Portrait of Kindness (Anne, Casual)

[LING LING DONGFENG]

Her name is Anne. Don't be late.
-Susan

Ling Ling fingered the note written in her manager's neat hand carefully, folding and unfolding the paper curiously, though making sure not to blur the black ink the message was written in. It was part of an art opening for a few young artists in the area. Though she herself had chosen not to be featured in a moment of lost confidence, she still wanted to go to check out some if the other people's work. Susan had written down the name of someone she thought Ling Ling would make friends with; she made it no mystery that she was basically trying to set Ling Ling up to make friends, something Susan always urged Ling Ling to strive in obtaining more of.

She'd not wanted to go when Susan had mentioned it, nor did she know how or why the woman knew Anne, but it was of no matter. Anxiety had caused her to hide in her house for the last few days - in all honesty she'd lost count of how many it was, but she knew it was less than a week, so not terrible - but this morning she'd woken up finally more cheerful, thankfully. So she had showered and put a nice dress on, a light, blue one that was perhaps a bit too cold for the end of winter, but she wanted to look pretty after a few days of sitting in the same clothes.

When she'd dried her hair and was making her breakfast, she went to check her mail slot to find the note that Susan had written shoved among a few bills and ads. Now, she contemplated going out. It might be nice to leave the flat today, the better half of her told her. After all, it was nice out. But then all the intricacies of her mind unhelpfully reminded her of everything that could happen, and she nearly threw the note out. She instead left it on her kitchen table and sat at her laptop computer, trying to think of something to write. Nothing came, possibly because her thoughts kept returning to the convention.

Finally, sighing, she forced herself to not to think about everything until she left – she could do that sometimes, and it was a helpful talent - and put on a coat. In the cab ride over, she fidgeted with the small folded piece of paper, suddenly not only nervous about where she was, but what it was she was actually going to. She found that she was becoming curious about who Anne was. She knew better not to raise expectations though, because it left too many openings for defeat. The furthest she allowed herself to assume was the Anne was a good artist who was probably pretty kind, it Susan had told her to meet her.

She reached the center where it was being held and walked tentatively up the stairs, counting steps and creaks that they made to distract herself from going back. She reached the door at the top and, taking a deep breath, opened it. She saw about six different artists’ works, scattered in organized clusters about the room, and artists’ tables. Ling Ling looked for the table labeled ‘Anne,’ which proved to be fairly easy as the table was one of the ones in the front of the room. She walked over, admiring the art quietly before looking up at the women behind the table and asking, “You’re Anne, right? Susan told me to come see your art…?” She held out a hand to shake, “I’m Ling Ling, nice to meet you.”