Between Shifts

June had learned the rhythm of the gallery the way some people learned a neighborhood route or the cadence of a favorite song: small repeated motions that settled the day into order. She knew which light caught the frames along the back wall around nine, how the door latch squeaked when the wind pushed it, the exact place on the counter where the sweet old ceramic mug chipped in a crescent. On most mornings she walked the long way from her apartment, because the streets between her building and the gallery gave her small, steady material for practice—an old bicycle with a torn saddle, a paint-flecked stoop where a stray cat slept, the half-blind florist who arranged carnations like a private act of stubbornness. Her camera hung under her coat like a familiar animal; she felt its weight like a promise.

She reached the gallery a few minutes before the other assistant was usually there. The door was unlocked, as always, but when she pushed it open she noticed that the chairs were not the neat rows she expected and the fluorescent lights hummed with a different frequency, the kind that makes voices sound flat. Someone had left a folded stack of printed emails on the reception counter; the top one had the gallery letterhead and a subject line that made her stomach thin and cold. She smoothed the paper with the pads of her fingers, trying to put the morning into some shape. The message was short and careful; it used words that were the opposite of consolation—“restructuring,” “untenable,” “effective immediately.” It explained that the gallery could no longer operate in its current form. No big funders had answered. Rent had escalated. Programs would pause. Staff positions would be dissolved.

June sat down on the low bench by the window. For a moment she thought she was misreading the type, or that some bureaucratic error would be found, or that someone would come in half-apologetic with coffee and insist that she hadn’t understood. That first wash of disbelief sat on her like a hand on the back of her neck. She read the message once, another time, then let it go to the floor like a page that had been read too many times. The rest of the assistants drifted in, one by one: Tomas with his rolled portfolio, Eliza tugging the sleeves of her sweater, a tall intern who kept checking his phone. They gathered around the counter and the wordless space between them made room for the manager’s voice.

He spoke with the formal kindness of someone who had spent a long time in meetings. He had the kind of air that made it hard to look at him and imagine how he felt, as if his feelings had already been folded away. He explained the numbers and deadlines, and he did not hide his own bewilderment. People shifted, said the soft things you say when there isn’t a script: “We’ll get through this,” “Call me if you need anything,” “Sorry.” The gallery smelled like toner and dust and the faint citrus of cleaning solvent, an ordinary smell now holding the ordinary terror of losing something you had convinced yourself would last. June tried to fold the syllables into something that made sense. Imagine the place as a patient thing, she thought—slowly breathing—now ask what happens when you lift it away.

When the formal part of the meeting ended they began the practical work of unmooring. Boxes were brought out from under the counter and the back storeroom; tags were taken off the walls and carefully stacked. June moved through the motions with a kind of automatic precision, clipping labels, sliding frames off hooks, carrying a stack of smaller prints like a set of quiet plates. Each print felt like a small fossil—preserved, fragile and susceptible to a sudden and indifferent change in fortune. She packed her own portfolio into a cardboard box she found in the supply closet, the box that had once been full of gallery postcards and flyers for past openings. While she worked she kept thinking of simple things: the exact shade of a photograph she’d taken of an empty bench in a park, the way the light cut through a morning and turned a bench into a subject.