Chapter 4: parti
She climbed the stairs slowly, each step a return to a self that suddenly seemed very small, and very far away. Her dorm room door, adorned with a peeling Van Gogh starry night sticker, felt like a border crossing. Inside, the smell of gesso and stale coffee was a shock after the house’s curated, scentless air.
Leo was sitting on her unmade bed, sketching in a battered notebook. He didn’t look up. “You’re back before dawn. I’m impressed.”
“What are you doing here?” Ivy dropped her clutch onto a chair littered with paint-stained sweaters.
“Your roommate let me in. I was worried you’d been ritually dismembered and turned into an installation piece.” His charcoal moved in quick, angry strokes. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Or become one.”
“I’m fine. It was just a party.” She fingered the silk of her dress, the material feeling alien now. “I got a meeting with a gallery owner. Marcus from Vanguard.”
Leo’s hand stopped. He finally looked at her, his eyes dark in the lamplight. “Rossi’s guy. Of course.” He closed his sketchbook. “And what does the good doctor get out of this brokerage?”
“Why does she have to get anything?” Ivy’s voice rose, defensive. “Maybe she just recognizes talent.”
“Talent.” Leo repeated the word like a foreign object. He stood up and walked to her easel, pointing at the half-finished portrait. “This is talent. This frustrated, messy, trying-to-breathe thing. That party? That’s something else. That’s consumption.” He picked up a tube of phthalo blue, rolling it in his palms. “My cousin got into that scene. She’s a photographer’s assistant now, basically a gofer. She says they chew up pretty girls like candy and spit out the wrappers.”
“Your cousin isn’t me.” Ivy crossed her arms, hugging herself. The room was too warm. “And maybe I’m tired of being a frustrated, messy thing. Maybe I want to be more than just potential.”
Leo was quiet for a long moment. The hum of the mini-fridge filled the space. “Just promise me one thing,” he said, his voice softer. “Before you sign anything, before you take your clothes off for any ‘artistic test shots’, you let me or someone else look at it. Someone not currently bathing in Rossi’s mothball-scented Kool-Aid.”
“I’m not an idiot, Leo.”
“I know.” He sighed, putting the paint tube down. “That’s why I’m worried. Smart people are better at convincing themselves that bad deals are good opportunities.” He headed for the door, pausing with his hand on the frame. “The dress is killer, by the way. For what it’s worth.”
The door clicked shut behind him. Ivy stood in the center of her chaotic room, suspended between two worlds. She peeled the dress off, letting it pool on the floor like a shed skin, and pulled on an old band t-shirt. She scrubbed her face clean, the makeup coming away on the towel in smears of beige and black.
But the feeling wouldn’t wash off. It was a low-grade vibration in her bones, part thrill, part dread. She lay in the dark, staring at the ceiling. Mara’s smile in the photograph. Rossi’s possessive hand on her back. Marcus’s evaluating stare. They played on a loop behind her eyes.
Her phone buzzed on the pillow. A new email. The sender was S.R. The subject line: Next Steps.
The message was brief. Marcus is eager. Wednesday, 10 a.m., at the Vanguard. Address below. Wear neutral. We will discuss the narrative.
We. The word was a collar. Ivy’s thumb hovered over the screen. The blue light illuminated her face in the dark room. She could delete it. She could type a refusal, polite but firm. She could listen to Leo, to the cold knot in her own stomach.
She thought of her mother’s voice on the phone last week, tired. Are you sure this is practical, honey? She thought of the other girls in her classes, their talk of waitressing jobs to pay off loans. She saw the infinite, grey stretch of a life spent just scraping by, her looks fading in a cramped studio, her paintings stacked unseen against a wall.
She hit reply. See you Wednesday.
The screen went dark. The commitment was made. In the silence, the memory of Doreen’s grip on her wrist at the party surfaced, her wine-heavy plea. You have real talent. It felt like a hand reaching for her from the bottom of a well.
