“What’s the wife’s name again?”
We were in our bedroom, an airy suite with views overlooking the putting green and the stretch of lawn extending to the pool. On the far wall, above the sitting area, was a framed pigment print of Kate Moss, taken by the legendary Chuck Close.
“Sylvie … Sylvia … One of those. Do you want me to introduce you?” Hayes was lying on the chaise longue, watching me unpack.
“I’d like that. Yes.”
“Where is she getting her art?”
I did a quick mental compute. “Mainly Gagosian, and probably some auctions.”
“Like that?” He nodded toward the Moss photo.
“No. That’s Chuck Close. He’s with Pace in New York. She probably bought it from them or at auction.”
“Is that Kate Moss? She looks weird.”
“It’s the process he uses,” I explained, “like a daguerreotype. The way you can see every pore on her face. Age spots that the naked eye probably can’t even pick up yet.” I made my way back across the room to the closet.
The Close piece was haunting. Mostly because Kate was my age. She couldn’t have been more than thirty in the photo, and yet I could see everything that she would become. Everything that I, we, probably already were. I wondered if Hayes could see it, too. The opposite of youth.
“I used to love her as a wee lad.”
“Yes. Well, who didn’t?”
“Come here,” he said. It was the way he said it. I knew that we’d stopped talking about Kate. That we’d stopped talking about art.
I made my way over to him, and he extended a languid arm, his hand wrapping around the back of my thigh, beneath the hem of my dress.
I did not speak as his fingers moved up my leg, arriving at my underwear, slipping beneath the fabric. “Hiiii.”
“Hi.” I smiled.
“I missed you.”
“That’s … apparent.”
He nodded, his fingers moving against me. “It’s been three weeks. That’s like decades in the music industry.”
“I imagine it is,” I said. But I could not imagine it was as he was saying it. Had he not been with anyone? Or just not with me?
I was quiet for a moment, listening to him breathe, listening to my heart beat, watching his hand move beneath my dress. Possessing me.
The bedroom door swung wide open suddenly, and Fergus was standing there at the threshold, his bald head buried in a pile of magazines. Hayes’s arm was back at his side before I could even register what was happening.
“Hey, mate, we picked these up for you,” Fergus said, finally looking up. “Sorry. Door was ajar.” He stepped into the room and very casually tossed a handful of magazines onto the credenza before turning and leaving. As if he hadn’t just walked in on us.
“We should probably lock that,” Hayes said, calmly.
I nodded. “We should.”
* * *
It was hours before we left the room.
I had the thought that, regardless of how unconventional or ill-fitted the two of us together seemed, the chemistry was like nothing I’d ever experienced. And by the way he responded to me, it appeared that for him it may have been the same.
He lay there at one point, staring at the ceiling.
“What?” I asked, my fingers tracing his ample mouth. “What are you thinking?”
“Just … I don’t know. I don’t want to say the wrong thing again.”
“Okay.”
He reached for my hand then, stilling me, his eyes intense. “This thing … us … It’s more than I expected.”
I hesitated, not wanting to misread the moment. Something had shifted. “Yeah,” I said, “for me, too.”
* * *
We went for a walk before dinner. Down the winding tree-lined drive and out onto Quimby Lane.
“So I’m going to do the TAG Heuer thing,” he said, his fingers entwining with mine.
“Really? That’s good.”
He shrugged. “Expanding my brand, right? Life outside of August Moon…”
“You’re not thinking of quitting the band?”
“No. I couldn’t … Not now … No. It’s my band. I can’t leave them. Contractually or otherwise …
“And all this.” He waved his free hand in the air, gesturing at our surroundings: massive hedges hiding estates, endless green. “All this stuff that kind of falls into your lap. All this is because of them. Us. I’m not ready to end us.
“When Ol and I first started writing music together, we never imagined this. We fancied ourselves a modern-day John and Paul. But really we were just a couple of posh toffs sitting around our parents’ country homes writing songs about love and loss and things we hadn’t actually experienced because we were thirteen.” He laughed then, trailing off.
I squeezed his hand but said nothing.
“How’s Isabelle doing?”
“Good. I told her.”
He stopped, his eyes wide. “No fucking way.”
“I told her you were a client, so … not exactly everything.”
