Iris watched as Sarah set a record for the world’s slowest lap around the room. Sarah stopped before each piece and studied it as though she had never seen it before, when in reality, she’d taken a job as a studio assistant for the artist several months earlier. Not only had she seen these paintings already, but she’d been the one to paint many of them.
Elsewhere in the cavernous room, a pair of children played a game of chase, while their mother, a woman with an expensive-looking nose and shiny hair, examined one of the oversized sculptures that hung from the gallery’s ceiling. The children were dressed in that specific way Iris noticed when she walked through certain neighborhoods, in which children were outfitted exclusively in a muted color palette of natural fibers. Iris felt a hiccup of compassion for the children. She imagined the austere gallery might not be where they’d like to be spending their Saturday afternoon, but then again they appeared to be having a better time than she was.
Iris had heard of Sarah’s boss before Sarah had taken the job. She had been described in one of Sarah’s books as a “great female artist,” which Iris assumed meant she was famous but less famous than her male peers. She was known for her oversized abstract paintings, and had recently begun exhibiting massive sculptures made out of steel bent into shapes that critics loved to describe in gendered terms. Looking at the sculptures now, Iris didn’t see anything particularly masculine or feminine—whatever that would mean—about the works. Instead, she saw objects that looked heavy. And yet here they were: suspended in the air overhead, like rain clouds constructed out of several tons of steel.
Prior to Sarah taking the job, Iris had assumed the artist made all her work herself, but it had quickly been revealed this wasn’t the case—which Iris knew wasn’t all that unusual. Sarah and the rest of the studio assistants worked on the paintings, and the sculptures were fabricated elsewhere, arriving straight to the gallery in shipping crates, never before having seen the inside of the artist’s studio.
The outlines of Sarah’s job were nebulous—abstracted, to say the least. In addition to working on the artist’s paintings, she was also responsible for picking up the artist’s dry cleaning, arguing with the artist’s neighbor about the height of the hedges in her backyard, and escorting the artist’s dog to weekly obedience lessons, among a plethora of other tasks that changed from week to week. For the first month of the job, she’d returned to the apartment she shared with Iris later and later each night, complaining about the artist. It was concerning to Iris, but not as concerning as it was now that Sarah had stopped complaining. Lately, she’d begun to speak about her employer in a slightly reverent tone. Iris had told Sarah she sounded like wall text. Sarah had told Iris it was called being good at your job.
Iris made her way over to Sarah, who had been standing in front of a single painting for what seemed like several lifetimes but actually amounted to a total of twenty-six seconds. Standing next to Sarah, Iris tried to see what Sarah saw—but her stomach was growling and she was tired and she was thirsty. She felt like one of the children who had been dragged to the gallery that day. She wasn’t even sure why Sarah had wanted to come here in the first place. Hadn’t she been staring at these same paintings every day at work for the last few months? It wasn’t like Iris went to the coffee shop where she worked on days off and plunked her laptop down to join the freelancers camped out there while nursing the dregs of lukewarm oat lattes.
The children ran past panting and giggling. Sarah moved on to the next painting.
◆
Sarah stood in front of a painting which she had painted almost the entirety of. She felt proud of her work—her work that was on display in a blue chip art gallery—her work that would likely sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars—her work that might end up in a museum someday—her work that was not her work, but was still her labor—was still her contribution. To what? To history, maybe; to society, perhaps. Definitely her contribution to her bank account. She actually had a salary now—and paid time off—and a health plan. She’d scheduled a celebratory tooth cleaning for later that month.
A few feet away the mother of the children was standing in front of one of Sarah’s favorite pieces in the show. The artist had been describing it as a self-portrait, although Sarah struggled to find anything figurative in its composition. Instead it reminded her of a sunrise, which on second thought, she realized, must be a pretty nice way to see oneself. Unless, of course, it was actually a sunset which conjured an entirely different set of associations.
Sarah walked into the center of the gallery and craned her neck to look up at the gargantuan sculpture that hung above her head. It had been made out of sandblasted stainless steel and aluminum, and despite its weight, had a floaty, mercurial look to it. Like the painting that reminded Sarah of the seconds sandwiched between night and day, this piece too lived in a place of in between. And yet, as the wall text declared, this work of art was consequential! Weighty! Made by a woman working in steel! It was a statement. An expensive statement that had required chains and cranes and dozens of handlers to install.
Of course not everyone was a fan of the artist’s new work. Many critics loudly preferred her earlier paintings. Sarah had seen the headlines. She just hadn’t had a chance to read the articles yet.
Sarah could overhear a nearby conversation between a gallery employee and a woman who wore her passport and credit cards in a pouch suspended from her neck like a bolo tie.
