“Actually, the Monkees,” I laughed, leading him inside.
Isabelle was at school, and then fencing. We were alone.
“So, this is home?”
“This is home.” It was strange to have him in my space, his large frame filling the threshold. I had a flash of me and Isabelle dragging in our Christmas tree the previous winter and fretting it would not fit through the door.
Hayes made his way through the entry into the great room and its walls of glass. The Palisades, the Pacific, and points south dominating the view. Catalina rising like a purple phoenix at the horizon. “Bloody hell. I am truly speechless. You live here? You wake up to this every day?”
“Every day.”
“How do you manage to leave this paradise?” His eyes were green in the light. Oh, pretty, pretty boy.
“It isn’t easy.”
“No, I don’t imagine it is.” He turned his attention to the interiors, surveying the space: the Finn Juhl coffee table and Herman Miller Tuxedo sofa in the living room, the Arne Vodder table and Hans Wegner credenza in the dining area off to the left. “Is this your midcentury furniture?”
I nodded. “You know midcentury furniture?”
“I know you like it.”
“How do you know that?”
“You told me”—he smiled—“in Las Vegas.”
“You remember that?”
“I remember everything … especially the things you like.”
I might have blushed then.
“Did you paint all these?” His attention had turned to the myriad watercolors I had mounted and framed salon-style on the far wall.
“Most. A couple are Isabelle’s.”
He made his way across the room to better inspect them. A mélange of landscapes and figures and still lifes. Moments I thought worth capturing. “These are beautiful, Solène. Truly.”
“Thank you.”
“I want one. Have you sold any?”
“No,” I laughed. “It’s just a hobby. I don’t sell them.”
“I still want one. Make me one.”
“Make you a watercolor? I don’t take commissions, Hayes. I do it for myself.”
He did not seem altogether satisfied with that response, but he let it go and we continued on our tour. Down the corridor with the collection of mounted family photos. Most of Isabelle, a few of younger versions of me. We’d had to rearrange them all when we removed the ones with Daniel. It was not a painless process.
Hayes stopped before a black-and-white self-portrait I’d taken my senior year at Buckingham Browne & Nichols, when I was morphing from would-be ballerina to artsy Euro prep stage. An interesting phase, to be sure: long thick hair, oversized leather jacket, angst.
He reached out to touch the frame. “How old are you here?”
“Seventeen.”
“Seventeen,” he repeated, his finger tracing over the glass. “This. Fucking. Mouth.”
I smiled up at him.
“I dream about your mouth.”
“I dream about your dick. We’re even.”
He laughed, throwing back his head. “You can’t just say things like that to me. And then … Okay, hurry up and show me the rest of the house.”
We proceeded down the corridor, Hayes pausing at a photograph of me dancing with the Boston Ballet School, back when classes six days a week did not seem so insane. “How old?”
“Fifteen.”
“Wow.”
And then coming to a complete standstill before a shot of me, seven months pregnant with Isabelle, on the beach in Kona. He was silent as he pulled me into him, my back against his chest, his chin on my shoulder. We remained like that for a few moments, neither of us speaking, until he moved his hand over my belly, holding it there.
“You are so beautiful.”
“Don’t.” I pushed his hand away. “Don’t do that.”
“Oh-kay … What … what am I doing?”
“Don’t do the baby-fantasy thing with me.”
“Is that what I was doing?” He sounded so confused I almost felt sorry for him.
“That’s where it was heading.”
“Oh-kay,” he repeated. “I’m sorry.”
He dropped it, which was wise. Because if I allowed myself to entertain any of the numerous paths I thought he might be taking in his head, I most likely would have asked him to leave and not ever come back. I could not stomach the weight of that just yet. The idea that with us there could be no happy ending.
Our tour continued: my office, the guest room, Isabelle’s bedroom. My daughter was going through a Hollywood Regency phase with her fuzzy throw pillows and ornate lighting fixtures. It was all white lacquer and fuchsia with metallic accents and Moroccan poufs.
“I know this is surprising, but I haven’t been in many thirteen-year-old girls’ rooms,” Hayes said, nosing around.
“That’s probably a good thing.”