Ivy rolled over, burying her face in the pillow. She didn’t sleep. She practiced holding Mara’s vacant, beautiful smile in the mirror of her mind, until her own face ached with the unfamiliar shape.
She climbed the stairs slowly, each step a return to a self that suddenly seemed very small, and very far away. Her dorm room door was a slab of cheap painted wood, scarred with stickers from previous occupants. Inside, the silence was a physical relief after the party’s constant hum.
She dropped her clutch on the floor. The black silk dress pooled around her ankles like a shadow she was stepping out of. In her practical cotton pajamas, she felt like a child again. The portrait on her easel watched her, its unresolved eyes a mute accusation. You left us here, it seemed to say. You went and got yourself a new frame.
Sleep was a shallow, fitful lake. She dreamed of cameras that clicked like insects, and of Doreen crying thick, oily tears that stained canvases. She woke to Saturday morning sun and the bland smell of microwave popcorn from the hallway. Her phone, facedown on the nightstand, was a dark rectangle. No messages. The party already felt like a fossil, layers of sediment hardening over the memory.
By Monday, the fossil had begun to crack. Leo cornered her after life drawing, his brow furrowed. “So? Give me the post-op. How was the land of the lotus-eaters?”
“It was a party, Leo. People drank. They talked.” She focused on wiping charcoal from her hands, the black dust clinging to her skin.
“Uh-huh. And did they also suck the marrow from your bones while discussing postmodern theory?” He fell into step beside her, his bag bumping against his leg. “You’ve got this look. Like you’re waiting for a verdict.”
“I’m fine.” The words tasted like aluminum. “Rossi set up a test shoot for me. At the Vanguard Gallery.”
Leo stopped walking. The flow of students parted around them like water around a stone. “A shoot. You, modeling.”
“It’s just tests. To see.” She heard the defensive pitch in her voice, the one she used when explaining herself to her mother.
“To see what, exactly?” He shifted his weight, his expression unreadable. “If you photograph well? Ivy, you could photograph well under a sewer grate. What are they really looking at?” He sighed, running a hand through his hair, leaving a faint grey streak. “Just… get everything in writing. Even the ‘no obligation’ stuff.”
Rossi’s email arrived Wednesday, succinct. Friday, 4 PM. Vanguard Gallery. Bring your portfolio. Marcus is expecting you. The portfolio request felt like a test of its own—a bone thrown to the artist part of her, the part that was supposed to matter.
Friday afternoon, the gallery was a white cube cooled to the temperature of museum preservation. Marcus, in another velvet blazer, greeted her with a handshake that lingered. “Ivy. Seraphina’s new protégé. Let’s see the work before we see the subject.”
He flipped through her portfolio on a sleek desk, his movements quick, efficient. He paused only at a self-portrait she’d done months ago, a raw, unflattering study in fatigue and fluorescent light. “This has a certain grim honesty,” he mused. “But it’s not the narrative we’re building. Come. The studio is set up.”
The back room was a clinical space, all seamless white paper and silver umbrellas. A rail of clothing awaited, garments in neutral linens and silks. A young, harried assistant named Chloe smiled tightly. “We’ll start simple. Just you in the turtleneck, against the white.”
The lights were hotter than she expected. They poured over her skin, bleaching detail, flattening perspective. “Give me nothing,” Marcus called from behind the camera, his voice now all business. “Empty. Think of a closed door. A vacant room.”
Ivy tried to find that emptiness. She thought of Mara’s photographed smile. The lights hummed. The shutter clicked, a rapid, mechanized sound. “Good. Now, a whisper of something. Not a thought, just the ghost of a feeling. Loss, but you don’t know what of.”
It was strangely exhausting, this work of vacancy. Chloe adjusted a strap, her fingers cool and impersonal. After an hour, Marcus lowered his camera. “Water break. You’re doing well. You have a… palatable blankness. It’s a quality.”
She drank from a cold bottle, the condensation wet in her palm. Palatable blankness. The phrase turned inside her, sharp-edged.
