She watched his lips mumble something that closely resembled, “No… maybe… kinda… sort of…”

“How dare you?”

“Look, in all fairness, I just told her about a night I was hanging with you as a friend, not as an interpreter… I was just venting about you ditching me… by the way, how could you ditch me? It doesn’t matter if you are into dick or into pussy: no friend ditches another friend without warning! I waited outside the club for you till…”

She had already heard this part of the tale at least a dozen times; she wasn’t particularly interested in hearing it again. Her mood considerably soured, Jodi turned her attention back to the Latina. “Lucia, if you think I’m so terrible, then why the hell did you introduce me to your sister-in-law?”

It was Martinez’s turn to act defensively. “Who said anything about you being terrible? Jesus! I don’t think that! I just…” She stopped, breathing deeply and releasing some of the tension that had accumulated in her shoulders. Once she felt sufficiently calmed, she continued. “I just care about you… and not only cause I got a shitload of money riding on your talent. I care about you as a person… dare I say, as a friend.”

“I appreciate that,” said Jodi with honesty. She already considered the curator a friend; to know that the famously reserved Lucia thought the same was a welcomed surprised.

The brunette did her best to try to explain her interest. “Jodi, I’ve been working with artists for 15 years… and I’ve seen others like you: incredibly talented and intelligent individuals who live for the moment and by their own set of rules – hard and fast. They weren’t able to keep that pace for long… no one is. Almost all of them burnt out. I simply don’t want that to happen to you.”

“You are asking me to slow down.”

“I’m asking you to consider slowing down.” With a demeanor that seemed to belong to an older and wiser person, Lucia continued, “Honey, I am not saying there’s anything wrong with sex. God knows I love it. And there’s nothing wrong with drinking or partying or working hard at what you love… There is, however, something wrong with smoking, but I won’t get into that now… What’s wrong is building your life around those things. There’s more to life than just ‘the moment’. If you don’t give yourself a chance to experience those things, you will never feel like a complete person.”