Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Don’t be coy with me, sweetheart. It doesn’t suit either of us.”

“Jane, wait, just hold, okay?” Amina swallowed whole words, trying not to sound as scared as she felt. “I’m not sure what — but — can — let me just get off the other line.”

“Don’t you DARE fucking—”

She clicked over, the silence a welcome foxhole.

“Ami?” Dimple asked. “Is that you?”

“Holy crap.”

“What?”

“It’s Jane. She’s pissed. I’ve gotta call you back.”

“NO! Talk to me first.”

“What?”

“We need to talk.”

“Later, Dimple, she’s—” Jane hung up, the sound of her disconnection sending a flare across the murk of Amina’s confusion. “Wait. Why is Jane yelling at me?”

“Well, first of all, Jane needs to calm down and understand that—”

“WHY IS JANE YELLING AT ME?”

“Because she thinks the show is bad for business. Okay. So.” Dimple paused. “I went ahead and had ten of your prints matted and framed. I’m showing them with Charles White.”

“What?”

“Occasional accidental, the everyday tragedy.”

The panic that filled Amina was both swift and unexpected, like stepping in a puddle and getting caught in a riptide. Her legs shook. She looked down at her knees and then up at her hand, which had locked around one of the bedposts.

“Occasional slash accidental colon , documenting the everyday tragedy,” Dimple clarified.

Amina squeezed the bedpost harder. “You …?”

“Stop. Please don’t panic. It’s going to be amazing.”

“You can’t do it.”

“Of course I can.”

“No, you can’t . She’ll kill me. I promised.”

“No you didn’t. Not in writing.”

“What?”

“I checked.”

Checked? Amina’s eyes spun around the bedroom. “Dimple, I told her I wouldn’t even take them. It will kill her business.”

“Oh, c’mon. Is that what she told you?”

“She’s right! People don’t want to see their bad shit memorialized — not by the hired help! What were you thinking? Oh my God, she’s going to sue me.”

“She can’t sue you. I mean, she can, but she won’t win. They’re not her pictures.”

“Yes they are.”

“No, they are not . Jane doesn’t own the rights if the clients have bought their negatives. So as long as the clients sign the release, we’ve done nothing wrong.”

Amina blinked, stunned. “You can’t really believe that.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“She took me in , Dimple. She trained me.”

“Oh Jesus. You’re not going to, like, recite the entire script for The Color of Money , are you? Because the whole rookie-screws-the-master thing is played out. She didn’t teach you shit about taking these kinds of pictures. This is what you do. This is what you’ve always done. Jane doesn’t want anyone to see your best work? Fine. That’s her business. But it can’t be yours.”

“They’re her clients. They’ll never use her again if they see them.”

“That’s not what Lesley Beale says.”

It felt like years since Amina had even thought about the Seattle socialite. “What the hell does Lesley have to do with it?”

“I went to your office to see if there were more photographs, and found the one in the manila envelope on your desk. The naked bridesmaid on the coats with Brock Beale? Holy fucking hell. Amazing . The grimace on his face. It might actually be my favorite.”

“Oh my God.” Amina sat on the bed. “What have you done?”

“Stop acting like it’s bad, will you? I’ve gotten the permission to show your work from the clients who own the negatives.”

“You showed Lesley that picture?” Her throat felt hot and vomity. “Yes, obviously. I had to. She loved it, by the way. I mean, are you kidding? And we can talk all day about her art history degree and the ‘truth of vision’ and the ‘integrity of the moment’—which we did, by the way, and which I might actually agree with if agreeing with that woman didn’t make me want to drive a stake through my own heart — but make no mistake: That photo is the best thing that could have ever happened to her claim to the Beale fortune, and she knows it. She wants it up. She wants the whole fucking show up so it doesn’t look like the vendetta it is. Why do you think she’s helping us?”

“Lesley’s getting a divorce?”

“Oh, right, you missed that. Yeah, it’s big news out here. Apparently that douchebag has been screwing half of the—”

“Helping you?”

“Us, Amina, she’s helping us . She’s calling the clients personally. Talking about the value of art, the honor of honesty, the exclusivity of being included, blah blah blah. Honestly, who fucking cares what she’s saying? It’s working. We’ve gotten six out of ten permissions so far. We just need to—”

“No. Stop. I’m not going to do it.”

“Because of Jane?”

“Yes, because of Jane!”

“So take her out of it. What’s she going to do to you?”

“I am not getting fired over this!”

“Amina,” Dimple said, taking a breath. “You’re already fired.”

“That’s not true.” She knew even as she said it that it probably was. Dimple was a bully, not a liar, and more to the point, it felt inevitable. Didn’t she always know Jane was going to find out and fire her? Wasn’t it exactly what she had feared every time she got another print?

“She told her staff,” Dimple said. “Apparently there was some kind of shakedown over there this morning. She’s trying to figure out who else knew.”

Amina hunched over, riding out the fresh wave of guilt that crashed over her. Had Jane sniffed Jose out, found evidence of his prints? “Did she fire anyone else?”

“No idea.”

Her hand hurt. Amina let go of the bedpost, slowly unclenching her fingers. “She’s going to hate me.”

“She might. Then again, she might not, once she calms down. That’s why I’m saying take her out of the equation. A, because you’re already fired, and B, because you don’t actually know this is going to hurt her business. Neither does she. It’s just an assumption. I mean, let’s say this show goes up and absolutely nothing bad happens to the business. Do you still feel like shit?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Fine. Then why did you keep them at all?”

“What?”

“The prints. Why bother?”

“I … I don’t know.”

“Really? You don’t? You don’t know that you’ve been hoarding them in your closet — your closet , by the way, worst metaphor come to life — because you secretly wish other people could see them? Because I know that. It seems pretty obvious, actually. And why wouldn’t you? They’re fucking good. They’re your best work. I mean, listen, you can tell me that isn’t true, and that they were really just for your own viewing pleasure and you want things to go back to the way they were, with you pretending that your life doesn’t suck now that you’ve traded your ambition for America’s belated goddamn moral crisis, and you know what? I will give them back. I really will. I will give them back and you will just have to forgive me at some point in the future, because no matter how right I am, I’m actually not willing to have you hate me over this. Okay? But you have to tell me that that’s really what you want, not just some sad shit you like to play out because you weren’t loved enough as a kid or whatever.”

Amina was silent, lying back on the bed, the phone next to her head. Her cousin’s voice no longer filled her entire ear, just the space near it. It felt much less personal this way; the difference between getting blood drawn and getting a mosquito bite. It also allowed her the distance to admit that something was happening every time Dimple said best work . It felt like eating or fucking or otherwise having the right thing go in the right place. It felt primordially good.