“Not anything at all actually,” he laughed.
“Baby steps…”
We began walking again, east, toward where the road dead-ended.
“So, a client, huh?” he said, after a minute. “I’m afraid to see what you do for your friends.”
“What was it you said? ‘I have a lot of friends. Most of them I’m not fucking.’”
“Did I say that?”
“You said that.”
“Hmm.” He smirked.
“Yeah, well … I’m not fucking any of my friends.”
“Just me?” He squeezed my hand.
“Just you.”
* * *
We had dinner at the house. The D’Amatos’ chef—they had two: one they’d taken with them to Ibiza, and a second they were kind enough to leave with us for the weekend—prepared a paella feast that we downed on the back patio beneath a lilac sky. The conversation flowed, lubricated by endless pitchers of sangria. Oliver and Hayes held court, regaling us with stories from their travels and school and growing up in London. They’d shared such a long, entangled history, and they seemed to speak in code, like something out of Hogwarts:
“We were playing football on Green, and it was Fifth Form.”
“No, we were Lower Shell that year, because Simon was Upper.”
“Right. And our headmaster said never in the history of the school had he seen such hooliganry. He was quite cross. Not even during the Greaze.”
“We won the hooliganry award. Unofficially.”
This, I was able to detect, was regarding an incident that had happened at school and not with the band, but it was difficult to keep it all sorted. And each time the others got the joke and I didn’t, I felt decidedly American.
Desmond had a raunchy sense of humor and peppered the discussion with sordid tales from the road, mainly the antics of Rory, which were easy enough to follow. Fergus had an infectious laugh, but spoke little. And Charlotte sat, taking it all in, a sweet smile on her delicate face. She clung to Oliver’s hand. And every once in a while she would look over to me, shake her head in feigned annoyance, and toss off something wry, like: “You’d think they’d tire of talking about themselves?”
When the sky was finally dark, around nine o’clock, and Desmond and Fergus had retired to watch a movie in the subterranean theater, the four of us relocated to the sofas and sat gazing at the stars, enjoying the breeze blowing in from the ocean mere blocks away. Oliver lit up a cigarette. The figure he cut, reclining—legs crossed in white trousers, linen shirtsleeves rolled to his elbows, golden hair pushed back off his brow—brought to mind another era. Like something out of a Fitzgerald world, if not Gatsby himself.
“I plan to lie by the pool and do nothing all weekend. And not sign one fucking autograph or write one tweet. Is that okay with everyone?”
“It’s a real tough life you lead, HK,” Hayes said, wrapping an arm around my shoulders. He occasionally called Oliver by the initials of his last name, Hoyt-Knight. And there was something about that that I found old-boy-ish and sexy.
“Yes, well, someone has to do it. And I brought three books, and I intend to crack at least one. Which I am sure is a hell of a lot more than those blokes are doing in South Beach.”
Hayes glanced at his watch. “I’m guessing they’re about three mojitos in, apiece. And they’ve got ten models with them.”
“Where are they staying? Soho House?”
“Yeah. Watch.” He pulled his iPhone from the pocket of his shorts and began texting. “How. Many. Models. Do. You. Have. With. You. Right. Now.”
“We have to do something absolutely mad so we can prove we had more fun.” Oliver flicked his cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. Charlotte tossed me one of her exasperated looks.
“I am having more fun,” Hayes laughed.
“Really?” I turned to him. “You wouldn’t rather be with ten models in South Beach?”
He looked at me for a moment, not speaking, one eyebrow raised. And then finally: “Do you not know me?”
“I do. I was just … teasing.”
He leaned into me so that the others could not hear. “I wouldn’t rather be anyplace else. Than here. With you.”
“Ditto.”
His phone buzzed in his hand. “Eleven!”
“Fuck!” Oliver laughed.
“Yes, I don’t know how you’re going to have more fun than that,” Charlotte said, straight-faced.
Oliver furrowed his brow, snuffed out his cigarette, and then pulled her onto his lap. “Charlotte, you know me. Models are like toffee. They often seem like a great idea, especially on holiday. But once you get them in your mouth, you remember that they’re cloyingly sweet and they stick to your teeth. Plus they’ve no nutritional value whatsoever … But they’re certainly very pretty in the window.”