From: [email protected]
Dear Delilah,
Hello, my name is Alex Tokuda and I’m one of the curators at the Whitney in New York City. For the past several months, we’ve been preparing for our Queer Voices exhibition, due to launch on June 25, which will showcase queer photographers and their work from all over the country.
Delilah had, of course, heard of the Whitney’s Queer Voices exhibition. While New York City was home to over eight million people, queer photography was still a small world—niche to the true assholes—and the fact that the Whitney itself was creating an entire showcase centered on queer voices was . . . well, it was huge. Delilah would’ve given anything to be part of this show, but she couldn’t even submit work for consideration. The Whitney dealt with agents, seasoned gallery owners, famous photographers. They didn’t take emails from queer women in torn black jeans working weddings and serving up sparkling rosé at the River Café.
She swallowed hard and kept reading.
I do apologize for the weekend email, but in the spirit of full transparency, I’m a bit desperate here. Yesterday, a mutual acquaintance, Lorelei Nixon, shared one of your pieces, Submerged, with me, and I was very impressed. I’m writing to ask if you’d like to be part of the exhibition. I understand this is late notice. Usually, we book our artists months in advance, giving them plenty of time to prepare, so again, I do apologize. Just this morning, one of our previously scheduled artists had to pull their work from the exhibition due to a personal family matter, and I immediately thought of you. I feel your style and perspective is integral to this show, and this experience would be a wonderful opportunity to share your work with a broader audience. As this is a collective show, we’re asking each artist to prepare ten pieces from their body of work.
Please let me know your answer as soon as possible. We would need your pieces ready for matting and framing by June 20, at the very latest.
Best,
Alex Tokuda
Assistant Curator, The Whitney
they/them
Lorelei Nixon . . . Lorelei Nixon. Who the hell was Lorelei Nixon? Delilah scanned the email again, landing on the piece Alex referenced, Submerged. Of course Delilah knew the piece well. It was hers, after all, and she’d named the damn thing—a bride in a rusty bathtub full of milky water, mascara sliding down her face, eyes on the viewer. What she didn’t know was why the hell someone named Lorelei had it available to show to—
Lorelei.
Realization flashed hot through Delilah’s veins.
Lorelei.
That was the name of the woman who bought Submerged and promptly took Delilah home to her bed. Blond pixie cut, talented fingers. Not Lola or Leah or Laura, but Lorelei.
Which meant this was real. This was actually happening. The Whitney wanted Delilah’s photographs on their walls. Granted, they only wanted them because someone else more important or high profile had to drop out, but who the hell cared about that?
She, Delilah Green, was going to show at the Whitney. The Whitney. LaToya Ruby Frazier, a Black photographic artist whose work blew Delilah away—and who happened to be just a few years older than Delilah—had shown at the Whitney. Sara VanDerBeek, Leigh Ledare. This was huge. This was potentially the thing that could alter the course of her entire career. This was a life changer.
And she was in fucking Bright Falls.
She felt a flare of panic as she scanned Alex’s email again for the details. June 25, which was nearly three weeks away, but they needed her work by the twentieth, which was a mere four days after Astrid’s infernal wedding. She chewed on her bottom lip, wondering just how much grief Astrid would give her if Delilah crapped out on her right now.
Not that she cared all that much about her stepsister losing her shit, but as Delilah’s mind ran through dropping the bomb on Astrid, booking a flight back to New York, then walking into her apartment without the fifteen grand Isabel was paying her for this wedding gig, she knew she was up shit creek.
Delilah needed the money. Plain and simple. The Whitney might open a lot of doors, even give her some sales, but sales weren’t guaranteed, and the show itself wouldn’t pay her rent and ensure she could buy a grilled cheese sandwich from her local bodega for dinner.
Still, there was no way she was passing this up. She had some pieces that she really loved already—maybe even a couple that she’d shown at the Fitz—and she’d have a few days once she got back home to fine-tune them, take some new shots if she needed to, work in the co-opted darkroom where she rented space in Brooklyn.
She just wouldn’t sleep for seventy-two hours. Or eat. No big deal.
The Whitney.
Her chest swelled, and she felt an inescapable need to squeal. So she did, nice and quiet, while she wrote Alex back and enthusiastically—but totally professionally—accepted their invitation.
She’d just hit send when someone knocked on her door. Delilah froze, trying to remember if she’d requested room service or something in her slightly inebriated state upon check-in last night. Nothing rang a bell, and she vaguely remembered hanging the Do Not Disturb sign on her doorknob. Better to hunker down in this sea of cotton flowers until they went away, but she’d barely decided on this plan when she heard the unmistakable sound of a key sliding into a lock and the door swung open, revealing Astrid with two to-go cups from the Wake Up Coffee Company, the local coffee shop, stuffed into the crook of her left elbow, a key dangling from her right hand.
Delilah dropped her phone and yanked the comforter up to her chin. “What the fu—”
“I knew it,” Astrid said, cutting Delilah off. “I knew you’d still be in bed.” She set the coffees down on the dresser—the entire piece of furniture might as well have been one giant papier-mâché flower—and fisted her hands on her hips. “It’s nine thirty.”
“How the hell did you get a key to my room?” Delilah motioned to the rose-gold key ring, which, unsurprisingly, was shaped like a rose.
“Nell is a client of mine.”
“Nell.”
“The owner?”
“Ah yes, good ole Nell.”
Astrid sighed. “Most people actually know one another in this town, Delilah, and I redesigned her living room–kitchen combination last winter.”
“So a few throw pillows and a leather couch equals a complete and utter invasion of privacy? Isn’t that illegal?”
Astrid pulled a face, making it very clear that what she was about to say next pained her greatly. “I’m your sister.”
Delilah rubbed her eyes—that word had always settled funny on her gut. “Well, you should have redesigned this god-awful hotel room.”