Free How Should a Person Be? by Sheila Heti Page A

hanging out with Margaux, and talking with Margaux, and sharing a studio with Margaux was not enough to make me a genius in the world. It would not help me lead the people or make me into the sort of person I should be. It would not help me finish my play, or solve any of my problems.
    Yes it would. It would solve them all.

• chapter 9 •
    THEY WANDER IN MIAMI
    T hat winter, Margaux’s gallerist decided to take some of her paintings to Miami, where for a week the city would be turned into a giant art fair. Collectors from all over the world would attend, and all the top galleries would be there. The fanciest art would be shown at Art Basel, the largest of the fairs, and of the smaller fairs orbiting its periphery, one, called Scope, was where Margaux’s work would be.
    Though her dealer had already left for Florida, Margaux continued painting. I said she should deliver the newest paint ings by hand, not ship them, and said it was important for me to take the trip down with her. I wanted to record us there. Didn’t I need to write my play? she asked. I told her that the trip would be like writing; I hoped that if we went away together, like the mothers in my play, I could later study the transcripts and figure out what reality had that my play did not; learn why my play was not working, which was maybe the same reason my character was not working, and thus discover how I and the play should be.
    Then I watched, the morning we ­were to board public transit to the airport, as Margaux stuffed three oil paintings packed in bubble wrap into her large duffel bag, along with twenty T-shirts. We ­were only going for three days.
    On the plane ­ride down, we read an article in the New York Times about a paint­er who would be attending the fair that week, a twenty-­five-­year-­old guy named Ted Mineo who had studied at Yale and was being represented by one of the top Soho galleries. Basel would be his debutante ball. From Miami Basel to the heavens! His dealer intended him to meet everyone. No doubt he would be kept busy his entire time there. It read as though his life for the past five years had been very well managed, from art school, to his discovery in art school, to his move to Brooklyn and so on, so he was quoted saying of the contemporary art world, “There’s a career track. You get your B.F.A. and then you get your M.F.A. You move to New York, you have a show, and it’s like being a lawyer or something ­else. And that ­doesn’t entirely square with the romantic ideal of being an artist, living in isolation and being the avant-­garde hero.”
    When we finished reading it, I asked Margaux if she had ever thought about going to Yale. She told me she had once spent several weeks thinking about it, after searching around on the internet and realizing that all the big artists had gone there. She had made millions of sacrifices for her art—­maybe she should beg, borrow, and steal what­ever she could to go. But then she thought, No, that’s awful —­because there ­were just too many people who could not, and it seemed like it shouldn’t be the rule that you have to attend Yale. “In the end,” she said, “it felt too unfair to even think about, and it just seemed wrong to my morals and my faith in art. I think it would have really hurt me and made me sad. To me, it looked the same as joining a country club that Jews or black people aren’t allowed into. And lots of good people do join country clubs. But it would depress me too much. I figured I had to see what would happen without me joining the country club.”
    When we arrived in Miami, we changed from our pants and sweaters, getting half-­naked in the airport washroom, our clothes spread all over the counters. “Be careful,” I told Margaux, since she was so loyal. “What­ever outfit you choose for yourself now, you’ll be wearing for the next