Page 35 of Suite 7

“Tell me while I look.”

I’m already outside, phone to one ear, free hand opening Instagram, TikTok, Twitter in three rapid taps.

Cold breath, the Sunday street quiet enough to make my voice sound too loud. Something in my body recognizes this: the instant narrowing, everything non-essential falling away.

“Luminos,” Vivienne says. “The new concealer line.”

“I was at the launch.”

“There’s a hashtag.”

I find it. #LuminosFail. Over sixty videos, most posted in the last twelve hours. The pattern resolves immediately.

Celine Park, 2.1 million followers, holding the Luminos #3 compact next to her forearm. Side-by-side with the campaign imagery. The difference is obvious enough that no one needs her to say anything.

She doesn’t say anything. She just looks at the camera.

It’s worse than angry. Angry burns out. This is the look of someone who expected better and is no longer surprised that she didn’t get it.

“The shade range,” I say.

“The shade range.” Vivienne’s voice goes flat. “The campaign imagery said something the product didn’t back up.”

“I need you not to say anything in the next ten minutes. Nothing attributed to LUMA. Can you do that?”

“My social team wants to —”

“No.” The word comes out the same way Kane said kneel: not loud, not aggressive, just completely without room for negotiation. “A wrong response now is worse than silence. I need your creative director on a call at noon. I need to understand the decision trail before I can shape anything.”

She exhales. “Noon.”

“Noon.” I hang up.

I stand on the sidewalk while the city hums around me, indifferent and ongoing.

The LUMA problem is containable. I know exactly what to do, in what order, with what words.

In the space the crisis vacated, the Kane-shaped thing fills immediately.

I go back inside. Order coffee, and spend the next hour prepping the noon call, focused and methodical, three steps ahead of the problem. I handle it. I always handle it. But underneath, he is there.

The LUMA problem I know how to fix.

The other one will require me to venture somewhere I’ve never permitted myself. And I lack time for that.

I pay the bill. Pick up my bag, and walk out into the Sunday street and start my car.

I’ll deal with it later. After the call. After I’ve established what this is, or isn’t, or was, or won’t be.

The sequencing argument is already getting harder to maintain, and I know it, and I drive anyway.

6 Vera

The afternoon drags.

I try the television, some romantic comedy I’ve seen before, the dialogue washing over me meaningless. I pick up the book I’ve been meaning to finish for months, read the same paragraph three times, put it down. I rearrange my bookshelf by color instead of author because at least that task requires enough focused attention to keep one part of my brain occupied.

The other part refuses to cooperate.