There is nothing in this world lonelier than an empty art show.

I shouldn’t say it was entirely empty. After all, I was there, the artist himself, Ben Davenport. I was wearing a suit for the occasion, no tie. I had a name tag bearing my signature, another Ben Davenport original.

And the walls were full of my art. There was the photography wall, black and white urban shots, life breaking through cracks and interesting layers of graffiti. Most of what I did was oils, though, two walls of that. One series was very realistic, except for these windows of abstraction, as if they were revealing a deeper truth than reality. I had only a few watercolors, but they were the good ones, and they had a little corner to themselves. In the middle of the room were my sculptures, human figures with the inner structural supports breaking out in odd places.

I had a table set up with two kinds of wine, the cheapest red and white I could find with an Italian name. No red party cups here, nosiree. Only the best shallow clear plastic for this art show. There was a Stop & Shop cheese plate, cheddar and swiss and pepper jack, with a few crummy crackers and some tired salami.

See, it isn’t an artist, or art, or fancy snacks that makes an art show successful. It is art patrons, those mysterious individuals who come inside to look at art, frown consideringly at art, and according to myth, sometimes even buy it.

My art show was empty.

I had the space for just one night. It was a favor from my boss — not even a friend, just someone who knew that I did art “as a hobby”. “You could do a show!” she told me. Her father owned a strip mall; one of the spots had a tenant that just left, and the new tenant wasn’t due to start construction for a week, so the space was open. I could have it for a night, and it would be so elegant, she could just see it now.

I allowed myself to be convinced. It had been two years since I had introduced myself as an artist to anyone. I still painted, true, but the cubicle I sat in ten hours a day was more real to me now than my college dreams of the Bohemian paradise, where creative types interacted all day long, collaborating and creating things of exquisite beauty and deliberate ugliness, bringing things into the world that meant something important, and then going home and discussing philosophy over thimblefuls of absinthe.

My college fantasies were equal parts Moulin Rouge and Rent. Don’t judge.

I tried to make it in Manhattan or Brooklyn, but they were too expensive, and I couldn’t find a roommate who wouldn't murder me in my sleep. But East Meadow, Long Island, that’s not too far away from the city, right? I could take the LIRR in whenever I wanted. And this job processing claim tickets, it was just to pay the bills until I made it big.

But I didn’t make it big, and I kept processing claim tickets. At work, I was “the artistic one” that got asked to design a logo for the newsletter, or do to free work on someone’s website “for the exposure.” Damn it all, I was so desperate that I did, only to find that my name was credited nowhere on the site. (“But at least people are looking at it!”)

So when Janice offered me the chance to do a show, a real live show, I got more excited than history would indicate I should have.

I finished a few pieces I had been putting off. I raided flea markets for frames in likely sizes. I promoted the show at work, sure, but also in the art departments at Stony Brook and NYU. (Poster, stapled to bulletin board, the original mixed media.) I made postcards and stuck them in the bathroom in a few Brooklyn coffeeshops and bars. I emailed local high school art teachers. I posted on Internet forums and Reddit and dozens of other places. “Ben Davenport presents, ‘The Inner Light’. 5pm-11pm.”

Janice told me at work that day that something had come up and she wouldn’t be able to attend. But she gave me the key and wished me luck.

I left work at 3pm to get the space ready. I hung paintings on the walls. I draped a tablecloth over a vacuum cleaner box and balanced a sculpture on top of it. I set up my card table with the crap wine and the crap cheese and the crap crackers. Then I put on a name tag, took a deep breath, and opened the door.

By 8pm, I was pretty sure no one was coming. By 9pm, I was sure of it. By 10pm, I had finished the red wine and started eyeing the white.

At 10:42pm, she came in.

I know it was at 10:42pm, because I was watching the clock. I was imagining that the digital 2 and the 3 that was soon to follow it were two halves of the same number, differing only by the position of that one, red LED. What did it feel like for a 2 to become a 3? Did it understand the difference? Did it think of itself as one greater, or recall when it was one less? I was watching the hell out of that clock, waiting for the moment it found out. I may have been a bit drunk by that point.

I leapt to my feet. What should I do? What should I say? Would talking scare her off? Was it creepy to just be quiet? How drunk was I?

The girl was cute, in the artsy kind of way I had always preferred. She had shortish hair, plastic glasses, and a funky knit hat. I wasn’t sure if she was wearing a dress or just a skirt; there were so many layers of swirly fabric that it was impossible to say. She wore a lot of jewelry, though, several earrings and big chunky bracelets and at least six rings, not to mention a necklace that swung like a pendulum as she took slow, steady steps around my impromptu gallery.

She looked up, smiled at me, and went back to looking at the art. She started with the watercolors but dismissed them, focusing more on the oils. She took barely a glance at the photography, but seemed to really like one of the sculptures.

