AS SOON AS THE RAMP went down, Layla vanished to make a phone call and Zania continued to loudly “search” the gallery for the dolly. As I watched the men struggle alone with the giant task of unloading crates of shoes, I had a lightning-fast internal debate about whether I wanted the crew to take me for a real gallerina or if I wanted them to trust me. Ray was right; I was more persuasive on sincerity than on sophistication. So I helped out. I lugged and staggered, truck to building and down the hall to the gallery. The hall was the worst—narrow and practically forty feet long. After a few chuffing trips, Pearson came up with the idea of sliding the crates on blankets from the truck and into the building, but it was still hard work, and I felt a third sweat soaking my suit and dripping my thin layer of foundation away. The two men didn’t say anything to me, but I caught Pearson giving me an appraising glance when he thought I wasn’t looking. He appeared less condescending as he flexed and strained, and more like the kind of sturdy, unflappable person you hoped would show up to fix your broken furnace. Erik pounced and sprang, as agile as ever, but he was laboring, too. His cheeks puffed with breath when he upended the crates into enormous piles in the gallery space. Hundreds and hundreds of shoes. The crew had their materials now.

When Zania and Layla reappeared, they ignored the unloading and waded straight into the shoes. “Let’s get an all-suede pile,” Erik told them. “All leather, too.”

“We’re fine,” Pearson said to me when I walked back to the truck. “We can take it from here. Thanks, though.”

By the curious way he said it, by the way we were suddenly alone and only a few feet apart, I felt compelled to explain. “I grew up in a rural state,” I said. “We were raised to pitch in.”

“You’re from New England,” he said.

I regarded him as calmly as I could, but he didn’t look calculating, just curious.

“How’d you know?” I said.

He shrugged and moved toward another box. “Just a lucky guess.”

“Come on. What was the clue?”

“Your accent and your crow’s feet,” he said, sounding resigned. “Long winters are hard on the face.”

I tried not to touch the wrinkles I’d always hoped would wait to form until I was at least thirty-five and married, with a mortgage and a child on the way.

“How about you—Brooklyn?” I said.

I was wrong, I knew, but I suspected that Pearson preferred to fool people with his urban veneer.