Make It Look Expensive

Jenna Park had a talent for making improbable things look like a carefully staged aesthetic. She could transform a stack of pizza boxes into a sculptural centerpiece that, under soft lighting and a tastefully applied Instagram filter, read as “deliberately raw luxury.” She could convince landlords that a persistent smell was actually “seasoned vintage charm.” What she could not, for the life of her, do consistently was hold down a job that required any form of credential that involved punctuation and a middle initial.

On a Tuesday that smelled faintly of burned coffee and optimistic rain, Jenna upgraded her LinkedIn profile between freelance gigs and the forty-minute nap she tried to pass off on her calendar as "strategic downtime." Her profile reads like a performance: she had a headline that sounded like something a start-up founder would pin to a motivational poster, a summary that mixed buzzwords with sincere sentences about onboarding joy, and a portfolio that contained three projects tagged "speculative" and one event that had, technically, occurred — her neighbor’s poorly attended rooftop birthday party, which she had organized, styled, and photographed herself for posterity.

The thing about LinkedIn was that it was both a stage and a rumor mill. Someone’s casual embellishment could ripple outward like a glossy leaf in the corporate current. Jenna’s embellishment did not stay contained. An executive assistant at Bennett & Co., who had not suspected anything more than an archetype while scrolling at eleven p.m., saw the headline "Experiential Events Lead — Brand Moments and Corporate Scalability" and read it like scripture. The assistant, after a moment of adrenaline-fueled hope, forwarded the profile to Gary Bennett with a four-word subject line: "Potential contractor?"

Jenna was in the middle of balancing a precarious stack of thrifted tablecloths on her head for scale when her phone rang. The number on the screen was a corporate rectangle; the voice on the other end was a tuxedo.

"Ms. Park? Gary Bennett. I saw your profile. I’m told you can make something feel like a million dollars without being one." His voice was the kind of voice that had been in many actors' infomercials and at least one audiobook narrator's catalogue. Jenna felt both flattered and alarmed. When she asked questions, his answers were crisply economical: "We’re doing fifty this month. Something for my fiftieth. I want it to feel... real. No sleeves, no pretense. But tasteful. And… impressive."

She put the phone on speaker and considered her options. There were three. Option A: be honest in the way honesty tends to exist on a geometry problem — straight and somewhat unhelpful. "I’m not an events lead. I’m a creative generalist who can MacGyver mood with mood lighting." Option B: confess immediately that she had inflated a title and lose a possibly lucrative gig. Option C, which is what she did, was perform a small, precise act of self-translation: tallied the truth and left out the part that read like a missing reference.

"I’d love to take a look at the brief," she said. "I can definitely put something together. When’s good for a site visit?"

The rest of the day became a blur of human resource panic and neighborly opportunism. Jenna told herself she was not lying, strictly speaking; she was abridging. She had produced memorable things, and surely producing one memorable thing on a larger scale was — by some logic — extrapolation. She called Marco.

Marco Alvarez lived two doors down in a converted studio that doubled as a prop warehouse. At any given moment his apartment looked like the aftermath of a craft store and a yard sale mating with a Pinterest board. Marco answered the phone with the sort of enthusiasm that made Jenna feel like an accomplice in a heist.

"You got a gig?" he said.

"Sort of. Boardroom vibe, large ego, low tolerance. Need lights, flowers, and a chandelier that doesn’t cost forty grand. Also I might be lying about my job title on LinkedIn." She waited for the noise of genuine judgment, but Marco only laughed.

"Lying, huh? That’s what makes the world interesting. I’ll bring the glue gun. And the silverware."

She also messaged Priya, who ran a floral gig out of a shop that smelled perpetually of lilies and a borderline amount of ambition. Priya’s texts pinged back with three question marks and a selfie with a bouquet that could stop traffic. Neither Marco nor Priya asked for payment upfront; Jenna told them a version of the truth that involved future payment, wins, and a lot of grit.

On Thursday morning she walked into the Bennett & Co. tower feeling like she’d swallowed a cliché. The building had the kind of lobby where elevators played curated soundscapes. Gary’s assistant led her through halls polished enough to reflect ethical compromises as if they were design choices. Gary was smaller in person than Jenna had imagined but had a glare that suggested he measured everything in ounces of disappointment.

The kickoff conversation went like this: Gary listed adjectives — refined, intimate, surprising — and Jenna nodded as if those adjectives were something she breathed daily. She had a portfolio to show him: a digital slideshow of tastefully photographed corners and mood boards with fonts that signaled competence. Some of the photos were real; others were mock-ups she had made last week after a caffeine-induced design binge. She called them "specs."

Gary looked at the mock-ups the way people look at architectural renderings when a building has not yet borne the weight of real weather. He asked about vendors, elaborate lighting rigs, and a caterer who could produce thoughtful canapés instead of the usual corporate rectangles. Jenna said the names of vendors she didn’t know like a woman reciting foreign capitals she had only read in a travel magazine.

After the meeting, Gary excused himself and then pivoted, sharper than she expected. "Our date is five days from now," he said. He folded his hands in a motion that made the air between them feel small and consequential. "I don’t want rehearsals. I don’t want elaborate staging. I want the night to feel effortless. I hire people who make impossible things look easy."

Jenna’s heartbeat did something novel and alarming. For a moment, the lobby soundscape became underwater. Her palms went slick, and she felt, absurdly, like an actor who had been handed a line she’d never memorized. She could have fled. She could have called Marco and Priya and raised a white flag made of thrifted lace. Instead she laughed a little.

"Five days," she echoed. It was not, strictly speaking, a guarantee. It was a dare.

Outside, the city had the kind of indifferent traffic that refuses to be staged. Jenna texted her team a single line: "We might be doing something huge. If anyone asks, tell them I actually have a title." She hit send and watched the three blue ticks appear. Then she sat on a bench and tried to think about five days as a manageable quantity of time rather than an immovable cliff.