The Work

All the so-called ‘estate sales’ that were eighty per cent second-hand furniture superstore trash.

If Frick was the dick he sounded like, it made her furious to think of how his money shaped the market and perceptions of art in his own time. And still

A man’s death leading to a life-changing amount of money. How it felt like receiving a paycheck for the work of enduring their cruelty.

Lally’s early childhood memories of happiness were littered with details she’d spend the rest of her life interrogating for signs of her mother’s misery.

What was strategic about that? What was so cost-effective about being on your own? How was work so lucrative and alluring if this was how it manifested in the body? No, this was the truth she’d brought back from the dark place. Independence had always been an illusion.

How many artists were shit to their wives and girlfriends rather than their models? Did it make a difference if the predatory behaviour took place in the home or the studio? The rules of engagement seemed to be changing fast, but the same men still went ahead and broke them.

She had been returning to this meal her entire life. The smell of it, the saltiness, made her eyes water. It was the certainty of the thing. The reminder that she had been in this dark, low place before, and she had returned home to her mother before, and time went on and problems passed, and she survived.

At first Lally had dismissed him as a pushover. That was before she understood that sorrow turned some men soft rather than hard, and that soft might sometimes be better.

Lally fought the urge to counter this suggestion, not liking being told what to do by the ghost of an imperialist prick.

The installation had been meticulously photographed as soon as it was completed in situ, but if someone from the buyer’s side noticed any anomalies they wouldn’t raise the matter with her for fear of word getting out that the work had been compromised and their investment tainted. They all patted each other’s backs and asses like that. Praise could