Isabelle had a couple of framed graphic prints on her wall, pretty pink posters that read “For Like Ever” and “Keep Calm and Carry On.” But above her desk, tacked up to the busy bulletin board, were no fewer than half a dozen pics of August Moon and the band’s calendar. Her photo from the meet-and-greet was sitting on her night table.
Hayes spotted it, exhaling deeply.
“Weird, right?”
He nodded and then turned to me. “We’ve fucked up royally, haven’t we?”
“Yeah. So now you know what I’m dealing with.”
“I’m sorry. It’s slightly different from this perspective.”
“You think?”
“Yeah.” He plopped himself down on the bed and lay back, his head on the fuzzy pink pillows. “Fuck. This is going to be ugly.”
“Yes, it is.”
“She’ll be there tomorrow evening? What are we telling her?”
“That you’re my client. That you’re a friend. That’s it.”
“She’s going to buy that?”
“Let’s hope so.” Daniel’s words were weighing on me.
Hayes was quiet for a second, his eyes searching mine. “Why haven’t you told her, Solène? You’re feeling guilty…”
I said nothing. Guilt did not scratch the surface.
“Are you trying to protect her? Or are you protecting yourself?”
“Both of us, maybe.”
The corner of his mouth curled slightly, more sorrow than smile. “Do you feel like if you just wait long enough this will be over, and you’ll get away with not saying anything at all?”
“I suppose that’s a possibility, isn’t it?”
He held my gaze, serious. “I’m still very much here…”
“So it appears…”
“Come here,” he said, tapping the duvet beside him.
My expression was beyond incredulous. There was not a chance in hell I was going to lie on Isabelle’s bed with Hayes. “Absolutely not.”
“Sorry.” He sat up. “I suppose that’s awkward.”
The doorbell rang. I had not been expecting anyone. “All of it’s awkward. I’ll be back in a sec.”
There was a fine art delivery service at the gate. I recognized them from the gallery. I had not arranged to have anything shipped, but Marchand Raphel was on the work order, so I signed for the package and led the two handlers in. The guys carefully positioned the large piece against one of the walls in the living room and cut away the cardboard packaging at my request. Josephine’s name was on the attached paperwork, but when the tableau was finally revealed my heart leapt. There, in my living room, was Ailynne Cho’s Unclose Me.
I began to shake.
“Hayes!”
It took him a moment to appear from the corridor, an impish grin on his face.
“Did you do this? Is this from you?”
“You said it was the one piece you loved.”
I nodded, and then, unexpectedly, I began to cry.
Hayes saw the embarrassed handlers to the door, and then returned to me, holding me in his arms. “Shhh.” He was kissing the side of my face. “It’s just art, Solène,” he teased.
I laughed. Through the tears and the waves of emotion and the realization that what he’d done was huge, I laughed.
“Thank you. You didn’t have to do this.”
“I know that. But I couldn’t give up the opportunity to make you feel—what was it you said?—‘everything.’”
My heart was melting. “You.”
“Me?”
“This is why they love you, isn’t it?”
“Who?”
“Everyone.”
He smiled. “Yes, everyone.”
I stood there for some time, losing myself in the seductive image. The garden, the woman, the light. The rush, the idea that it was mine. The realization: this was what it was like to be high, on art.
Hayes made his way back to the walls of glass to admire the vista. The sun was beginning to lower, casting the room in an apricot light. “Are you happy?”
“I think you know the answer to that.”
“Good,” he said. His eyes were still on the water, but I’d heard the change in his voice.
“When do you have to pick up Isabelle?”
“Six. We have a while.”
I watched him stroll across the room.
“Is this a midcentury dining table?” he asked, his finger running along the lines of the oblong Arne Vodder. I’d got it in the divorce—the furniture, the house. Daniel got the cottage on the Vineyard. And Eva.
“It is.”
“It’s nice,” he said.
“Glad you like it.” I made my way to him at the table’s head, where he was once again gazing out at the view: the lawn, the sky, the sea, the dipping sun.
Hayes reached for my hand, and then, without warning, twisted my arm, turning me away from him. He did not speak, letting my wrist loose and placing his palm firmly at the center of my back, folding me until I was bent completely over the table, the rosewood smooth and cool against my cheek.