“There’s a Ramaswami. And one of Kenji’s sculptures.”
“Which Ramaswami?” he asked, and Lulit gestured accordingly.
Nira Ramaswami’s work, typically oil on canvas, detailed the plight of women in her native India. Forlorn figures in fields, young girls at the side of a road, trusting brides on their wedding day. Stirring, passionate, dark eyes and solemn faces. They had always been compelling, but the Delhi gang rape in December 2012 brought about a surge of interest in the subject matter and she was suddenly in high demand.
“This one?” Hayes’s eyes lit up. “I like this one.”
Sabina in the Mango Tree.
“It’s not cheap.”
“How not cheap is it?”
“Sixty,” Lulit said assertively.
“Thousand?”
“Thousand. Euro.”
“Fuck.” Hayes paused. His eyes going from Lulit to the painting. Of all Nira’s pieces in the fair, it was the most uplifting, hopeful.
His hand was still encircling my wrist. “If I buy it, will you let me take her?”
“No. Hayes, do not. I’ll be done at eight.”
“Will you let me take her?” he repeated to Lulit.
She inclined her head, ever so subtly.
“Good. Done.”
“Hayes, you’re being ridiculous. I’m not going to let you do this.”
“Solène. It’s already done.”
I stood there, stunned. “This feels a little like slavery. White slavery.”
“Except I’m buying your freedom, I’m not buying your services. Don’t overthink it.”
* * *
We made our way through the throngs on the first floor and out onto the street, Hayes leading me by the hand the entire time. It felt so open and obvious, and all I could think was how the European art world would be talking about the fact that I’d abandoned my partner to engage in a patently inappropriate affair.
There were girls when we stepped out next to the Champs-Élysées. Many. It was Sunday afternoon, after all. And when Hayes took a moment to don his sunglasses and a gray knitted cap, I stepped away from him and crossed my arms.
“Are you just going to pretend we’re not together?” he asked as we made our way to the taxi queue.
I laughed, uneasy. I did not want a TMZ repeat.
“Whatever.”
There was a family in line ahead of us with two young daughters and a son. They recognized Hayes immediately and after much squealing and cooing in Japanese, they wrangled a photo out of him. As usual, he was amiable.
I stayed just off to the side, with the teenage son, bundled against the wind.
In the cab, Hayes rattled off some address in the Marais to the driver, and we rode in silence down the Champs-Élysées, through the Place de la Concorde, and along the Quai des Tuileries, continuing east.
At some point, I reached for his hand on the seat and he pulled it away. “You’re angry? With me? After what you just did, you’re angry with me?”
He was staring out the window at the Seine, the Musée d’Orsay, and points south. The light was beautiful at this time of day. Even through the gray, everything was tinged gold and russet with the changing leaves. It dawned on me that I had not seen the late-afternoon sky in almost a week.
For a while, Hayes did not speak. And when he finally did, his voice was soft. “I’m angry at myself. I just wanted to spend the day with you.”
“I know. And I appreciate that. But you can’t just blow in making these grand gestures, like you’re in a Hugh Grant movie. You can’t … buy me … or my time.”
He turned to me then, gnawing at his bottom lip. “I’m sorry.”
“And I told you I had to work, and you didn’t respect that. Which is completely selfish and rude. And entitled.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated.
“You can’t always get what you want, Hayes.”
He held my gaze for a minute, not saying anything. We were whizzing past the Louvre on the left.
“Do you even want that painting?”
“It’s beautiful.”
“It is beautiful. But that’s beside the point. Purchasing art shouldn’t be something rash, or manipulative. It should be this pure thing.”
He smiled faintly. “You’re a bit of an idealist, you know.”
“Maybe.”
He was quiet again, but he reached out and hooked his pinky finger around mine on the car seat, and that tiny motion was enough.
“Why don’t you want to be seen with me?” His question took me by surprise. “Why? Why are you so uncomfortable? What are you ashamed of? What do you think will happen when people find out? We’re together, are we not?”
“It’s complicated, Hayes—”
“It’s not. I like you. You like me. What does it matter what anyone else thinks? Why do you care?”
