I had an unexpected surge of nerves driving down La Cienega with him in the front seat of the Range Rover. The idea that I had his life in my hands, this irreplaceable commodity, and that should anything happen to him on my watch I would be forever culpable. It was like driving with Isabelle as a newborn all over again: the pressure, the fear.
It is likely I had never seen Lulit’s eyes as wide as when I walked into the gallery with Swagger Spice. I had not warned her or the others. It was the day before our July opening, and I knew they’d be swamped with detailing the show. I did not want to give her something else to think about until he was already there.
Her jaw dropped and she moved to fix her hair, which was in a perfectly messy topknot. She was in jeans and no makeup and she was still flawless. Her enviable brown skin that would not age.
“You’ve brought … company.”
“I have.” I smiled, wide. A whole conversation transpired between us then without a word spoken. “Hayes, this is my partner, Lulit Raphel. Lulit, Hayes.”
“So this is the famous Lulit. It’s a pleasure. I’ve heard plenty about you.” Hayes’s voice sounded particularly deep in the cavernous space. Gravelly. As if he’d been up eating pussy until four in the morning. Which, indeed, he had.
“Lovely to meet you, Hayes.”
“God, this space is brilliant.” He began walking around, admiring the layout, the art. The juxtaposition of Cho’s atmospheric images and James’s emotional landscapes. Both abstract, more metaphoric than literal. Smoke and mirrors.
“You want a guided tour, or you want to wander on your own?”
“I want to wander first.”
“Okay, I’ll be in the office. It’s toward the back, off to the right.”
Matt popped his head out from his office in the rear, and Josephine exited the kitchen as I was approaching.
“Who is that?” Matt raised a wily eyebrow. “Client? This early?” It was not quite ten.
“Potentially,” I said.
Josephine headed out toward the reception desk, sipping from her mug of green tea, and then very quickly turned around and headed back to us. “Holy shit, is that Hayes Campbell? Is he a client now?” Josephine was twenty-four.
“Who’s Hayes Campbell?”
“Only like the hottest guy in the hottest band. In the world. Where have you been?”
“In my thirties, clearly.” Matt smirked. “What band, now?”
“August Moon,” Josephine whispered. “Holy shit.”
“The boy band? Those adorable posh boys from Eton…”
“Only one went to Eton,” Josephine said matter-of-factly.
“Who went to Eton?” I asked.
“Liam.”
“He did?” This was news to me.
“Yes. And the others all went to a posh school in London. Except for Rory, he’s the bad boy.”
“You know all their names?” Matt asked.
“All whose names?” Lulit joined us in the kitchen and made a beeline to the espresso machine.
“August Moon. Our newest client is from August Moon.”
Lulit threw me a seemingly casual look, and I shrugged in response. She understood: she was not to say a word.
“Well, I’m going to offer our boy band visitor some Pellegrino,” Matt said, grabbing a small bottle from the fridge. “We’re being rude here.”
“Forget it, you’re not his type.” Josephine swiped the bottle from him.
Matt was stocky, sardonic, Korean-American, male. I doubted highly he was Hayes’s type.
“He only dates older women. Don’t you watch Access Hollywood?” She started out of the kitchen and then suddenly stopped, swiveling around, her eyes landing on me. “How do you know him exactly?”
Lulit pressed the button on the espresso machine just then, filling the space with a welcome roar.
“He’s a client.”
* * *
I barely had the time to process all that Josephine had said—who knew she was such a wealth of boy band information?—before Hayes came looking for me. I could hear them in the hall: Lulit making introductions, Hayes’s not-enough-sleep voice, Matt and Josephine sounding not at all like themselves.
He popped his head into the office eventually. “Hi. I’m looking for the boss lady.”
“There are two of us here.”
“I’m looking for the one I came with.” He smiled, sly, sliding the door shut behind him. “This is a cool space.”
Lulit and I shared the oversized box. White walls, cement floors, like the rest of the gallery, except the lighting here was warmer and there were personal touches throughout.
“Is that Isabelle?” He came up behind me, admiring the photos on my desk. Two of Isabelle: one as a toddler, dressed as a ladybug for Halloween; the other at age seven, a snapshot taken on the Vineyard, my little bird. And a black-and-white of me, captured by Deborah Jaffe, one of our photographers, at her opening earlier that year. Close up, in profile. I’m laughing and my hair is still long.
