguely, wiping the droplet with my finger, noting that my emergency manicure was already chipping.

“Well, piece of advice,” said Layla, returning the folder. “Never show anyone anything when they ask for it.” She smiled that same assaulting smile. “I have to go help these oafs.”

Layla walked away with a sway in her step. She had the body of a fifties starlet: busty, with hips that seem shocked at the smallness of her waist. Her long arms and her preening confidence were the only signs of her genetic relationship to her father, Steve Goetz.

Layla strolled into the installation, trailing her hands over shoes and wires. Pearson and Erik hadn’t spoken for the last hour, and they greeted Layla with silent nods and kept working. No discussion. It was possible that they might not talk about Brenae or Hal the entire week. They might hardly talk at all, making my eavesdropping a waste of time.

The shoes were rising in columns, some already two feet high. The men had found a way to stack them, crisscross, and Erik was wiring them in. Pearson sorted for him. The columns, with their toes and heels, gave off a sense of wrong burial, of bodies stacked and piled. Layla joined the sorting. She seemed to dislike touching the shoes, holding them with her fingertips as she soldiered on, her face dutiful. Only when she handed things to Erik did her expression change, growing shadowed with doubt. According to Ray, Layla and Erik were the couple, together and apart since last year. I wondered how Erik liked dating the only child of a famous collector and a pharmaceutical fortune heiress, photography concentration at LAAC. I could see why Layla liked Erik. He was adorable, with that tumbling brown hair, nimble build, and ready smile; he had already landed his own solo show in Chinatown and had won a fellowship to Rome for next year. Yet in Layla’s presence, Erik’s shoulders hunched and his eyes were evasive. They flitted to Layla when she wasn’t looking, and flicked away when she was.

As I pulled Layla’s extra-frothy coffee closer, I noticed the guest list she had handed back to me. Scribbled in the margin, in tiny letters, were two words:

Quit now.

I took a sip of coffee and flinched. My tongue shorted out on the heat.