It was a nude figure, or perhaps two. I had started by making a couple of wire maquettes and twisting them together in interesting ways. When I applied the clay, I began with one figure, but then decided I really had two. They were a man and a woman facing each other but at the same time sharing certain limbs, a leg here and an arm there. The wire structure showed through in places as if slices of their flesh had been cut away, as if they could merge together and become one if they just arranged their pieces correctly.

I observed her observing the piece, and started to reinterpret my art through her eyes. “Dude,” she was definitely thinking. “Couldn’t he even finish his sculpture? One out of ten, would not visit again.” After a long observation, she turned, and I braced myself for the worst.

But she didn’t berate me for my lack of talent or artistic expression. “Are you the artist?” she asked.

I swallowed once, twice before finding my voice. “Yes. Yes, I did all of these.”

She nodded once to herself, as if making a decision. “I thought so. Yes, you’ll be perfect. You see,” and she leaned in conspiratorially, “I need you to take my place.”

I set down my wine. “What was that?”

“They have to keep it in balance, and by the time they figure it out, you’ll have figured it out, and then it won’t matter anymore.” She eyed my sculpture again. “Yes, I think this will work.”

It figured, that the only person who would come to my show was crazy. “I’m sorry, but I really don’t understand.”

“Oh! I should have said.” She shook her head. “It’s Belmont House. You’ve heard of it?”

I picked up my wine again, pounded it down. “I should say so. Belmont House? THE Belmont House?”

She nodded.

“You’ve got a slot, and you don’t want it?”

She nodded.

“And you want me to take it instead?”

“Uh huh. But there’s a little snag. See, they’re expecting a girl, so you’ll have to be in disguise.”

“Ah.” My brief excitement fled, leaving resentment behind. In fact, I was angry. Angry that I had even thought this show was a good idea. Angry that no one in my life had bothered to show up. And above all, angry that this girl had dangled my dream in front of me and then yanked it away.

You have to understand that Belmont House is one of those places that looks at my college art lifestyle fantasy and says, sure, we can do that. Eight artists live and work there. They work and display their art in the lower floors, live on the upper floors, and produce some of the most fascinating work I’ve ever seen. I visited once on a high school class trip, and it was probably responsible for my choice of major. I didn’t know about the philosophy and absinthe, but they certainly checked off all the other boxes.

“Yeah, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but...” I pointed at my face. I shaved in the bathroom at work, and I already had the shadow of a beard. I might not have been a paragon of masculinity, but no one would ever have suspected me of being a girl.

“Oh, not a problem. Here, take this card. It’s got the address and stuff.” She handed over an envelope with a stiff card inside. “And one more thing.”

She did something odd, then. She took off her necklace, a silvery Celtic knot on a long black cord. She held it up between us and blew on it. Did sparks really come out of her mouth, attach themselves to the intricate knotwork patterns and race around for a few seconds? Was there really a flash of light before the sparks disappeared? I refuse to answer these questions on the grounds of wine.

But she did put the necklace around my neck, before I could stop her. And then she turned on her heels. “Good luck! I love your oils!” And she was gone.

It was a nice compliment. But I was not paying any attention to the crazy lady’s praise.

My shirt was turning black.

Radiating out from the medallion of the necklace was an ever-widening circle of black fabric. I felt at, it clawed at it, but there was nothing physical to grab. I held up a hand to see if it was ink or paint, but there was nothing.

There was a bathroom in the back, and I dashed over to it, threw open the door, and flipped on the light. I expected to remove my suit jacket, take off the shirt, and try to figure out what was going on.

Instead, I saw the torso of a woman in a black dress.

There was no mistaking it. The neckline dipped rather low to reveal creamy skin and collarbones and yep, a line of cleavage that disappeared into the bodice of the dress. As I goggled, the circle widened, passing below my hips. My pants had joined with the top of the dress. My suit jacket became some sort of wrap or stole. Within only a few more seconds, my shoes became strappy, black sandals with a heel on the back.

Even more startling was my face. As the circle of change reached it, my features shifted, and suddenly I was looking at a woman’s face. It had the same creamy skin, lightly scattered with pale freckles. My hair was red, just a shade brighter than auburn. Only my eyes looked the same, bright green as always, but framed with such long eyelashes they looked alluringly feminine.

“What the hell?” I asked the mirror, and the woman reflected echoed the statement. My voice sounded high and pale to my ears.

The necklace. It had to be the necklace. It was still there, the cord hanging down my neck and following the line of my cleavage, the medallion itself dangling in the air a few inches from my stomach. I grabbed at it, missed, grabbed again, and caught it with hands that suddenly had painted nails. I hooked my thumbs around the cord and wrenched the necklace off my neck.

The transformation did not reverse exactly. Instead, I felt a ripping, tearing sensation as if I was pulling off my entire skin. The image of the woman swept up into the necklace, and suddenly I was back to normal, breathing heavily, holding a necklace which dangled innocently from my hands.