by Robinne Lee
For a long time I lay there, shaking. My limbs numb from pleasure; my mind reeling, unable to digest the magnitude of what I had just let happen. What, if given the opportunity, I would let happen again. I’d been so intoxicated. By his smell and his taste and his touch. By his breath in my ear and his Scotch on my tongue and his fucking fingers. And the illicit thought that he was barely an adult and I had not let that stop me. That it had not stopped him.
And then I had the sobering realization that I could not remember the last time I had come with someone else in the room. The very idea that I had denied myself that for so long struck me. Hard.
And there, still in his arms, my mind began to race and I fought it. I did not want to think about the repercussions just then. I did not want to think about Isabelle, or Daniel, or how this would look to my clients or the other mothers at the Windwood School (dear God!). I wanted to bask in the glow for a little while longer. Savor this present from him.
But the thoughts were there, right below the surface.
“Are you happy?” he asked, once my breathing had calmed. Not “Are you good,” or “all right,” or “okay.” Are you happy?
I nodded, trying to find my voice. “Yes. Very.”
“Good.”
“I can’t wait to see how you play badminton.”
“Sorry?” He paused for a moment and then it clicked. “Yeah,” he laughed, “I might be a little better at this than I am at badminton.”
“Luckily for me…”
“Luckily for you, yes.”
We lay there for a moment, curled up in each other, taking in the quiet of the room. It felt a little like magic to me, this in-between time. This shared moment. But I could feel it rising again, the thoughts, the guilt, the panic. Mounting. And I could not stop it.
“Oh God, what have I done?” I heard myself say. “This was just supposed to be lunch. Jesus. What am I doing here with you? You could be my kid. This is so wrong. You’re twenty. And you’re like a rock star. What the fuck am I thinking?”
Hayes sat up beside me, his eyes wide. “Are you serious?”
I was as surprised as he was by the verbal diarrhea. Even as it poured out, I recognized that it was very American of me, and that my mother would have scoffed. “Kind of, yes.”
“What? Are you feeling guilty now? You were happy two seconds ago. Very happy.”
“I can’t believe I let you do that. I’m sorry. That was totally inappropriate of me.”
“Were you forcing me? Did I miss something? We both wanted this,” he said, sounding every bit the rational one. The adult in the relationship.
I glanced up at him then, all disheveled in his wrinkled Prada shirt and his hair sticking out in fifty-one directions and his eyes tired and the slightest hint of stubble shadowing his jaw, and the thought occurred to me that he was a man.
I needed a moment.
“Don’t mind me. This is just my postorgasmic freak-out.”
He laughed. “Is this going to happen every time? Because if I know that I’ll just plan ahead.”
I smiled then. “No. It won’t. It shouldn’t.”
“I’m serious, Solène. I can’t … You cannot freak out like this. I don’t do well with women who freak out. I pegged you differently.”
“You what?”
“Fuck. I’m sorry. I just…”
“Come here.” I reached for him.
“Fuck,” he repeated, lying back beside me.
He was quiet for a moment. And then: “Once, when we were in Tokyo, there was this girl who … Never mind. I don’t want to talk about it. Just promise me you’re not going to go crazy.”
“Okay.” I smiled. “Promise.”
He jumped up again. “And I checked in with you, right? I asked if you were okay. Several times. Right?” He sounded uncertain.
“Yes, you did.”
“I just want to make sure I’m not losing my mind.”
It was fascinating to see his anxiety. The things that tormented him. I couldn’t begin to imagine what life for him and the other guys in the group must have been like. Not knowing whom to trust, and worried that at any time something could be used against them. I assumed there was probably much at stake.
“And don’t let the rock star rubbish get to you,” he said, lying down again. “Because it’s not real, it’s crap. It’s like this idea and it’s not who I am and … I’m always going to be real with you, okay?
“Fuck, it’s late,” he said, glancing at his watch. “I have a six a.m. wake-up call. Which is in three and a half hours. And I’ve been up since four. God, I just want a bloody break.”
