I am not my eating disorder.
I will be gentle with myself.
I am aware of possibilities for improvement, but I don’t want to be anyone else.
Every day is a constant battle between what I know is good for me and what my anorexia wants. She’s always with me, spitting insults and cruelty and telling me I’m unlovable, fat and greedy. I’ve been able to construct a box in my mind and trap her in it, but she’s never truly silent. I can hear her in there, rattling the lid and screaming in frustration.
Each day is supposed to bring me closer to full recovery, but I’m just so tired. I know I’m going to slip up. It’s just a question of when, and how badly.
At the traffic lights, I take a deep breath and a slow look around me, trying to be present. Trying to mentally prepare myself for a job interview I never asked for.
I am grateful for this opportunity.
New experiences lead to personal growth.
I do love this area, the center of Bohemian London a hundred years ago. It’s not far from my university so I know it well. The narrow rows of Victorian terraces open up onto jewel-box garden squares. The weather has been hot and dry, and the grass is already going brown at the edges even though it’s only the end of June.
The Albright Collection is an ultra-modern and slick building with an original redbrick Victorian façade. I hurry up the steps and the security guard in the foyer directs me to Mr. Blomqvist’s office on the top floor. I find a waiting area with no one around, just several sofas, a desk where an assistant must sit, and a closed door which bears a plaque that reads, STIAN BLOMQVIST, MUSEUM DIRECTOR. I wonder what he’s like. Probably frail with spectacles and papery skin, like some of my professors at university.
I’m getting a paper cup of water at the fountain when a man strides out of the elevator, tall, strong, blond, dressed in a suit and with a laptop bag slung over one shoulder. He stops dead and stares when he sees me.
It’s the Viking from last night.
I want to kick myself. I heard his accent, and I should have guessed that the man who shouted at me for nearly falling down the stairs was Stian Blomqvist. How many Swedes were there going to be at dad’s opening night?
Mr. Blomqvist, so self-assured, so wide awake and full of purpose at this early hour, has been caught off guard by me, and I can tell he detests the sensation.
“Miss Petrou,” he says, recovering. “This is my office. Come inside.”
His voice is gravelly, and consonants sound hard and heavy in his mouth as if he’s carving them onto stone as he speaks. I watch his broad back retreating. I should probably just leave because I don’t want to work for him, and he won’t want to hire me. We’re going to spend twenty or so stiff minutes going through the motions of an interview for a job both of us know I’m not going to get. I can picture the look my therapist will give me if I leave, though, and dad will go on for hours about how I’ve disrespected his friend, and I don’t actually want to get better.
Inside his office, I sit down in the chair Mr. Blomqvist offers me and watch as he takes out his laptop and various devices. He’s got Nordic blue eyes and fine blond hair, shaved at the sides, and longish on top and swept back.
When he finally sits down and looks up at me, he’s oddly still. Like he’s been carved from stone as well as his words. Even his eyes don’t flicker, but rather he stares.
“Your father tells me that you helped organize his exhibition.”
“Yes,” I say loudly, over the trumpeting of the elephant in the room. Oh, yeah. Only I can hear that.
Mr. Blomqvist is silent, so I start reciting what my duties were at the gallery. He laces his fingers together on his desk, and I notice there are markings on his knuckles. Tattoos. They’re Nordic runes, and there’s some sort of animal prowling down the back of his left hand. A wolf, I think. I wonder where else he has tattoos. If they’re on his hands then they must be all over his body. They’re so at odds with his immaculate appearance that I start to become distracted, because while he’s a jerk he’s kind of a gorgeous jerk, with a sculpted face and a generous, surly mouth. I like the way he says dis and dat instead of this and that.
“If the curator of another museum wanted to borrow a piece from us, what would you do?”
The question blindsides me, and I force my gaze back up to his. “I would pass on the request to the collections manager.”