“The majority of them, no.”
“My mum didn’t go back to work after I was born. She rode horses and did charity stuff and … had lunch,” he laughed. “I don’t know what she did, come to think of it. I don’t know how she filled her days.”
“Would you describe her as a good mum?”
“I guess so. I turned out all right. I mean, you like me.”
“I do.” I smiled. “Do you think she was happy?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. Are you happy?”
“Right this moment? Yes.”
He was quiet for a minute, watching me. “Do you think you’d be as happy if you weren’t working?”
I shook my head. “Maybe if I’d gotten married and had kids older, I would have felt the pull to settle down. But I had all this education and energy and desire and there was more life to live than that. And now it’s so much of my identity. And yeah, sometimes I feel guilty that I wasn’t the mom serving hot lunch at private school. But who’s to say that would have made me a better mom? I probably would have just been restless and unhappy. And resentful.”
He nodded, his fingers tracing over my cuff. “Yeah, I get that.”
“If you hadn’t done this, what would you be doing?”
“Ha! Press junket questions. I’d be at Cambridge with half my year, sleeping in the same five-hundred-year-old college four generations of Campbells have slept in, playing football, chasing skirts, rowing, and having a grand time.”
“Interesting,” I said. I could not picture him doing any of that. “Hard or soft-shell tacos?”
He laughed. “Soft.”
“Ever been in love?”
“No.”
I stopped. It was not what I was expecting. “No?”
He sipped from his drink, placed the glass on the table before us. “No.”
“Never? Really? Wow.”
“Do I strike you as someone who’s been in love?”
“You strike me as someone who knows what he’s doing.”
“I’ve had some good teachers. Some of whom have said, ‘Don’t fall in love with me.’” He let that stand in the air, accusatory.
“Did I say that? I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. I didn’t really listen to you anyway.” He said it with no pretense. His hand had found its way beneath the table, to my knee, to the scalloped lace hem of my dress. “I’ve thought I was in love. Turns out I was wrong.”
“Penelope?”
“Penelope.”
My mind paged through the times he’d said he was falling, at the Chateau Marmont, at the George V. I was weighing them differently now, those proclamations. I’d written them off as infatuation. Things a young boy might say. But perhaps he’d been revealing more of himself all along.
A sultry breeze blew up from the ocean. The air was moist, balmy. Hayes’s fingers slipped beneath my hem and I flinched. For a long time neither of us spoke. He held my gaze as he forced my knees apart, uncrossed my legs, pried open my thighs.
There was another couple on the banquette not far from us. A group of Basel types across the reflecting pool. We were not alone. And yet I did not stop him.
“I take it we’re done talking about Penelope…”
He chuckled, sly. His fingers pressed up against me, inside me. “We are very done talking about Penelope.”
He leaned into me then, his mouth near my ear, his breath hot on my neck. The thought occurred that I would miss this when he moved on. When he was with someone ten years my junior, and I was somewhere invisible. I was going to miss his hands.
This.
His thumb on my clit and my heart in my throat and the humidity enveloping us like a blanket.
When I thought it might happen, that I might come right there in the courtyard of the Setai, he stopped, pulling away. I reached for his arm. “Where are you going?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. And then he took his hand from between my legs and rubbed his wet fingers over my mouth. My lips, my tongue … I sat, speechless.
He smiled his half smile, took a swig of Scotch, and then kissed me. Deep.
“You,” I said, when I found my voice.
“Me.”
“You. Are so fucking dirty.”
He leaned in again to suck on my lip. “Am I?”
“Can we go back to the room now?”
“Not yet.” He was smiling when his hand returned between my legs, his fingers slipping beneath my underwear, sliding up inside of me, effortless. “You. Are so fucking wet.”
I sat there for another minute, lost in him. And then I grabbed his wrist. “Pay the bill,” I said, “and then meet me upstairs.”
“Okay.”
* * *
It took him longer than I would have liked to arrive at the suite. But the sight of him at the bedroom entrance—black dress shirt slightly unbuttoned, glass still in hand—gave me such a rush, I forgot to question where he’d been.