Everything’s so big! the woman declared.
The gallery employee nodded his head. The artist is very concerned with scale, he explained. How much space she takes up in the gallery.
The woman appeared to be thinking about this, or at least pretending to. Finally she turned back to the gallery employee. So big! she said again, and wandered off to look at another of the dangling sculptures.
◆
Iris noticed herself growing increasingly more hungry, along with the other sensations that often accompanied hunger, like the sudden desire to transform into a crying baby or a city-destroying monster at any moment. She stood in front of a painting that she thought resembled something a kindergartener would make if given the proper supplies and encouragement. She knew she wasn’t supposed to think this—that the point was that a kindergartener hadn’t thought to make it—but still, maybe a kindergartener just needed to be gifted expensive oil paints, an abundance of canvases, and a team of art school-educated assistants in order to pull off such a feat.
While Iris contorted her face in an expression meant to convey artistic appreciation, she was actually busy planning her next meal. Sarah had promised dinner would be on her if Iris tagged along for the gallery visit and there was a new restaurant not far from the gallery that served personal pizzas made out of sourdough crust decorated with ingredients like nasturtium petals and wild ramps and fresh nettle pesto. The restaurant had outdoor seating. Iris wondered if they took reservations, if there’d be a long wait on a Saturday. She wandered over to where Sarah now stood, directly beneath the gallery’s largest sculpture.
Well? Iris asked, leaning her head on Sarah’s shoulder.
We just got here, Sarah said. I want to watch the video. She gestured to a doorway that led to a small viewing room. Inside, a video of the artist speaking directly to camera was playing on a loop with several pairs of noise-canceling headphones waiting nearby on a wooden bench.
I’m hungry, Iris said. Nearby the children also appeared to be getting antsy, pulling on the leg of their mother’s artfully oversized corduroys. Iris watched them and felt grateful she was no longer a child. She was an adult with the ability to choose how and where she spent her time. It was actually something she had been working on with her therapist. I have choices now, her therapist had said to Iris, instructing her to echo the words back in her own voice as many times as it took for her to believe the statement was true. Today she had made the choice to come to this gallery and she could make the choice to leave whenever she liked. This was called progress.
Give me ten more minutes, Sarah said.
Fine, Iris said. Take your time. But I’m going to go find a deli.
I told you you should’ve packed a snack, Sarah teased, and Iris pretended to pull something out of her pocket before flipping Sarah the middle finger. Sarah rolled her eyes and waved Iris away, returning her gaze to the sculpture above.
◆
Sarah picked up a pair of the noise-canceling headphones and sat down on the bench across from the wall where a video of her boss was being projected. In the video, the artist was explaining her process. She kept using that word—process—over and over again as she walked through her studio crowded with works in progress and miniature prototypes of the sculptures that were now suspended from the gallery’s ceiling.
In the video, the artist wore a pair of paint-covered work pants. Sarah had never seen her wear them before. She looked tough, almost like a mechanic, as she walked through her studio and described her experience in art school being told no by many of her male professors. She held her hands about a foot away from each other as she described the thick books full of art history she’d been assigned by her teachers. Hundreds of pages, she said with a sigh, and not a single female artist. That was when I realized I had to start thinking big.
The video cut to the artist upstate at her second home, her children frolicking around an idyllic pond, while her husband—known by many as a “great artist” (no gendered modifier necessary this time)—described what it was that had drawn him to her work when she’d been one of his students. Shockingly bright, he said. Just that rare combination of talent and promise and seriousness. As he spoke, Sarah studied the deep lines of his face. He must have been at least twenty years older than his wife. The wrinkles etched into his face reminded Sarah of the draperies she used to sketch during her own art school years, when she’d stared at each fold until she knew it better than her own face in the mirror. Then she’d recreate the tableau in charcoal on the piece of paper in front of her. Back when she was studying the fundamentals.
After the video cut to black, it began again from the beginning, and this time, Sarah watched and imagined herself as the artist in the video. She imagined that this was an exhibition of her own artwork, that it was her name on the wall, her partner speaking proudly about her trailblazing career in the art world. She imagined herself walking through a studio all her own, her many assistants milling about, her calendar managed and all her meals delivered. She’d be talented and promising and serious, explaining her process in a looping video playing in a dark room. Of course, in the film playing in front of her now, not a single studio assistant appeared onscreen. Sarah thought maybe she’d do that part differently, but then again she didn’t know what it was like to be a great female artist herself, so maybe she’d do everything exactly the same.
Sarah stood up and took one last look at the screen. She made her way to the doorway that led back to the rest of the exhibition, and then she remembered she was still wearing the noise-canceling headphones. She took them off just in time to hear the sound of something crashing to the floor in the gallery, followed by a chorus of screams.
