‘Cool,’ Sam said, walking across to the living room to gather his gym stuff from the airer stretched wide and covering the room’s initial cosmopolitan sheen with an unmistakable air of domesticity. ‘Want some company?’
Jamie’s modelesque frame stiffened all over again.
‘No, it’s okay. It’ll be boring.’ I shrugged, though my heart started to thud harder. It was okay, they had dinner plans anyway. ‘Just admin.’
‘You sure? Sure you don’t want a lift?’ he continued, overcompensating for not being able to give me one this morning. ‘To Randwick?’
I smiled, shaking my head. One hundred per cent. Not until I knew my own address.
‘I’ll be okay.’ I said. ‘Thank you.’ I turned to Jamie, who matched my tired smile as she gathered the breakfast bowls from the table, clearing the mess away.
‘See you at home after?’ Sam asked. I nodded. Home after. After I’d found a home.
A buzz interrupted the click-clack of my heels. I stalled on the steps leading into the gallery to retrieve my phone from the worn pocket of the only jeans I’d, naively, packed for Sydney. I froze as I saw the sender’s name: H. Sommers. I swiped open the body of the message, heart in my mouth, subject line dancing:
Re: The Mystery of Morning – Leo Todd And Friends Launch New Exhibition at CreateSpace.
My hungry eyes devoured the words:
Dear CreateSpace.
I’d erred on the side of caution and kept my own identity anonymous too, content to hide behind CreateSpace’s email account.
I’d like to accept your invitation to the opening night of your new Leo Todd exhibition. An opportunity I couldn’t possibly refuse.
I hoped she’d feel the same about my working with her. I swiped across to my personal account, trying desperately to not mix work and what I wished was pleasure: turned out a handful of acceptances and rejections for a bunch of studio flat viewings in and around Randwick wasn’t all that pleasurable. Not when a big part of me wanted to stay close to Sam. At least Sommers’ reply might buy me some grace when I asked Tim for this week’s wages. He’d made it very clear on my first day that he was going to pay me more for my Art Today Australia expertise – an offer I wasn’t sure would stand up if he discovered that I’d only ever been Devon Atwood’s PA. I imagined even less so if he exposed me as unemployed. I didn’t have time to negotiate; I had to move forward with this today.
Pushing open the door, I found Tim and Olivia in situ. Tim was dressed in black dungarees, a flesh-coloured polo underneath that made me do a double-take. His hair and beard looked like they hadn’t been trimmed in weeks. Devon would have never let her beauty regime slide. Once again, I blamed her skewed priorities for my redundancy – it was all about keeping up appearances for her. Olivia looked as pristine as ever, tapping manicured fingers on the laptop resting on one of the two flat-pack desks we’d erected as our makeshift office in the corner of the room. I sat at the second desk, quietly so as to not set off any more mood swings. They both nodded to me, but a comfortable silence fell between the three of us: my problem-solving had earned their trust.
‘Jessica.’ Tim’s voice sounded anxious. ‘How are the RSVPs coming?’ He furrowed his brow. Yesterday he didn’t care that the press weren’t even coming, so I struggled to see how he could now look so concerned by the numbers. He made a gesture that seemed to say hurry up with one hand, unwilling to wait for my response.
‘Good,’ I said, drawing my loose hair to hang to one side. Sam used to know that was a sign I had something awkward to ask. Thankfully, Tim was unaware of this. ‘Hannah Sommers just added her name to the list.’ I beamed like it was an achievement, but Tim accepted this as a given: she’s your future boss, after all.
‘And what did you say back?’ His hand encouraged me on. Nothing. It was just an RSVP. Tim noticed my blank stare. ‘I actually have a question to ask her,’ he said.
‘I have a question to ask you too,’ I interrupted, keen to ask about my wages in this brief moment of calm. As if on cue, Tim’s phone vibrated on the desk. I tried to make sense of the clipped ends of his conversation. He didn’t sound happy. I just couldn’t work out whether it was a ‘your ASOS order isn’t coming today’ or a ‘we need to call it all off’ not happy. Either way I needed that money before going to see the flats in Randwick tonight. It felt like a year raced by while Olivia and I waited with bated breath for Tim to hang up the call.
‘It’s bad; it’s very bad.’ Tim shook his head, removing his specs for dramatic effect. I waited for him to go on. Given the other outbursts I’d seen this week it still could have been the ASOS thing. ‘That was the website developers,’ he went on, beginning to pace. ‘The ticket price has been listed wrongly this whole time. We’ll be losing money on every sale.’ His face looked as grey as his beard, his eyes searching mine for answers. I’d solved the layout issue, the lack of space for Patience and the press debacle but clearly Tim’s bar was set higher than a hat-trick. ‘Jess? We can’t change the price now, can we?’
I was meant to be doing Tim a favour, not running the show. But my God, I was running the show. I looked into his questioning eyes: can we? It would look bad, sure. But we had to. We couldn’t keep selling them at that price, not given how much Tim and Carlo had promised CreateSpace the exhibition would bring in. I’d always begrudged the pompous prices that seemed to follow the art world around, but the fat figures detailed in the contract had sent my mind into a spin. ‘Spin.’ My whisper escaped into the space between us. We just had to spin this. Lord knows I’d had to spin a yarn and turn a tale or two at Art Today.
‘Okay, here’s what we’ll do,’ I said. ‘Get the developers to design a flash saying visitors have twenty-four hours left to buy tickets at the Early Bird rate; we’ll then push up our original price a little to cover the projected loss – the publicity should enable the exhibition to carry a higher price.’
‘Great – I was just about to say that,’ Olivia chipped in, grasping for a little of the limelight. Turned out not everyone was qualified in bullshitting – you needed years as a PA for that.
‘You think that will work?’ Tim asked, peering over his glasses.
‘Yes?’ I replied, not meaning to send my inflection soaring in the process.
‘Then great, we’ll do that.’ Tim nodded, smiling again. ‘What would we do without you?’ He cocked his head to study me closer. Olivia sat up a little straighter.
‘You’d be fine.’ I looked from Tim to Olivia, not meaning my voice to waver.
‘No, seriously.’ Tim’s smile vanished, worry drawing lines across his face. ‘We can’t do this without you.’ That seemed a bit rich seeing as I’d been with them for less than a week, but I couldn’t help that feeling from filling my stomach afresh, telling me again: you’re useful, wanted.
‘Tim, I—’
‘Jessica, I—’ His question interrupted my own. I nodded to him to continue; he was my boss, after all. ‘How do you think Ms Sommers would feel…’ He had always called her Hannah before. He must really want something. ‘If you were to stay with us a little longer, postpone your start date with the magazine a little – just until we have the opening night out of the way?’ He stood a little straighter, overcompensating for the vulnerability scrawled across his face. He really needed me. And I needed him. I needed the job, the money. Most of all I needed to stop myself from leaping into his arms at the offer of a whole month of work.