“Neither do I. That’s part of it. All I know is that the next thing is my boss, who represents Matthew’s work, tells me that he doesn’t want me working on Matthew’s show because of our personal relationship. Fine—fair enough. Philip Louis dated clients and it always fucked things up, but he ran the gallery so it was different for him. So I don’t know anything about the show and Matthew was always really secretive about his work, especially when it was going well. Superstition or whatever, and for a long time I found that really charming, so I respected it, gave him space. The night the show opens, I get to his studio, which is in this giant warehouse in Bushwick—that’s this sort of gritty neighborhood in Brooklyn, so ugly that people think it’s cool—and there’s a crowd of people there, and this energy, a tingle of something, about the way people are looking at me. And I feel like I’m being paranoid or wonder if it’s sort of, you know, nice attention. Like, oh, there’s his girlfriend, she’s so lovely, rising star, blah blah blah.” Even in this open, unfiltered mode I felt embarrassed to admit that—that I had wanted to be admired. Craved it enough that I was willing to ignore the feeling of low-grade dread tugging at me, telegraphing that I should be wary. That something was off.

“You needed to listen to your intuition.” Clara tapped her forehead to indicate her third eye. “Seriously. I don’t even believe in all of that psychobabble stuff and I’m a psychic, but I’m telling you. Trust yourself more. Anyway, keep going.”

“So the show, I find out, is comprised of two artists’ works. And the other artist is …”

Clara leaned in even closer, her knee touching mine, her hand on my wrist. “That bitch Ramona!” For a second I remembered just how young she was. How, when I was her age, my friends and I were riding our bikes to the Wawa and pooling our money to buy a milkshake to split.