THROUGH MY EYES

Chapter 9 — Publicity

Chapter 9 — Publicity

Publicity is a machine that eats privacy and spits out narratives. Rena learned its gears quickly: the way a flattering profile could open doors, the way a single line could be clipped and sold as a headline, the way a photograph could be cropped until it read like a promise. She had thought of publicity as a ladder; she was learning it was also a ledger.

The glossy magazine piece—Bianca’s profile—arrived like a small weather system. Bianca had a reputation for tenderness and teeth; she could make a subject feel seen and then ask the questions that made the room shift. They met in a café that smelled of coffee and old paper. Rena ordered an omelet and watched Bianca’s pen move like a metronome. The conversation wandered from craft to lineage, from the scar at the base of Rena’s thumb to the woman who braided hair. Bianca asked about authenticity and about the cost of being visible.

“I sell forgetting,” Rena said at one point, and the sentence landed like a coin. Bianca’s eyes flicked up, and Rena saw the moment the line would become a headline. It was a small transaction: a phrase for a frame, a truth for a market. The profile humanized her in ways that made some people uncomfortable and others hungry. The city’s faces shifted again; some smiled, some looked away.

With the profile came invitations. Panels, late‑night shows, a boutique festival that wanted to honor her as a boundary‑pusher. Each invitation was a ledger entry. Each appearance required a performance that was not always the same as the one she rehearsed in the mirror. There were questions about labor practices and consent, and Rena found herself answering with a careful honesty that surprised even her. “There are economies here that people don’t see,” she told a televised host. “There are favors and debts and people who get erased.”

The clip of her answer circulated. Some praised her candor; others accused her of grandstanding. The ledger in the mirror had new lines. She had begun to use publicity not just to sell an image but to place questions in the public ledger. That felt like power, and power had its own cost.

Tommina watched the calculus with a face that had learned to measure risk in cigarette burns. “They’ll try to make you a mirror for their own faces,” he said one night as they walked past the bakery. “Don’t let them polish you into something you don’t recognize.”

He was right. Publicity came with handlers and with people who wanted to own the reflection. A publicist named Cecilia arrived with a plan: curated appearances, a social media cadence, a set of talking points that would keep the narrative tight. She was efficient and charming and had a way of making the world look like a schedule. Rena agreed to a limited plan—enough to keep the film’s momentum but not so much that she lost the ability to speak in her own voice.

There were small rituals that helped. Before an appearance she would stand in the doorway of the bakery and breathe in the yeast and sugar until the smell steadied her. She would press her palms to the mirror and practice the tilt of her head that read as both invitation and refusal. The scar at the base of her thumb was a small punctuation she traced with a fingertip. She kept a notebook where she wrote down names and favors and the small moral compromises that added up. The ledger was practical; it kept her from being swept away.

Publicity also brought letters—some tender, some accusatory. A woman named Elisa wrote to say that Rena’s work had given her a kind of forgetting that felt like relief. A young performer named Lina sent a message asking for advice about contracts. Those letters felt like deposits in a bank Rena had not known she was building. They reminded her why she had chosen to be visible in the first place.

But publicity had a darker side. A tabloid published a piece that suggested a liaison with a director who had been courting her; the piece was thin on facts and heavy on insinuation. A paparazzo learned her routes and began to appear at odd hours. The leak of private footage had taught her how quickly a rumor could calcify into a narrative that could be sold and resold. She began to notice patterns: who smiled when she entered a room, who looked away, who lingered with a question that had nothing to do with work.

At a televised panel about labor and image, a critic asked whether performers could ever be fully autonomous in an industry that monetized forgetting. Rena answered with a line she had practiced in the mirror: “Autonomy is a negotiation. Visibility is a currency. We can choose how to spend it.” The line was quoted and clipped and used in a dozen contexts—some flattering, some not. The ledger in the mirror had new entries: attention, critique, and the slow accrual of responsibility.

That night she walked home under a sky that had been scrubbed clean by rain. The city’s lights made small suns in puddles. She stopped at the bakery and bought a small loaf, the smell of yeast and sugar steadying her like a benediction. Tommina walked beside her, and for a moment they were just two people moving through a city that loved spectacle and feared truth.

“You’re changing,” he said softly. “Not just the world. You.”

Rena looked at him and then at her reflection in a shop window. The tilt of her head felt like a ledger entry. “I’m learning to be what people will pay attention to,” she said. “And to ask what that attention should do.”

Publicity would keep coming—offers, profiles, panels. She would learn to place mirrors where they mattered and to break the ones that flattered only those who already had power. The ledger would keep adding up. She would keep writing the entries.