Sherri is too busy to travel to Wisconsin to see poor, sick Jerry, really, she is. The annual gala is coming up in eight months, and nobody can agree on the theme. Her diva event planner at the museum, Marco, is pushing for Arabian Nights Under the Stars. He imagines tents, magic carpets everywhere, go-go dancers on plinths above the guests, little monkeys on leashes, a genie in a bottle. “Hummus!” he says. “Grape leaves! Fig everything! Lamb on a spit. We’ll drink wine out of old-school chalices, sit on pillows, and smoke hookahs. We could have two-humped camels trucked in.”

Margie Kent taps her pen on the table. “It all sounds a bit too Aladdin to me.”

“Or Raiders of the Lost Ark,” says Yvonne Blaisedell.

Sherri’s student intern, Chase, is just learning how to speak up in meetings, at her insistence. She loves interns and makes a point of giving them meaningful work to do. “Um, excuse me, but do we need to worry about cultural appropriation?” Oh, Chase. Not now, Sherri thinks. Not this meeting. Not on this day. Chase has unwittingly just become Marco’s enemy.

“Good point,” says Terrence, the head of membership. “This reeks of Orientalism.”

“OK, find me a theme that won’t offend someone,” Marco says. “Just try.”

“Cats?” Chase says.

Sherri wishes she could laugh. Oh dear. Marco shoots a look at Sherri and mouths Help me.

Terrence leans forward. “Excuse me, but what does Arabian Nights even have to do with our collection, and, well, art in general?”

Marco rolls his chair back to the wall. “What did Great Gatsby have to do with art? That was last year’s theme, and we raised almost a million dollars.”

The last thing Sherri needs is the staff disagreeing with each other at a board meeting. Terrence and Marco recently broke up, and they both came into her office on separate occasions to cry on her shoulder. She advised them to keep it professional, and here they are, arguing in front of board members. They are both her friends—they are like family, really. Everyone at the museum is. Nobody has done the other wrong. Sometimes, Sherri explained to them, playing the role of the sage older woman, that’s just how relationships end. She is beginning to think that’s the way her relationship with Bayard might end, maybe soon. No hard feelings. She always broke up with men when they cared too much for her, and Bayard has already proposed a few times. Each time she says no he kisses her and says he hopes she’ll change her mind someday. He put the ring in her nightstand drawer. She’s dated plenty of men over the years, but ever since Arthur, she’s been superstitious that loving her comes with a high cosmic price.

Margie looks at Sherri and says, “I’m just worried that the theme might seem a little … tacky.”