“Candles?” he said, taking in the room, taking off his boots. “Were you hoping for something romantic?”
“Actually, I was just hoping you’d bring your mouth.”
He smiled at that. “I bet you were.”
From my position on the bed, I watched him make his way toward me, his body long, lithe, beautiful. He took a moment to hook his iPhone up to the speakers. Then, as the music started, some evocative baseline I did not recognize, he took a sip of Scotch and drank me in.
“Are you going to make me wait, Hayes Campbell?”
He grinned, setting down his glass. “Maybe. Just a little.”
The vocals kicked in then. A haunting, familiar voice. Bono. Although nothing I’d ever heard before. Raw, sexy, disjointed lyrics.
“U2?”
“U2.”
Hayes joined me on the bed, took his time unzipping my dress. His fingers warm against my flesh. A driving guitar, his hands unclasping my bra, his mouth on my breasts. His tongue … He lowered himself, eventually, index finger running along the waist of my panties, from hip bone to hip bone and back. Bono’s voice, lulling. Sleep like a baby, tonight …
He paused for a second, his eyes finding mine, and then he bowed his head, took the material in his teeth, and slowly, slowly pulled them off. When he’d succeeded in getting them down to my ankles, he sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. His expression almost smug.
“What? What are you thinking?”
“I want to see what you do when I’m not with you.”
It took me a minute to register his request. “Now?”
“Now. Show me.”
* * *
When i got to our booth at the fair just before eleven the following morning, Matt was already there poring over his laptop. Lulit had yet to arrive.
“You want the good news or the bad?” he greeted me.
“No ‘Good morning’?”
He smiled, pushing his glasses up onto his face. “Sorry. Good morning. Good news: We’re going to sell a lot of art today.”
We’d been doing well thus far. Glen Wilson’s installation Gatekeeping was striking. Salvaged chain-link fences, with large-scale portraits woven throughout the steel mesh, symbolic of the gentrification transforming the artist beach community of Venice. The pieces representing the remnants of once-affordable properties and their displaced residents. It was political, powerful art.
“So what’s the bad news?”
“You’re a blind item,” he said, positioning the laptop so I could view the screen.
“A what?”
“Jo just sent this.”
The browser was opened to a website I didn’t recognize. Blind gossip something or another. At the top of the page there was an item titled “Naked Lunch.”
Which pretty boy with a penchant for mature women has been moonlighting as a collector in South Beach this week? Is he fulfilling his artistic desires or that of his amorous dealer?
I stared at it for a moment, trying to compute. It seemed so esoteric to me, random. “Is there a photo?”
“No.”
“Is my name up there?”
“Not yet. But it’s a matter of time before someone guesses.”
“How did Josephine know it was us? It could be anyone.”
Matt sighed, shutting the window. “The clues: Wise or Naked, August Moon, Petty Desires. It’s all in there.”
“Fuck,” I said. We’d been so careful. So lucky. “Who reads that thing?”
“Pretty much everyone who cares about gossip,” he laughed. “Sorry.”
I nodded. It was bound to happen. “‘Amorous dealer.’ Great.”
Matt smiled. “It could have been much less favorable. Lulit doesn’t know. We don’t have to tell her.”
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe that’s best.”
* * *
My pretty boyfriend showed up sometime after two, wanting to see me, to see the fair. There was something of a lunchtime lull, and so we slipped away with Lulit’s permission.
“This dress,” he said as we meandered through the neighboring booths.
“What about it?” It was a cream-colored crepe shift. Sleeveless, short.
“It’s rather … wee.”
“That it is.” I smiled over at him.
As always I was aware of the eyes on Hayes. Poufy curls, skinny jeans, boots. A walking exclamation mark. But for the first time, and I wasn’t sure if it was just my imagination, it seemed that people were looking at me as well.
When we finally snaked our way over to the Sadie Coles booth to see Urs Fischer’s Small Rain installation—a thousand cartoonish green plaster raindrops suspended from above—I leaned into him. “We’re a blind item.”
“You and I?”
“No, you and some other chick you were with the last couple of days in Miami.” I paused. “You weren’t with some other chick the last couple of days in Miami? Right?”