gal might do with a girlfriend if she didn’t have to work twelve-hour shifts six days a week, all while babysitting a teenager. She should text the girls, her locas. When was the last time they all met up for lunch or a drink? Ha pasado—way too much time.
She parks the truck in a garage and filters into the pedestrian wave fattening the sidewalks. Office workers return from late lunches and delivery vans idle on curbs. Birdsong competes with the Doppler howl of a passing motorcycle. Somewhere cars honk and fungal fingernails panhandle. Grease and discarded vegetables ripen to a cloying bouquet in alleyways behind restaurants. A tension lifts from her shoulders and a slink slips into her step. She opens the door to the gallery and is greeted by a chime.
A small sculpture, no larger than a paperback, sits on a simple podium in the center of the space.
It intrigues her.
From a distance the sculpture’s convex surface appears smooth, but closer inspection reveals a landscape of intricately carved glyphs. Written and rewritten in an unfamiliar language, the carvings are a kind of palimpsest, impossible to decipher. What’s more, the distinction between sculpture and podium is illusory. Both are part of the same stone.
She catches the attention of a gallerist poised behind a desk. “Are these real words?”
The gallerist walks over and assesses the sculpture with her for a moment before responding. “Some are, like this bit in Sanskrit. Some are gibberish”—he indicates a series of symbols on the far slope of a bulge—“others are borrowed from invented languages found in literature—Elvish and Klingon. That kind of thing.” He slips her a smile. “Let me get you a catalog.”
While he’s away, she circles the sculpture, examining it from various angles. “It’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it. Are those paintings by the same artist?”
“Mm-hmm. The whole gallery. Everything you see. She’s local, but I’m sure we’ll lose her to New York soon.”
He presses something the size of a European fashion magazine into her hand. Presumably, this is the catalog. She gives it a cursory glance, then tucks it under her arm and takes a phantom sip from her long gone Americano.
“It’s really stunning.”
“Take a look around.” He holds out a hand for the empty cup. “I’ll bring you a fresh one. Regular or decaf?”
She smiles. “Regular. Cream. No sugar. Thank you.”
He disappears into a back room, returning a moment later with a mug of steaming coffee. It smells delicious and she hazards a sip, burning her tongue.
“Careful, it’s still hot. I’m Peter, by the way, the owner.”
They shake hands. “Laila.”
“Nice to meet you, Laila. Do you live in the area?” As they chitchat, they drift toward a triptych on the far wall.
“I do, yeah. I’m never home, though. I work too much.”
“What line of work?”
The triptych hangs together haphazardly, but each individual canvas is subdivided into orderly diamond grids. The same glyphs that skin the sculpture appear here scaled down. The work is exquisitely detailed. “I’m a pharmacist. Is this painted?”
“Partially. A randomizing algorithm generated it. All the symbols are fed into a database, then the algorithm flows everything into a template. The results are then printed onto canvases prepared with different washes.” He indicates the variations in each of the paintings. “These three are my favorite in the whole show.”
“They’re the same markings from the sculpture.”
“That’s right.”
“They’re beautiful.”
“I think so, too. There’s something so current about it, but also classic.”
She compares the texture of the canvas to the flatness of the ink, trying to recall some trivia from her art history class in college, but nothing comes to mind. She shakes her head. “I could never be an artist. I’m not that creative.”
“Then tell me about being a pharmacist,” Peter says. “Was it something you always knew you wanted to be?”
She laughs. “God, no! My father was in fashion and everybody figured I’d go that route, but it didn’t appeal to me. When I got to college I realized I had a knack for chemistry, so I went into pharmacology. People think pharmacists are just glorified retail clerks, but there’s more to it than that. There’s a whole side of it that’s about compassion and pain management. That’s what I like about it most. I like working with people.”
“That’s very interesting.” He tucks a hand into his pocket and seems to study her as if she were part of the show, another of the artist’s intricate creations. “How’s the coffee? Did I get it right?”
“It’s perfect. Thanks.” She takes a sip and this time she doesn’t burn herself. “What about you? What made you want to open a gallery?”
“Oh, that’s a boring story. I got into it by accident. I’m really a reporter, but I know a little bit about art so here we are. We’ll see how long it lasts.”
“Wow, and I thought I worked too hard. Reporter and gallery owner—that’s ambitious!”
He shrugs. “It’s not as hard as it sounds. They’re both really just about talking to people. I manage to get home at a decent hour,” he adds with a grin. “I wouldn’t do it otherwise.”
She finds herself on the verge of confessing that between work and life, she always chooses the pharmacy. But her stepmother’s voice is in the back of her head. You don’t know this man. Don’t be telling him your business. As much as she hates to admit it, Esther is right. Confiding in strange men—that’s how you get yourself into trouble. She should tell Alex that. Just because he’s a guy doesn’t mean he doesn’t have to watch out around men.
She lowers her eyes to the coffee and says, “That’s admirable.”
Just then her phone rings; its synthetic chirping shatters the calm of the gallery and startles her. Apologizing, she scrambles to fish it out of her purse. It’s probably Alex calling her back. If she misses his call, God only knows when she’ll be able to get a hold of him again.
But it’s not Alex calling. It’s Bill, the pharmacy’s regional manager.
“Shit. I should—”
“Absolutely.” Peter raises his hands and retreats.
She waits for him to return to the desk before taking the call.
“Hey, Laila,” Bill says. “Got a minute?” The incessantly cheerful cadence of an ad for store-brand pain reliever playing in the background quickens her pulse. Whether out of fear or excitement, or a mix of the two, remains unclear.
“What’s up?”
“I know you just went through inventory last night, but—”
He
