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distraction of work.
    I met with the director of our children’s galleries, Kidspace, about a new idea she was developing for an interactive sculpture exhibit, and then I dove into some overdue updates to my master spreadsheet for my upcoming surrealist photography exhibit. I know it’s an anomaly to be a creative person who enjoys working with spreadsheets, but the delicious concreteness of a list or a chart just soothes my soul. As the day flooded past, I got swirled up into activity and almost, almost forgot that my marriage was in smithereens.
    “Caroline?” The museum’s director of development (“fundraising” if you like your words straightforward), Neil, was leaning through the open door of my office, one hand hooked around the doorframe. “Do you have a minute?”
    “Sure.” I beckoned to the pair of bony aluminum chairs I had lifted from the equipment inventory after an event last year. It’s not technically stealing if the items don’t leave company property. “Make yourself comfortable.”
    One eyebrow quirked as he draped his long frame onto a chair, one ankle resting on the other knee. The chair creaked loudly as he settled. “I wanted to talk to you about fundraising opportunities with Crush,” he said, and I gave a mental groan. Crush was a start-up founded by a fellow Williams alum and known for its eponymous, and wildly successful, family of dating apps. In fact, so successful was this start-up that it had recently gone public—to the great excitement of investors everywhere, and to the even greater excitement of every donor-funded arts organization in northwest Massachusetts. “If I’m not mistaken,” said Neil, “you went to college with Diana Ramirez.”
    Oh yes. Indeed I had gone to college with Diana, and what a delightful experience that had been. “You’re not mistaken, but I have no idea how you know that.”
    “Good memory,” he said. “I’ve been looking at her for a while as a potential donor, but until the IPO I wasn’t sure if she’d be worth pursuing. Fifty million shares later, she is officially worth it. So, I wanted to see if you’d be up to reaching out to her. Work the old alumni angle.”
    This could not possibly be happening. Not today. “Neil, I barely knew her. We certainly weren’t friends. And besides, everybody’s going to be chasing her. Every alum in the country has got to be crawling up her butt already, and—”
    He snorted.
    “Sorry. But you know what I mean.”
    “I do. They’re going to be in there with headlamps,” he said, and I did one of those big, loud, involuntary “HA!” laughs. “But,” he continued, unperturbed, “that means we should be, too. I read a piece on her last week where she talked about how much she loves the Berkshires; she just bought a weekend place down near Stockbridge. So, if you’re counting, that makes you an alumna of the same college, who—like her—loves the area so much that you moved back,
and
you work for a leading arts organization with deep ties to both the college and the Berkshire region.” He flipped his palms up, like, case closed.
    And also, the woman can’t stand me,
I thought. But I hated the thought of spilling tired freshman-year gossip to my co-worker; better to support my avoidance from a different angle. I leaned forward on my desk, forearms crossed. “I know. I read the same piece. The thing is, though, I’m a curator. I do my art thing and you do your fundraising thing, and I don’t ever do your thing. I don’t know how to do your thing. I’m not a schmoozer.”
    “No, you’re not. Because ‘schmoozer’ sounds like some kind of fancy poodle mix.”
    I almost sprained my face trying not to laugh. I had to get him to leave me alone about this. “Seriously. I do not have the first clue how to tackle this.”
    “Well, you can start by putting together what you know about her, and then do some research to fill in what you’re missing. Where is she from originally? What is