“I like this.” Hayes lifted it from the desk. “Solène Marchand,” he said softly.
“We are not having sex.”
“I … wasn’t expecting us to…”
“No, I don’t mean now, I mean in general. They cannot know that we are having sex.” I pointed to the door.
Hayes’s expression was contrite. “But Lulit knows, right?”
“Lulit knows. The others do not. And we’re keeping it that way. And later you can tell me why you only date older women.”
“Who said that?”
“Access Hollywood apparently.”
* * *
Hayes followed me around the gallery while I gave him a brief overview of the exhibit. The work of the two artists, how they were similar, how they were not. How Ailynne worked with film and created ethereal nature stills by experimenting with depths of field and focus. And how Tobias’s prints were done digitally, playing with shutter speed and then further manipulated in post. How his captures managed to look like the world flying by at sixty miles per hour. Both artists’ works: blurred, evocative.
He was quiet for the most part, attentive, like a young student. His hands clasped behind his back, his face open. I imagined this was what he looked like at his posh school. Minus the skinny jeans, of course.
“How do you find them? Your artists?”
“Different ways. Some we plucked straight from grad school and have been with us since we first started. Tobias was at CalArts. Ailynne came over recently from a smaller gallery.”
“I really like this one,” he said, pausing in front of a large James print. A moody seascape, at once peaceful and aggressive.
“It’s very masculine.”
“Is it?” Hayes cocked his head. “What makes it masculine?”
“The energy, the mood, the colors. It’s just a feeling I get.”
“I thought water was feminine.”
“I think art can be whatever you want it to be.” I reached out to grab his hand and then remembered where we were and who he was, and so quickly retreated, crossing my arms.
He laughed softly. “What are you so afraid of? You ashamed of me?”
“I’m not ashamed of you.”
“You don’t want your friends to know about us.”
“I don’t want my employees to know about us.”
He leaned into me, suggestive. “They’re going to figure it out. And then you’re going to have to admit that you like me. And then maybe you’ll realize that’s not such a bad thing. Boy band and all. I want this. I’m going to buy it.”
He pulled away from me, stepping to the middle of the room for perspective, while I pondered what he’d said.
“They’ll ship it to London?”
“They will.”
“Do you like it?”
“I do.”
“Do you love it?”
“I like it a lot.”
“Is there anything here that you love?”
I nodded. “In the front room, in Gallery 1.”
“Show me.”
He followed me to the Cho piece that I most coveted. An image so blown out it appeared almost translucent. Sunlight in a garden, and the vague silhouette of a woman, nude, her features blurred and indeterminate, lying in the grass, bleeding into the atmosphere behind her. A faded anemone, the one certainty in the foreground. Unclose Me, it was titled.
“This…” he said, tugging on his lip, pensive. “This is what you love?”
“This is what I love.”
He nodded, slow. “What do you feel when you look at it?”
“Everything.”
His eyes caught mine then, and he held my gaze and smiled. “Yeah.”
* * *
He did not stay for long. He had meetings starting at twelve and scheduled throughout the afternoon, and that evening he boarded a plane to London. I would not see him for a few more weeks. And each day was agony.
the hamptons
Visiting Day at Isabelle’s camp was the last weekend of July. In the early years, Daniel and I would go together, a forced show of solidarity. But eventually that ended. And now I handled drop-off and Parents’ Weekend, and he did the pickup. The arrangement seemed to work best for all parties.
My parents made the trip with me in Daniel’s absence. We’d drive up together from Cambridge and stay in a quaint B&B not more than an hour from the camp, each time exploring some hitherto unchartered territory. Strolling in Ogunquit, scouting small galleries in Portland. It was the one time I felt most like a daughter, when all the other labels and the weight of them seemed to fade. I welcomed it.
On that Saturday, we spent a leisurely afternoon in Boothbay Harbor. Following a fish-and-chips lunch, we popped into a very local gallery and just as quickly popped out.
“Beh,” my father grunted in that very French way of his. “Blown glass and lighthouses.”