“We’ll do a few with the drape,” Marcus said, gesturing to a long piece of raw, off-white linen. “Classical echoes. Think timeless. Think artifact.”
Chloe showed her how to hold the fabric, arranging it over one shoulder so it fell in what she called “a natural cascade.” It smelled of starch and dust. The lights came up again. “Turn your head. Slowly. Stop.” Click. “Now, look through me. As if I’m glass.”
She tried. She stared at the black lens, and it felt like staring into a well. Her own reflection was a tiny, curved ghost in the glass. “Eyes are softening too much. Think of a statue. The eyes are made of stone.”
The door to the gallery floor opened, and Rossi entered, a silent observer in her practical shoes. She stood just outside the pool of light, arms crossed, saying nothing. Her presence was a weight, a final inspector on the production line.
“Better,” Marcus murmured. The clicks came faster. “That’s the look. Untouched. Waiting.”
Afterward, under the normal lights, Rossi approached. “Marcus is pleased. The ‘waiting’ series has commercial legs. High-end editorial. Perhaps a niche fragrance campaign.”
“He said I was blank,” Ivy said, the words escaping like a confession.
“Blank is the finest canvas,” Rossi replied, her hand coming to rest on Ivy’s draped shoulder. “It implies potential. It invites projection. That is the value.” She produced a single sheet of paper from her leather folio. “A standard release for the test shots. It allows Marcus to use the images in his portfolio, to shop them to clients. This is how it begins.”
Ivy’s eyes scanned the dense text. In perpetuity. Royalty-free. Model release and waiver. Leo’s voice echoed in her head. Get everything in writing. But this was writing, a forest of legalese she couldn’t navigate. At the bottom was a line for her signature.
“It’s just for the tests,” Rossi said, her tone reasonable. “A formality. You can’t very well have your images shown to Vogue Italia without it, can you?” She offered a pen.
The pen was cold, heavy metal. Ivy thought of the photograph in the study, Mara’s timeless, vacant smile. She thought of her own portrait at home, the one with the unresolved eyes. She took the pen.
The signature looked foreign on the page, a small, tidy knot. Rossi smiled, a slow unveiling of satisfaction. “Excellent. I’ll have Chloe call a car. You should celebrate. This is the first real step.”
The returned car was different, a sleek town car. As it glided away from the gallery, Ivy’s phone buzzed. A text from Doreen. Heard you were at Vanguard today. We need to talk about your mid-term project. My office, Monday?
Then, a second, follow-up text, sent a moment later: I found some old contact sheets from Mara’s first test shoot. You might find them instructive.
The city blurred outside the window. Ivy leaned her head back, the weight of the pen still a phantom pressure in her fingers. The release was signed. The narrative, as Rossi called it, was now legally underway. But in the darkening screen of her phone, Doreen’s words glowed, a tiny, persistent crack in the white canvas, offering a different, messier story entirely.
She climbed the stairs slowly, each step a return to a self that suddenly seemed very small, and very far away. The hallway of her dorm floor smelled of microwave popcorn and bleach, a jarring assault after the party’s curated perfumes. She fumbled with her key, the metal loud in the quiet.
Her room was a cave of her own making. Canvases leaned against every wall, half-empty coffee cups dotted surfaces like fungal growths. The portrait on her easel—the one Leo had criticized—seemed to accuse her with its lifeless eyes. She shucked off the silk dress, letting it puddle on the floor, a slick black shadow. In her cotton shorts and tank top, she finally breathed.
A soft knock at the door made her jump. “Ivy? You in there?” It was Leo.
She hesitated, then opened the door a crack. He held two steaming mugs. “Saw your light. Made tea. Figured you might need, I dunno, a palate cleanser.”
She let him in. He didn’t comment on the discarded dress. He handed her a mug and sat on her desk chair, backwards. “So. How was the ivory tower?”
“It was glass, actually. All glass.” She sipped the tea; it was chamomile, bland and safe. “It was… a lot of people talking about capital-A Art.”
