1913issue6online

88 they looked like they could easily board a plane to Paris, they might have some hope. But if they stood in front of my desk long enough to need to put down their portfolio because their arms were tired, if they wore too much jewelry or had stains on their shirt, or were too old and seemed eager to talk to me even after realizing that I was just an assistant, they were probably not going to make the cut. I learned how to smile in a way that is probably common among pathological liars. If there was some other task I needed to get to, I wagged my hid- den foot with impatience as they spoke. After a year of work- ing there, I tended to put the portfolio they handed to me into a stack without looking at it as soon as the door shut behind them. -excerpted from The Fluency of Light: Coming of Age in a Theater of Black and White, reprinted with permission from the University of Iowa Press. -Aisha Sabatini Sloan

1913issue6online

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