Freelance

A freelancer. That’s how I’d describe myself. Or, at least, that’s what I say to Mum on the phone. It’s vague enough that she can fill in the gap when she speaks to friends about her daughter’s career. The free spirit who moved to the city to pursue her dreams. Bohemian, an auntie called me once. That must have been when Mum was filling the gap with artist.

I wonder, looking around the gallery, if I should fuel her assumption while I’m here. A noise from the door derails that train of thought. Voices flood the empty space. I pick up the mop again in an attempt to look busy, but I needn’t have bothered. The man who enters the room startles for a moment when he sees me.

“Oh,” he says, relaxing when his eyes slide to the bucket beside me and then over me entirely. A glance I’m used to. “Through here.” He turns and shouts back toward the entrance.

I move aside as trolleys of food and wine rattle across my polished floor, breaking my last hour’s silence. I busy myself with dusting the picture frames while the caterers filter past me. The guise of a stretched, screaming face stares down at me, and I read its neatly printed label: Devoid. It costs more than my yearly rent. Most of the pieces do, I realize, maneuvering around the sculptures, more cautious with the duster now. By the time I reach the last corner, I’ve lost count of the years each one could pay for me to stay in my cramped flat. My head is fuzzy with chemical fumes. I wheel the bucket into the anteroom where staff are setting out platters of film-wrapped canapés and pouring flutes of champagne. They bustle around me as I gather everything back into the cleaning cupboard.

It’s part of the job I both love and hate: the invisibility. As though I don the wallpaper along with my old clothes and become part of a building’s fabric. It lets me watch things. Like now, as the man from earlier speaks to a woman in the doorway.

“. . . No-show. Again.” I can just make out his words.

The woman’s mouth is a thin line. “You,” she says, looking past him, and I inch back into the cupboard to avoid the scene. “Hello?” Her voice is sharp. She’s talking to me, I realize; the chameleon effect of my uniform is lost.

I contemplate feigning deafness before responding. “Yes?”

“Can you hold a tray and stand up straight?” She asks. I hesitate under her gaze. “You’ll be paid,” she adds.

The man nods to a tray of pastries. “And fed. If there’s any of this lot left.”

“I . . .” I’m thinking of how many mini quiches I can fit in my bag. I shrug. “Sure.”

“Excellent.” She scrutinizes me before turning back to the man. “Do you have something she can wear?”

He nods, heaving a sigh when she stalks out of the room. We both wait as her footsteps recede. “Saved me a world of shit there,” he tells me. “Carson, by the way.”

“Vicky.”

“Right. Wait here.” He disappears out of the side door, leaving me in the impromptu kitchen alone save for the sporadically appearing staff. I wonder if standing straight and holding trays is below their pay grade. Through the gap in the emergency exit I can see a slither of sky and my grey tower block beneath it. An escape route. Carson’s figure blots it out as he reappears, holding a bundle of clothes out to me.

“May as well keep ’em, she never turns up. Just keep those lot,” he nods towards the gallery wall through which music has begun to filter, “fed and watered. Easy enough. Eleanor will be back to tell you, anyway . . .” he trails off, appearing sympathetic for a moment. It passes. Daylight enters the room in another brief flash as he returns to the back street, and I squint at his retreating form. The room is silent again except for the classical piece drifting through the wall. I look at the clothes in my hand and sigh.

Something I can wear is a tightly buttoned blouse and skirt which I squeeze into in the bathroom. Whoever wore them before me has penciled their initials on the labels: RW. She has a strong taste in perfume.

Eleanor is waiting outside the bathroom when I leave. She leads me back to the kitchen and hands me a tray crowded with glasses. If she didn’t speak, I would think her mouth was hermetically sealed.

“Take the aperitifs out first. Make sure everybody is provided for. Then the amuse-bouches—I take it you’ve waited before?”

“Here and there,” I say. Nowhere with so many cravats, I want to add as she shepherds me through the door. The gallery has filled with people in the last hour, and I weave among them with my quickly emptying trays. It’s a separate exhibition for me, taking in the scene. I wonder if they notice the shine on the floors which their shoes are already dulling. If they think about who scrubbed the toilets.

A cleared throat distracts me: someone asking for red wine.

I prefer the solitude of cleaning. The silence. Carrying a tray of drinks is another form of invisibility, though—I exist when a hand is raised to summon a glass, or else as a passing blur of puff pastries. In between rounds of the gallery and avoiding Eleanor’s prowl I can pause and observe. Listen to grandiose statements about the postmodern condition made between sips of champagne and bites of hors d'oeuvres.

If this is an artist’s life, then I’ll take it. I hover beside an empty wall that I hope isn’t a statement piece and study the group opposite me. They’re clustered in the corner, appraising a canvas.

“The composition is exquisite,” a man in a turtleneck is saying.

Another nods. “Yes. Like the dissection of a soul.”

I squint at the painting. It looks like the nightclub floor I cleaned last night. I want my bed. Want people to stop asking me what pâté is in the vol-au-vents. The lights are beginning to dim with the buzz of conversation, and I take it as my cue to withdraw, catching Eleanor’s attention against my better instinct. She counts out thirty pounds and I take it before I’m asked to stay and clean again, wrapping some stray pastries in a napkin as I leave.

Outside, I check my phone. Midnight, almost. The people spilling out of bars and staggering into the street are silhouettes. I’ve a missed call from my mother. A text asking how my night went.

I study the pavement as I walk, pondering how to reply. What form my freelancing will take today—artist, actor, writer, other. I’m more like the plant in the alley leading to my building. Growing from a crack in the pavement, from the inhospitable concrete. Surviving.

Just got back from an exhibition, I type, stepping over its leaves. Talk tomorrow.