◆
Iris had walked further than was necessary. After a few more blocks, she stopped into a deli that looked like the type that would carry the brands she liked. Upon entry, she could see she’d been correct in her assumption. Here were the dark chocolate almond butter cups she loved, an assortment of kombucha in every hue of the rainbow, the bags of snacks that proclaimed no grains, no refined sugar, no nothing.
Iris studied the aisles of food the way Sarah had studied the walls hung with art in the gallery. She had always loved corner stores, grocery stores, gas stations—anywhere she could wander through rows and rows of brands, things she could actually afford to buy to bring a little bit of comfort or novelty or whatever it was she was looking for into her life. She picked up a protein bar that appeared to be marketed exclusively to women, the wrapper adorned with the usual nutritional info as well as a vague message about empowerment. She put the bar down and picked up another from the same company, this one with the same slogan but in a coconut-cacao flavor, and made her way over to the refrigerated section to pick out a beverage.
In one hand, Iris held her favorite brand of seltzer and in the other her second favorite brand of seltzer, weighing her options. Outside she could hear the roar of sirens blaring past but hardly registered the noise. She and Sarah lived on a busy avenue in Brooklyn, across the street from a twenty-four hour tire shop, and growing up in the borough, she had become accustomed to the cacophony of noises that made up the city’s drone. In fact, Iris found it difficult to fall asleep when she visited Sarah’s family in New Hampshire. She liked the sound of sirens and drunken shouting and traffic. It was as comforting as a white noise machine or a lullaby or rewatching her favorite TV show for the hundredth time. Less room for her to hear her own thoughts.
◆
Sarah wasn’t sure how she’d gotten from inside the gallery to the sidewalk. Someone had led her there, or maybe pushed her, but she couldn’t say for certain who it had been. Everyone on the sidewalk looked lost. The gallerist who, just moments ago, had appeared aloof and unaffected while parroting the exhibition’s press release to tourists from out of state, was now most certainly affected. He had a phone pressed to his ear and was silently nodding over and over again, apparently having forgotten whoever was on the other end couldn’t see the movement of his head.
Sarah thought about taking out her own phone and calling Iris, but what would she say? That her boss’s sculpture had just crushed a woman and her child? For a moment, less than a moment, really, Sarah wondered if the incident would affect the artist’s market value. But then she remembered there was a precedent for this kind of thing. Sculptures leaking formaldehyde, cables snapping during installation, museumgoers finding themselves pinned under a work of art. There’d likely be a lawsuit, a hefty payout; the artist might even attend a funeral or two. PR. Damage control. Lengthy essays by critics dissecting every angle of the incident. Whatever the case, it meant more coverage of the show. The news might even reach Sarah’s parents. Maybe now they’d stop donning masks of pained confusion whenever Sarah brought up her job at holiday dinners. Maybe now they’d understand her job was a real job, one that existed in the real world with real consequences, even if Sarah still didn’t have a 401k.
Nearby someone was crying. The sound made Sarah’s insides hurt, like someone had taken a meat hook and was scraping at the inner walls of her rib cage. She thought about all the paychecks she’d deposited with the artist’s name on them, how she’d been the one to make mock-ups of several of the sculptures out of Sculpy back at the artist’s studio.
Sarah watched the first stretcher emerge from the gallery.
◆
Iris ate the last few bites of the protein bar and discarded the wrapper in a trashcan as another ambulance roared past, its urgency only highlighting Iris’s lack thereof. She looked at the time on her phone. It’d been almost forty-five minutes since she’d left Sarah. She took another sip of seltzer and followed in the direction of the ambulance towards the gallery, just a few blocks away now.
As Iris got closer to the gallery, she could see an ambulance and firetruck were parked outside the entrance and a small crowd had formed there. A person was being carried out of the gallery on a stretcher, but Iris wasn’t close enough to get a good look. She walked faster, searching the crowd for Sarah’s face.
When Iris reached the gallery, another stretcher was emerging from its doors. One of the ambulances was departing and another was arriving. Time was doing that thing where it moved both very quickly and incredibly slowly at the same time. It resembled a slinky tumbling down a flight of stairs—continuously expanding and contracting as each second passed. Iris tried to remember what clothing Sarah had worn today, if any of it resembled the flash of color she’d seen on the body being carted off by paramedics, but her mind had gone blank blank blank.
But then there was Sarah. Sarah cutting her way through the crowd. Sarah upright and standing, but not the Sarah that Iris had left at the gallery less than an hour before. This Sarah’s face had gone pearl white and was glazed with what looked like a layer of sweat, the effect of which resembled a ghost who had discovered the dewy makeup trend and gotten overzealous with her application.
