ARIA'S POV
The gallery was mine on Thursday afternoons.
Vincent had standing meetings from two to five, the administrative machinery of running a serious gallery, and I'd learned to protect that window fiercely. No appointments, no calls I didn't have to take. Just me, the work and the particular quality of silence that lived in a gallery between events, when the pieces on the walls settled back into themselves and stopped performing for anyone.
I was doing final placement checks for the show. Four weeks out now. Clara had approved the sequence two days ago and I'd spent this afternoon measuring sight lines, checking the spacing between pieces, making sure the conversation between them worked in the actual physical space the way it had in my head.
The large canvas was going on the nort
