Page 43 of Impulse Control
He exhaled through his nose, something like satisfaction flickering across his face.
“Good,” he said. As stingy as he was with praise, to hear him offer that single syllable with such fierce approval actually bolstered my whole mood. Then he continued with, “You will fix this.”
Wait. What? I blinked. “I will…?”
“You,” he repeated, already pulling prints off the wall. “Not alone. But you will lead.”
My buoyed mood plummeted at the instruction. Whether it was because he wanted me tofixit or that I would be working with someone else, I wasn’t sure. Maybe both. Particularly if the one I would be working with was the photographer who took these.
Talk about ways to not win friends or influence people. I always got an A in that class.
He shoved a small stack of photos into my hands. “We need these to run Thursday. They will not run like this.”
I glanced down at the images. Fashion-adjacent. Street-level. Parisian, but anonymous.
“What do you want instead?” I asked, because while I could definitely tell him what they weren’t. I had no idea what he wanted in the first place.
René tilted his head. “What doyousee?”
The old instinct rose fast—to deflect, to hedge, to ask what he preferred. I felt it in my chest, tight and familiar.
I pushed through it.
“They’re all standing still,” I said. “Even the ones in motion feel…” I tilted my head as I turned the photographs, flipping through them. “…posed.”
“And?” he prompted.
“They need interruption for contrast,” I said, grasping for the first thing that came to mind. They needed to feelaliveand not something computer generated. They needed… “Something that doesn’t belong.” Because that would showcase what they were and give them an animation they definitely lacked right now.
René’s mouth twitched.
“You have until Wednesday,” he said. “Find me something that improves this.”
He turned away. That was it. No checklist. No permission slip. Just expectation.
I stood there for a second longer than necessary, the weight of the assignment settling into my hands. This wasn’t assisting or observing.
This waswork.
And he didn’t tell me who I was workingwith.
“Rachel.”
I looked up. René had stopped a few steps away.
“If you hesitate,” he said quietly, “I will know.”
“René?” When he continued to stare at me, I said, “Who am I doing this with?”
He glanced at me, then at the photos, then toward the window.
Oh.
He smiled.
Then he walked off.
I didn’t sitat a desk.
