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to speeches by earnest young artists who had no idea what they were protesting except that they had to protest something, and he had tried to persuade himself that he shared Sharan’s enthusiasm for such things.
    It was late October. The sky was clear blue, the wind had a bite that promised of winter around the corner, and there were golden leaves scuttling around his feet. Matt could feel the wind ruffling his hair, slipping its chilly fingers through his sweater. Any joy he felt at being asked to participate was tempered by the very real sense that he was being used.
    The group of artists mounting the show—along with their supporters and various hangers-on—had decided that they needed incredible attendance at this show, that they needed the hall filled to bursting. They needed public approval of this first modern art show at the conservative college, in order to set the stage for more such spectacles in the future.
    So, there was Matt, apparently upstanding, a law student himself and thus token and testament that anyone could like this art, that everyone should like it, that anyone remotely enlightened would come in and see it. He handed out flyers, he cajoled people to go inside and take a look, he reminded complete strangers that the show was free. It was unlike him to be so garrulous, but Matt knew that he didn’t have that much choice.
    The simple fact was that if he wanted Sharan, this was the role he had to play. He was representative of the ignorant bourgeois masses, a decoy positioned to coax his conservative (if not ignorant) fellows inside, so they could sip of the cup of artistic enlightenment.
    Something like that.
    He didn’t even see Leslie that first time, beyond the fact that a student with a ton of books in her arms was crossing the courtyard. He just shoved the flyer between her nose and the top book and started his spiel.
    “‘Piercing the Veil’,” he said, thinking for the umpteenth time that the title of the show made no sense. “It’s a student art show in the common room, the first one in years, and you’ve got to come and see it.”
    She looked at the flyer then at him, adjusted the weight of the books, then took the flyer in her right hand to study it. There was a color photograph of one of the paintings in the show, one done by Sharan in fact. It was red, as red as blood, with a jagged black line running from top to bottom just slightly to the right of center. It was called ‘Pandora’s Redemption’.
    “Is this the kind of art in the show?” she asked, clearly referring to the photograph on the flyer.
    “What do you mean?” Matt bristled at a potential criticism of Sharan’s work.
    “Is it all modern art?”
    “Well, it is all abstract, though much of it is post-modern. You should come...”
    “I don’t like abstract art,” she said, then handed him back the flyer. “Save this for someone who’s interested.”
    Surprise made Matt look at her. Her hair was a brown so rich that it was almost black, dark and thick and glossy, tied back in a ponytail. Hers wasn’t a cheerleader ponytail, caught up high on the back of her head and dancing in the breeze, but a low one, clasped demurely at the back of her neck. She wore no make-up, though she was pretty in a bookish way. She held his gaze for a moment, unapologetic about her view, and he saw that her eyes were as blue as the autumn sky. She then shrugged a little as if aware she might be hurting his feelings and made to step past him.
    “But why not?” he asked, not quite ready to let her slip away.
    She glanced back, studying him for a moment as if hesitant to reply.
    “I’d like to know. Really.”
    “It doesn’t mean anything,” she said with another of those little shrugs. “At least not to me.” She smiled a bit then, and he braced himself for another candid confession. “It doesn’t seem to me to be about what people say it’s about, like maybe they’re just making up stories to make it seem more meaningful