“Sounds awful.”
“It was.” The confession surprised her. “And kind of amazing. A gallery owner wants to do test shots with me.”
Leo whistled low. “Wow. That’s… fast.”
“That’s opportunity.” She heard Rossi’s word in her mouth. Valuation.
“Right.” He studied her face. “You look freaked out.”
“I’m not.” She looked at her painting. “I’m just thinking. One of my professors was there. Doreen.”
“No way.” Leo’s eyebrows shot up. “How did she manage that?”
“Rossi invited her.” Ivy wrapped her hands around the warm mug. “She said Rossi collects pretty things. That she’ll put me on a shelf.”
Leo was quiet for a long moment. “Doreen’s a mess, but she’s not always wrong. That photo you mentioned, in the study. Did it feel like art, or like a trophy?”
The question landed like a stone in her gut. Mara’s smile. The perfect, vacant gloss of it. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
“Just be sure, Ivy.” He stood up, his chair scraping. “The thing about selling something is you don’t get it back.” He headed for the door, then paused. “For what it’s worth, your stuff here?” He gestured at the chaotic room. “It’s good. It’s got nerve. Don’t let them convince you that’s not the point.”
The door clicked shut behind him. She was alone again with the silent canvases. She walked to the easel and picked up a charcoal stick. With a few savage lines, she blacked out one of the portrait’s empty eyes. The gesture was violent, satisfying. It had feeling.
Her phone lit up on the desk. A new email. The sender was ‘Marcus Vanguard.’ The subject line: ‘Test Shoot – Monday.’
Her breath hitched. Monday. Two days away. The body of the email was brief, professional, listing an address and a time. It ended with, ‘Seraphina speaks highly of your potential. We are eager to collaborate.’
She sat on the edge of her bed, the phone’s glow illuminating her knees. She thought of the car, the glass house, the weight of Rossi’s hand on her back. She thought of Doreen’s clammy grip on her wrist, the sting of cheap wine on her breath. Two different kinds of hunger.
She typed a reply, her thumbs clumsy. Thank you for the opportunity. I’ll be there. She hit send before she could think.
The silence after was absolute. She picked the silk dress up from the floor. It felt different now—not like a costume, but like a uniform. She hung it carefully on the back of her closet door, a dark slash against the beige paint. It was the first thing she would see when she woke up.
Sleep didn’t come. The city’s ambient light painted grey shapes on her ceiling. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw composite images: Rossi’s smile merging with Marcus’s, Doreen’s pleading eyes, the blinding flash of a camera that existed only in her imagination. She saw her own face, frozen and framed.
When dawn finally bled a pale grey light through her window, she was already awake. She showered, the water hotter than necessary, scrubbing at a feeling she couldn’t name. She dressed in jeans and a paint-stained sweater, reclaiming a skin.
She walked to the art building early, the morning air crisp. She bypassed the studios and went straight to the faculty wing. The door to Doreen’s office was, predictably, ajar. The smell of turpentine and mildew wafted out.
Doreen was hunched over a spread of slides, a magnifying glass in her hand. She looked up, her glasses reflecting the fluorescent tubes. “Ivy.” Her voice was rough with surprise and something like hope.
“You said to come by Monday to look at my portfolio,” Ivy said, her voice steady. She held up her tablet. “It’s digital. The real work.”
Doreen’s whole face softened, then tightened with a frantic urgency. “Yes. Yes, of course. Come in, shut the door.” She cleared a stack of art history journals from a chair. “Let’s see what you have that they shouldn’t be allowed to touch.”
Ivy sat, pulling up her files. As she swiped through her paintings—the vibrant, messy, trying-too-hard ones—she felt a confusing dual current. This was the anchor. This was also the anchor that could keep her stuck on the seabed forever. She needed to breathe a different air, even if it was thin and artificial.
She needed to see what happened in the light of Marcus’s gallery.
