Nina dropped the sketchbook and pencil. Both objects plummeted to the floor, the pencil bouncing off a cheese cube on her plate and rolling towards the gallery wall. She knelt to retrieve it, and found herself face-to-face with Goldie, again.

“We keep dropping things when we see each other,” Nina said, trying to smile even though her mind was still in the world of the drawings. She picked up her sketchbook but made no move to stand up, looking into Goldie’s big eyes. “Seems like you’re affecting the gravity around here.”

Goldie, holding Nina’s pencil in one hand, covered her mouth with the other as she laughed again. “Sorry again, I didn’t mean to scare you. I just wanted to see what you were drawing. If that’s okay.”

Nina hesitated, then passed her the sketchbook. “Just a study.”

“It’s good, though.” Goldie stood up and compared Nina’s copy to the original drawing at eye level. “You got the line weights right, and it’s a good attempt at the texture even though you’re using a different material.”

“Are you an artist too?”

Goldie shook her head. “Just an appreciator. My mom’s one, so I grew up around art and stuff, but I never really wanted to draw. I like writing about art, though. I do freelance art journalism for a few places. When I’m not working here.”

“That’s pretty cool.” Nina took her sketchbook back and pocketed it again, suddenly self-conscious. “I just draw.” And what did she have to show for that singleminded dedication? Nothing since she graduated. Half a copy of someone else’s beautiful work.

“What do you think of...” Nina gestured at the wall. “The show?”

“Well, I helped curate it, so I think it’s lovely, of course.” Goldie tilted her head towards Nina and winked, like they were sharing a secret. “But yeah, I just love O’Neill’s work, and how it feels so fresh and new even a hundred years later. She did so much for feminism and the suffragette movement, you know. And of course, the Kewpies!” She pulled her phone out of her sleeve— “No pockets,” she explained at Nina’s questioning glance— and showed Nina the Kewpie sticker on the back of the case, surrounded by other stickers from local artists and art shows to build a cacophonous but coherent picture of a certain type of girl. “Little memento of my first show.”

“Cute,” Nina said, and hoped it sounded complimentary and not dismissive. “I like the Monsters series,” she offered.

“Right?” Goldie swung her whole head around to face the wall again. “The sensuality! The eroticism! The devotion! The longing! Peak cinema!” She shot a glance at Nina, then looked away. “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that. This is clearly not cinema.”

“No, I get it,” Nina said quickly, in case Goldie decided to go talk to someone else instead. “Cinema. Yeah.”

Goldie grinned and, putting one hand on Nina’s shoulder, steered her towards a cluster of older adults Nina had never seen before. “Let me introduce you to my colleagues.” Nina couldn’t retain most of their names. She handed out her business card to all of them, though.

“This is nice,” one of the men said, flipping her card over in his hands. “Very expressive. Are you a student?”

“Recent grad,” Nina said, wondering how long she could legally keep saying that. It had been almost a year. “Haven’t really drawn much since school, though...”

“Happens to everyone,” said another man. “Perfectly normal part of the cycle. You’ll get your mojo back soon enough. Have you read Art and Fear?”

“Some of it...” Her thesis professor had scanned a chapter of it as a handout for them at the start of their last semester. She remembered feeling reassured, but not what she read exactly. Most of what she'd learned seemed to have fallen out of her head after her thesis show, left on the floor of the gallery with the pamphlets explaining to visitors what her thesis was all about.

“Read it,” the man repeated.

“Okay,” Nina said.

"So, Nina, where are you from?"

"Uh, New Jersey. Central."

A woman in cat's eye glasses and a cranberry-colored sweater made a sympathetic noise. "You've come a long way! Thank you for coming out tonight."

Nina nodded. "Rose O'Neill is a huge artistic influence for me..."

"I can see it," Art and Fear said, flipping over her business card again. The charcoal self portrait on one side did have something of O'Neill's rendering to it, Nina supposed.

"What kind of illustration are you interested in?"

"Editorial?" That was what she'd liked most in school, putting shapes to abstract concepts, but she'd tried everything before graduation. Privately, she was sure she wasn't cut out for any of it, and the art supply store in Middlewater was the farthest her studies would ever take her. But if there was one thing she could never say to these politely interested industry professionals, it was that.

"It's natural to have doubts," the woman in the sweater said, as if reading her thoughts anyway. "Especially right after school. But you'll figure it out."

"Thank you." 

Goldie beamed at her, like she was proud on Nina's behalf.

The rest of the group offered her more specific advice— had she emailed so and so, had she submitted to this and that, and Nina dutifully wrote all the names in her sketchbook, promising to email and submit, sure nothing would come of any of it.

She suddenly realized she'd taken up a lot of the gallery curators' full attention for an inappropriately long amount of time. "Thank you very much," she said again, and went back to the canape table.

The gallery was small, so there wasn't much else for Nina to look at or that many people she could talk to besides the group she'd just left. And she had work the next day. She really should get going. 

Nina glanced around to see if anyone would notice, then stuffed a stack of cheese and crackers into her mouth. She stood with her back to the table and chewed, feeling like a hamster with a sunflower seed.

Someone touched her elbow. Goldie had come over to refill her plastic cup of wine. "Oh, hi again," she said cheerfully. "We're going to a nearby bar after this wraps in..." she looked at her phone. "Twenty minutes? You wanna come?"

"I have work tomorrow, and it'll take me like two hours to get home..." Nina trailed off. Goldie's face was filled with what looked like genuine disappointment. 

When was the last time a girl wanted to spend time with Nina like this?

"The trains run until like midnight," Nina said instead. "So I guess I could stop by for a bit."

Goldie grinned. "Awesome," she said. "I mean, cool. Um, in case we get separated or something, why don't you put your number into my phone?"

Nina did, and immediately got a text saying "Hi, this is Goldie!"

"This is Nina," she texted back.

They went to the bar nearby, which was generally unremarkable but somewhat crowded anyway, so someone suggested a more fashionable bar further away for "the atmosphere", and the group split between people who didn't feel like walking fifteen minutes uptown and people who felt very strongly about atmosphere. 

"I don't really care either way, but I live further uptown, so it would be more convenient for me. Although the subway goes everywhere, so maybe it doesn't matter." Goldie was whispering these thoughts into the soft shell of Nina's ear, her leg pressing into Nina's on the adjacent stool. 

The senior curators had all bought rounds for the group, but refused to let either of the "young'ns" pay, so Nina was getting pleasantly tipsy for free. She leaned closer to Goldie, enjoying the warmth of someone else’s body against her side. The smell of sweat and smoke covered by perfume. 

She should have been networking, trying to get these industry professionals to remember her name and work, showing them her portfolio on her phone. But an impossibly beautiful girl was paying attention to her, and Nina couldn’t let her look away.

“I would invite you over,” Goldie said, in a low voice. “But my place is a mess.”

“I wouldn’t mind,” Nina said. She could call in sick tomorrow. Probably. Catching the train now seemed a bit Cinderella, she thought. Running away from the ball right as things started to get good.

When she checked her phone for the time, there was a text from her dad waiting for her. “ETA?”

“Tomorrow,” she sent back decisively. “Staying with a friend.”

She put her phone back in her pocket and took Goldie’s hand again, before she could reconsider. “Show me your mess.”

They bid goodbye to the Society people and took the subway up the West side to Goldie’s apartment, in which she lived, shockingly, alone. The car was almost empty, and the two of them sat down next to a set of doors. “It’s my parents’, technically, they travel a lot, and we host guests all the time... There’s a spare bedroom if you’d rather not...” Goldie arched her eyebrows and tilted her head in a meaningful gesture.