There is, soon, the sound of bottles opening, and chairs being pulled out from under the dining tables, and my room empties. I can smell foods I’ve never eaten but have learned to identify from the scents my body allows me to pick up on: mushrooms, pastry, some sort of rich cheese, salmon, preserved lemons. There are whoops and cheers from the main room, and the sound of carnivalesque music played by a string quartet, then laughter when someone gives a speech. I lean against the wall again. I’m exhausted. Not really from doing anything, though. Being in the presence of people looking at art is exhausting, I think. Seeing how little it means to them is exhausting.

“Hello,” says a woman’s voice. I open my eyes. I hadn’t actually realized that I’d closed them. I look around the space, but I don’t see anyone. Then, through the door by the painting of the elephant autopsy—that now has a red sticker underneath it marking it as sold—steps a woman I recognize. She is an actress who is known for playing women who are mad. She walks up to me quite quickly, taking long strides. She’s wearing a black dress, with a maroon velvet, kimono-style jacket over the top, with flowers embroidered on it. “Hello,” she says again. She’s right in front of me now.

“Hi,” I say. I like her look. Her big round eyes, her big round white face that, surrounded by her nest of bushy black hair, looks like the moon, taking us right back around again to the theme of madness. “Well, look at you!” she says.

I can smell alcohol on her breath.

“Just look at you,” she says again, and she looks me up and down. “You are just adorable. And look at that—” She holds up a bunch of her hair, revealing a very slender, very white neck underneath. My mouth fills with saliva. The woman’s neck is pristine, with no marks, no creases, nothing. “We’re matching!” she says.

“Oh,” I say, and I copy her and hold up a bunch of my hair too. The actress moves toward me and claps her hair against mine. “Cheers!” she says. And, briefly, faintly, as she leans in close, I hear her pulse in my ears.

“Cheers,” I say awkwardly.

“Goodness,” she says, as our hands come briefly together; I feel her warmth and, I suppose, she feels my coldness. And then she looks up into my face, into my eyes, her own eyes wide, with an expression that looks something like recognition. She pauses for a moment and then she says, “Are you an artist?”

And then I hear another voice, behind the actress. “No.” It’s Heather. “She’s an intern.”

“Oh,” the actress says after a moment; she looks me up and down again, and then she says, “Will you swap with me?”

“What?” I ask.