She climbed the stairs slowly, each step a return to a self that suddenly seemed very small, and very far away. The hallway of her dorm smelled of microwave popcorn and industrial cleaner, a blunt reality after the house on the hill. She fumbled with her key, the metal cold and unfamiliar against her skin still humming with curated conversation.
Inside, the overhead light was blinding. Her roommate, Jenna, was curled on the couch watching a baking show. “Whoa,” Jenna said, pausing a sprinkle-covered cupcake mid-frame. “You look… expensive. And sorta freaked out. Good party?”
“It was a thing.” Ivy kicked off her heels, the relief in her arches immediate. She peeled the silk dress off like a second skin, dropping it onto her desk chair where it pooled, a dark, liquid shadow over her open sketchbook.
“A ‘thing’ thing? Like, networking thing?” Jenna muted the TV. “Or creepy old-people-drinking-scotch thing?”
“Both.” Ivy pulled on an oversized sweatshirt, the familiar cotton a relief. She scrubbed at her makeup with a wipe, the cleanser sharp and medicinal. “I met a gallery owner. He wants to do test shots. Photographs.”
“Holy shit, Ivy! That’s huge!” Jenna sat up, her interest genuine and warm. “That’s what you wanted, right? A real in.”
“Yeah.” Ivy stared at her reflection in the dark window. Her clean face looked pale, younger. “His name is Marcus. He was… very sure of himself. Dr. Rossi set it up.”
The name ‘Rossi’ landed between them with a different weight. Jenna’s smile flickered. “The mothball professor? The one Doreen is always muttering about?”
“Doreen was there too.” Ivy climbed into her bunk, the springs squeaking. She told Jenna about the glass house, the chilled city views, the way people spoke in a code of names and references. She mentioned the photograph of Mara.
“Okay, the picture of the former student in the house is a bit… trophy cabinet,” Jenna said, pulling her blanket up to her chin. “But if she’s in Milan, maybe it’s legit. This world is just weird, you know? It’s all who you know.”
“Doreen said Rossi collects pretty things. That she puts them on a shelf.”
“Doreen also wears socks with sandals and stares at you during life drawing. Her perspective is maybe not the gold standard.” Jenna yawned. “Just… be smart. Get everything in writing. Don’t sign anything that says you have to, like, give up your firstborn.”
Ivy lay in the dark, listening to Jenna’s breathing even out. The digital clock cast a red glow. 2:17 AM. Her mind replayed fragments: Marcus’s velvet blazer, the critic’s dissecting gaze, Rossi’s hand on her back, guiding, always guiding. The cool, perfect smile of Mara in the frame. A narrative of discovery, Rossi had called it. A story to be built.
Monday morning in Foundations of Color felt like walking into a past life. The bright, messy studio was a jarring contrast to the minimalist gallery she now imagined. Leo cornered her at the sink, cleaning a crusted palette knife.
“So?” he asked, not looking up. The water ran murky with burnt umber.
“So what?”
“The vampire den. You got bitten?”
“I got a potential photography gig with a gallery owner named Marcus Vanguard.” She said it to the cracked mirror above the sink, testing the shape of the words.
Leo shut off the water. He turned, leaning against the chipped porcelain. “Vanguard? His stuff is… severe. All high-contrast, cold beauty. Models look like ice sculptures.” He wiped his hands on his jeans. “Rossi’s connected to him?”
“She introduced us.”
“Of course she did.” He pushed off from the sink. “Just remember, a curator’s job is to define value. To say ‘this is art, and that is not.’ Once you’re the ‘this,’ you don’t get to decide what you are anymore.” He walked back to his station before she could reply.
Her next class was Doreen’s. The woman was already at the front, arranging still-life objects—a tarnished trumpet, a drape of velvet, a plastic skull—with a feverish intensity. She saw Ivy and her hands stilled on the skull.
“Ivy.” Her voice was too loud for the half-empty room. “A word? Before we begin?”
Doreen’s office was, if possible, more claustrophobic than before. Canvases seemed to lean in closer. The turpentine smell was overwhelming. Doreen shut the door and didn’t sit.
