The email had arrived at 9:47 AM and Elena had read it at 9:48 AM and it was now 11:15 AM and she hadn't said anything about it to anyone.
This was, the Fighter would later reflect, the warning sign he should have clocked.
Elena not talking was not Elena being calm. Elena not talking was Elena doing load-bearing structural work on something that was going to come down eventually, and the only variable was what it was going to land on.
She was on the couch with her sketchbook open and her pencil moving, which looked like normal Elena but wasn't — normal Elena's pencil made considered, deliberate marks. This pencil was moving the way weather moves. The Fighter was at the kitchen table with his phone. Raul was doing something with pasta at the stove, the particular domestic competence of a man who cooked when the atmosphere required grounding.
Nobody said anything for a while.
Then Elena's pencil stopped.
"They didn't even look at them," she said. Very quietly. To the sketchbook.
Raul turned from the stove. The Fighter put his phone down.
"The Mercer Gallery," she said. Still quiet. "I sent the portfolio Monday. Full documentation, artist statement, three years of work. They replied this morning."
She turned a page in the sketchbook without looking at it.
To: e.faulkner@artmail.com
Date: Today, 9:47 AM
Dear Ms. Faulkner,
Thank you for your interest in the Mercer Gallery.
We are not currently accepting submissions from emerging artists at this time. Your portfolio has been reviewed and we wish you the best in finding a suitable venue for your work.
Best regards,
The Mercer Gallery
Submissions Department
"Four lines." She said the last sentence in a voice that was almost a parody of corporate warmth, which meant she had read it enough times to have it memorized. "We are not currently accepting submissions from emerging artists at this time. Thank you for your interest in the Mercer."
📎 Click to view email metadata
(They didn't even open the attachments.)
The Fighter opened his mouth.
"Don't," Elena said.
He closed it.
She went back to the pencil. The weather movement resumed. The kitchen was very quiet except for the pasta water starting to simmer.
Raul turned back to the stove.
They gave it ten minutes. The pasta cooked. Elena's pencil moved. The Fighter looked at his phone and didn't touch it. Outside, Chicago did its midmorning thing — a truck, a siren somewhere, the usual city soundtrack of things happening to other people.
Then Elena looked up and said, with the specific focused calm of someone who has found a target:
"Raul, did you finish the last of the good olive oil yesterday."
Raul paused.
"I used some for the—"
"That was the good olive oil. I bought that specifically. I said when I bought it, this is for cooking, not for the bread thing, and you used it for the bread thing."
"Elena—"
"I'm just asking. I'm just asking a straightforward question about the olive oil. Did you or did you not use the last of it."
"I used some of it, yes, but there's still—"
"There isn't. I checked. The bottle is empty. You used all of it."
She said all of it the way you'd say all of it about something much larger than olive oil, which was because it was about something much larger than olive oil.
"That's fine. That's completely fine. I'll just — it's fine."
"El," the Fighter said carefully.
"It's fine," she said, in the voice that meant it was not fine, that the olive oil was the Mercer Gallery was three years of work was four lines and unopened attachments and the specific exhaustion of making things and sending them into rooms that don't look at them.
Raul set down his wooden spoon. He pulled out the chair across from her and sat down, folding his arms on the table, and looked at her with the calm, unhurried attention of someone who had been in this apartment long enough to understand the weather systems.
"They rejected me from a band once," he said. "For being too good."
Elena stared at him. The Fighter stared at him.
"What," Elena said.
"High school. I was in a punk band. Les Déserteurs. We were—" He considered. "Actually we were not very good. But I was good. My vocals were good, I guess. And the other guys, they—" He made a small gesture. "They said it didn't fit the aesthetic. A punk band where one person is genuinely talented, it throws the whole thing off, you know? Punk is supposed to be about the feeling, not the ability. I was making it too much about the ability apparently."
"They kicked you out of the band," Elena said slowly, "for being too good."
"They asked me to tone it down first. I couldn't. I didn't know how to sing 'badly' on purpose, it felt wrong. So yes, eventually, they asked me to leave."
He picked up his spoon again.
"I cried for two weeks. It felt like... I don't know. Like being told the thing you did naturally was the problem. Like being too much of what you were."
The kitchen was quiet.
Elena looked at him for a long moment. The pencil was still in her hand but she wasn't using it.
"Dude, that's not the same thing," she said.
"No," Raul agreed. "It's not."
"They didn't even open the files, Raul."
"I know."
"Three years. I have pieces in that portfolio I've never shown anyone. Things I made at four in the morning because I couldn't sleep and the only thing that made sense was—" She stopped. Her jaw tightened. "Four lines."
"I know," Raul said again. Not it'll be okay, not another gallery will say yes, not any of the things that would have been well-meaning and useless. Just: I know.
The Fighter, who had been very still and very quiet in the way he was when he was paying close attention to something, said:
"What's the band called again?"
"Les Déserteurs," Raul said.
"Did you record anything."
"Some demos? On a phone. Terrible quality."
"I want to hear them."
"Ah. Absolutely not."
"Raul."
"Non."
"Elena, don't you want to hear them."
Elena looked at the Fighter. Something in her face had shifted; not healed, not resolved, but shifted, the way weather shifts without clearing.
"Yes," she said. "Actually. I really do."
"The answer is still no," Raul said, with great dignity, turning back to his pasta.
"We're going to hear them," the Fighter told Elena.
"We're definitely going to hear them," Elena agreed.
"This conversation is over," Raul said.
✻ ✻ ✻
It wasn't over. But Elena's pencil, when it moved again, made a different kind of mark; considered, deliberate, the real kind. Raul's pasta finished cooking. The Fighter stole a piece of bread and got told off for it and didn't stop.
The Mercer Gallery had not opened the attachments. That was still true. It would still be true tomorrow.
But tonight the olive oil didn't matter, and the bread was good, and somewhere on Raul's old phone there were demos from a punk band that had made the catastrophic mistake of asking him to be less than he was.
Elena was going to find that phone if it took her the rest of the year.
✻ ✻ ✻
The refusés have their own table. It's just not at the Mercer.
> Chapter complete. The search for the demos begins. Continue to next chapter? [Y/N]