What happened? Iris asked, but Sarah was having trouble finding her words. Nearby Iris heard an EMT speaking into his radio. He said things she didn’t understand, but certain words caught in her ears, words she knew meant something bad had happened and would now never unhappen.
Iris held out the bottle of seltzer and Sarah took a sip, followed immediately by a small burp.
Nearby one of the gallery employees was talking to a police officer, but Iris couldn’t hear what they were saying. She considered attempting to get a look into the gallery but didn’t want to be rude. She wasn’t sure what the etiquette was for someone who had arrived late to an emergency. It reminded her of the time she’d turned the corner in the East Village only minutes after someone had jumped to their death from one of the apartment buildings above. That day too she’d missed the event, only putting together the facts from the expressions on the faces of the nearby pedestrians who, in a rare moment of being phased, had stopped to form a circle around the tragedy.
More uniformed people had appeared outside the gallery. They ushered the crowd away from the entrance. The second ambulance departed, its siren wailing.
Sarah wasn’t saying anything more. Iris watched her look around the crowd with a vacant expression on her face, and briefly felt a pang of jealousy that she had missed the event, followed by a second pang, this one of guilt at even having the thought. She thought back to the moments before she’d found Sarah, when she’d wondered if she’d been one of the bodies on the stretcher. She pulled Sarah’s body in close to hers, but Sarah’s body had gone rigid, her shoulders not softening in Iris’s embrace.
◆
It had been Sarah’s idea to take the subway home. Iris had offered to pay for a cab, even though it would have been a long, expensive journey, but Sarah had turned her down. She didn’t say it but when she had imagined them in a car, she had imagined all the things that could go wrong. The driver could fall asleep at the wheel and drive off the bridge. The driver could be drunk and crash into a series of pedestrians. The driver could be perfectly fine and there could be a problem with the engine, one that resulted in the driver, Sarah, and Iris dying a fiery death. But now that they were squeezed onto the crowded L train, Sarah’s mind had conjured even more gruesome scenarios: the train going off the tracks, the tunnel filling with water, more fire, a collision. Next she saw a bomb detonating, an active shooter, a sarin attack.
Meanwhile, she sat next to Iris, not saying a word, just sitting in the sticky mud of her mind, imagining all the ways her choice to take the train would ensure this journey would be their last.
At Union Square, Sarah and Iris transferred to the N train, and before the train doors closed, a troupe of teenage boys in track pants shimmied their way onto the train, a small speaker in the shape of a pill in one’s hand. They shouted, Showtime, showtime, showtime, as they filled the car with their presence.
Sarah watched the boys perform. They swung from the subway poles like acrobats, upside down, sideways, abdominal muscles engaged and impressive. When Sarah first moved to the city, she had thought it was incredible that the boys never made a mistake—never accidentally crashed into an audience member as the train car careened through a tunnel, never slipped from the subway pole to meet the ground head first. But then one day, one of the boys had. Swinging from a pole, tossing a hat into the air to land on an outstretched foot, he had miscalculated the distance between one of his legs and a commuter with her face hidden by a celebrity book club-approved hardcover. There’d been a collective gasp throughout the train car from the few actually paying attention to the show, as all the while, the bass continued to bump from the boy’s speaker. The woman had been fine that day. It was only the illusion of control that had been shattered.
As the train car emerged from the dark tunnel onto the Manhattan Bridge, one of the boys moonwalked his way in front of Sarah and Iris, not registering the look of terror still frozen on Sarah’s face. He held his hat out in front of the couple, but Sarah hardly noticed. She was looking out the train window behind him, at the city laid out like a diorama across the water. All that steel and glass and concrete. It looked so small from this perspective, so inconsequential. And yet she understood the scale of things the gallerist had spoken of earlier. The weightiness of being a person moving through the city’s grid. So many things could fall in a day: bricks, window panes, scaffolding, bodies.
Outside the sun was setting. In minutes, it’d dip below the horizon, but for now, the sky washed with pink, the train hurtling across the bridge, they were suspended in between day and night, between Brooklyn and Manhattan, between birth and death and all the tragedies that lay between like dominoes ready to be overturned at any moment. Iris fished through her wallet looking for a dollar. She reached a hand out towards the boy and deposited the cash in his hat before he danced away. The performance was complete: he and the others headed for the next train car through the doors Sarah never dared to use because she had always feared slipping in between.
When they emerged from the train stop in Brooklyn, it would be dark out already. Iris would be surprised to find that once again, she was hungry. She’d wonder if they might end up stopping for pizza after all.