“I overstepped. At the party.” The words rushed out. “The wine… I was worried. I care about your artistic integrity.”
“It’s fine,” Ivy said, hugging her sketchbook to her chest like a shield.
“Is it? Have you agreed to the photographs?” Doreen’s glasses magnified the urgency in her eyes.
“I have a meeting at the gallery tomorrow.”
Doreen deflated, sinking into her creaking chair. “I see.” She picked up a stick of charcoal, rolling it between her fingers, leaving grey smudges. “Then you should know. Mara wasn’t just a student. She was a project. Seraphina funded her, dressed her, shaped her entire portfolio. The photographs Marcus took… they weren’t just for a series. They were assets.”
“Assets?”
“For a private collector. A specific kind of collector.” Doreen looked directly at her. “The narrative isn’t for Vogue Italia, Ivy. It’s for a buyer. The story is part of the sale. The beautiful, discovered thing.” She broke the charcoal in two with a sharp snap. “Mara isn’t in Milan. She’s in Aspen. She’s someone’s… companion. A living piece in a larger collection.”
The air left the room. The hum of the fluorescent light grew deafening. “How do you know that?”
“Because she called me. Six months ago. From a number I didn’t recognize. She sounded like she was reading from a card. She said she was happy, and grateful, and that I shouldn’t worry.” Doreen’s plump face was pale. “She asked me to take down the portraits I’d done of her from my website. Said they ‘didn’t fit the narrative anymore.’ Then the line went dead.”
Ivy’s mouth was dry. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because you still have a choice!” Doreen leaned forward, her voice a desperate hiss. “You walk into that gallery tomorrow for test shots, and you are auditioning to be a product in a very specific, very closed market. You are not auditioning to be a model. You are auditioning to be owned.”
The warning vibrated in the sticky air. It was monstrous, unbelievable. It sounded like the plot of a bad movie. Yet it slotted into place with a sickening click: the scrutiny, the proprietary hands, the talk of valuation and provenance. The photograph in the study, a catalog image.
The bell rang, a harsh bleat from the hallway. Doreen jumped. The moment shattered. “Class,” she mumbled, avoiding Ivy’s eyes now. “We should… we have to go to class.”
Ivy moved through the day in a numb bubble. In her painting seminar, her professor critiqued her use of azure blue as “derivative, lacking personal voice.” The words, usually a sting, now felt trivial. What was a personal voice worth? What was it even?
That night, she stood before the black silk dress on her chair. She touched the fabric. It was just cloth. She thought of the crisp cream stationery with the address, the silent car, the glass house. She thought of Mara’s smile. She thought of her mother’s voice: What will you have then?
Her phone buzzed. A new email.
From: Seraphina Rossi
Subject: Tomorrow
Ivy,
Confirming your appointment at Vanguard Gallery, 3 p.m. Marcus is expecting you. Wear simple, dark clothing. Neutral palette.
I will meet you there.
- S.R.
A choice. Doreen said she still had one. It felt less like a choice and more like a fork in a road where both paths disappeared into the same dark wood. She could not unsee the party, unhear the offers, unfeel the hunger they ignited in her. The world of brushstrokes and student loans seemed grey and feeble in comparison.
She opened her sketchbook to a blank page. Her charcoal hovered. She tried to draw the still-life from Doreen’s class, but her hand moved of its own volition, sketching instead the strong, plain lines of a picture frame. Inside it, she began to draw a face. It was not quite hers, and not quite Mara’s. It was something in between, a composite of discovered beauty. The eyes were deliberately empty, ready for a story to be written into them.
She closed the book. She hit reply on the email.
To: Seraphina Rossi
Subject: Re: Tomorrow
See you at 3.
- Ivy
The send sound was a tiny, final click in the quiet room. She got up and poured herself a glass of water, drinking it slowly by the window, watching the ordinary lights of the campus below. She was stepping into the narrative. She could only hope to someday still recognize the author.