Clean.
Erase the proof that my eye had drifted off assignment and onto something I didn’t have the right to want.
My finger didn’t move.
Instead I dragged the file into a folder.
Not the selects folder.
Not the rejects folder.
A third place.
A limbo I could pretend wasn’t a decision.
I named it something stupid on purpose.
extras_misc
Then I kept working like nothing had happened.
René’s emailcame in at 08:03.
A call time. An address. A list.
And, as always, no greeting.
I stared at it while chewing a piece of toast I’d only half made myself eat.
Today was not with him.
I would be assisting someone elseagain—another photographer, another style, another set of expectations I had to match without knowing the rules.
And René had added a line at the bottom like an afterthought.
Send me your alternates from yesterday. I want to see your eye.
My stomach tightened.
That wasnew. He hadn’t asked for those before.
I read the sentence again, trying to find a loophole hidden in the phrasing.
Alternates.
Not selects.
Not the official deliverables.
My eye.
As if he’d noticed the very thing Mischa kept calling out.
As if he was offering me a chance to exist inside my work again—without ever calling it that.
I stared at my folders.
The clean set of alternates, safe and technical and correct.