“How do you not?”
“I’m in a boy band. If I cared what people thought of me, then I’ve clearly entered the wrong line of work.
“Seriously, Solène, why do you care? I mean I want to protect your privacy because I don’t think Isabelle should find out this way. But if there’s another reason you feel uncomfortable being seen with me, then I need to know what that is.”
I was quiet as the taxi snaked past the Hôtel de Ville and into the Marais. Parisians out on the streets in droves.
I so wished I could not care, about the million and one things that were holding me back from completely falling for him. “I don’t know where to start,” I said.
“Start from the beginning.”
Just then the cab pulled to a halt, and our Arab driver announced, “Trente, Rue du Bourg Tibourg.”
“Oui, merci, monsieur,” Hayes said, pulling out his wallet. His British-accented French, oh so charming.
We stepped out of the taxi and into the narrow street before Mariage Frères, the renowned teahouse. Of course he was taking me to tea. It was four o’clock, after all.
“Mariage Frères!”
“You know this place?”
“I love this place. My dad’s mom used to bring me here. And lecture me about being French. A hundred years ago … before you were born.”
He smiled wide, taking my hand and leading me inside. “I knew there was a reason I picked you.”
“You picked me?”
He nodded. We made our way back to the restaurant area of the shop and waited to be seated. Hayes gave his name. Apparently, he’d made reservations, which I found amusing, that all along he’d had the audacity to believe he was going to pull off this quasi-kidnapping.
“Why did you pick me, Hayes?”
“Because you looked like you wanted to be picked.”
I laughed, uneasily. Our fingers were still entwined. “What does that mean?”
“That means exactly what you think it means.”
He let that sit there for a while, saying nothing else.
The host seated us quickly, a small table toward the back. But the room was well lit, and there was no hiding who my date was. It might have been his height, his hat, his sunglasses, but heads were turning. Again.
“The best part,” Hayes said, leaning into me, after we were seated and given our menus, “was that you had all these adorable little rules that were completely arbitrary.”
“You don’t forget anything, do you?”
“I don’t. So don’t make me any promises you don’t plan on keeping.”
I wasn’t sure if he was saying it to be clever, but it stayed with me for a long time.
“So tell me,” he continued, “tell me why you don’t want to be seen with me. Is it the group? Is it the age difference? Is it the fame thing? Is it not having gone to university? Is it all of them combined? What is it?”
I smiled at the list he’d imagined in his pretty head. “Not having gone to university?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know how your mind works. Arbitrary, remember?”
I took a moment to drink him in. His hair sticking in twenty-one directions since he’d yanked off his beanie. His Botticelli face.
“I am entirely too old for you, Hayes.”
“I don’t think you truly believe that. I mean, do you like me? Do you not have fun when we’re together? Do you feel like I have a problem following the conversation?”
“No.”
“Then I don’t think you really believe that. If you did, you wouldn’t be here. I think you care what other people might be thinking, or saying, and that’s what’s fucking you up.”
I paused. “How do you not care?”
“Do you know how much shit gets said about me? Do you know how many fucks I give? Zero.”
I sat there, watching him finger his sunglasses on the table.
“Do you know what they’ve said about me? I’m gay, I’m bi, I’m sleeping with Oliver, I’m sleeping with Simon, I’m sleeping with Liam, I’m sleeping with all three at the same time. I’m sleeping with Jane, our manager, who is attractive, but no. I’ve slept with at least three different actresses I’ve never even spoken to. I have ruined no fewer than four marriages on three different continents, and I have at least two kids … I’m twenty. When the fuck would I have crammed that all in?”
I started to laugh.
“I wish I was making this up, Solène, but I’m not. Which is why you can’t believe everything you read on the Internet. Oh, and Rihanna may or may not have written a song about me. Because we may or may not have had sex…”
“Did you have sex with Rihanna?”
He gave me a look then that I could not quite decipher. It seemed equal parts How dare you think I did? and How dare you ask me?
“Does Rihanna even write her own songs?”
“You’re missing the point here.”
“I’m sorry. Go on.”