It is a very strange experience. I hold on to the tickets, tightly, ready to offer them. I keep smiling and look ahead. I wait for the group of people to speak to me but Gideon just looks at me for a moment, while the blond woman whispers in his ear. Then, he nods and turns; all the people follow him and they disappear as a group behind the curtain. I’m not sure if I passed the test. I’m not sure if it was a test. If it was, I feel like maybe I did pass? If I hadn’t passed, maybe Gideon would have shaken his head, or perhaps even done something violent, like grabbed the booth and shaken it with me inside. I feel vaguely—amid my general feeling of confusion—proud of myself.

I feel like I’m sitting in the booth for hours. I’m skinny and so, my bum is quite bony; all chairs eventually make it ache, so it’s hard for me to use the dull pain as a marker of time. But, it must have been a while because, when a man comes through the door and puts a few crates of what look to be empty wine bottles on the floor by the entrance, it’s dark outside. I see the moon, momentarily, between the door and the wall, before the door shuts it out again.

“How are you doing?” I ask the puppet.

She lies still on my lap, empty again, my hand beside her. I lean my head against the side of the booth. I feel tired. My head has started to ache. My stomach rumbles.

I suppose this isn’t exactly what I had been expecting from the internship. The job description had said that I’d be shadowing a curator and learning about gallery directing and curation. It had said that I might be able to implement some of my ideas if I develop any during my time here, in which case, I may even get paid for my time. I’d gone to a really beautiful office near St. James’s Park a couple of months ago, which I was told the OTA uses whenever the gallery space is being prepared for the next show, and been interviewed by a nice woman who asked me about my practice and seemed genuinely interested in it. She had said that I would definitely “bring value to the institution.” There had been smart-looking bikes up on the wall, with thin frames, and pretty jewelry on the woman’s hands, and I’d thought to myself that, perhaps, a spot in that room would be the next step in my journey toward opening my own space.