“Is that the watch?”
“Yeah. What do you think?”
“Nice.”
“It’s kind of sleek, isn’t it? This one is the Carrera … Carrera Calib-something … I don’t remember. It’s late.”
“It’s a good-looking watch.”
“I think it’s too sleek for me,” he said, slipping it off his wrist. “It’s fancier than I usually am. Here, you try it.”
I let him put the watch on me. It was stainless steel: clean, masculine, elegant.
“Wow, that looks good on you. Keep it.”
“No, thank you.”
“I’m serious. It looks good on you and I’m probably never going to wear this one. They gave me two others. Just keep it.”
“I’m not keeping your watch,” I said, handing it over.
“Okay, just borrow it, then.”
“Hayes, I’m not the woman who’s going to accept gifts like this from you. Thank you, but no.”
“Don’t think of it as a gift. I’m lending it to you. If you borrow it, it kind of ensures that you’ll have to see me again.”
“You still want to see me again? Even after I freaked out on you?”
He nodded, a lazy smile spreading across his wide mouth. “Yeah. Because you have to return the favor. And I’m too exhausted to let that happen now.”
I started to laugh. “Really? So we’re going to do this again because I owe you?”
“Yes,” he laughed, sitting up and inching across the bed. “And because I have lots more things I want to do to you, I’m just too knackered to think of them.”
I sat up and watched him collect his belongings, zip his boots, smooth his hair, reapply his lip balm.
He made his way back over to the bed to kiss me. “This was fun,” he said, slow, sensual, his eyelids heavy. “I really like you.”
“I really like you, too.”
“Thanks for giving me the pleasure.”
“Ditto.”
On the way out of the room, he stopped and placed the TAG Heuer atop the stenciled credenza in the corner. “I’m going to be in the South of France next month. You can return it to me there.”
And then he was gone.
côte d’azur
I knew I would go. The way he’d dangled it in the air … like candy. This sweet, sweet lure. The way he’d phrased it. As if I did not have a choice. The way it fit into my schedule. Easy.
I had the gallery’s travel agent make the arrangements: a quick detour to Nice following Art Basel. I lied to Lulit and told her I was visiting family. I lied to my family and told them I was meeting clients. I tried to be honest with myself. It was just physical, this arrangement. Carnal. Nothing more, nothing less. And knowing that, I thought, would allow me to enjoy the ride.
I should have been able to pull it off: sex without guilt, sex without shame, sex without expectation. The French had been doing it for centuries. It was in my DNA. Surely, I could tap into that part of me that had yet to surface. Three days on the Riviera with a beautiful boy and no strings attached. I would not overthink it. I would go and have fun, and then return to my life. And no one would be the wiser. It had been three years. I deserved this.
* * *
The week before I left for Switzerland, Isabelle and I spent the weekend in Santa Barbara. Just the two of us, at the Bacara Resort, catching up on som
e mother-daughter time as I’d promised. She was heading off to Maine for summer camp at the end of the month and would be gone until mid-August. As it did every year, the pending separation weighed on me. The idea that she would return to me forever changed, in some small way or another. Time eluding us both.
Late in the afternoon on Saturday, we laid out a blanket on a promontory overlooking the ocean, and set out to capture the view in watercolors. It had become something of a ritual for us, painting side by side. I dreaded the day she would outgrow it.
I watched her as she painted in broad, sure strokes, confident in her artistry. Her nose screwed up in concentration, her French pout. Her long hair knotted at the base of her neck, secured with a pencil, like I used to wear mine in school. For all her independence, she was still my mini-me. We had marveled at that when she was small. Those first few weeks home from the hospital when everything was new and full of wonder. Daniel and I would lie in bed cocooning her and gazing at her features, her every little movement. Discovering what was mine and what was his and what was decidedly Isabelle’s. Falling in love with her, and each other, anew.
“Do you think you’ll ever get married again, Mom?”
It came out of nowhere. The big questions always did.
“I don’t know, peanut. Maybe…”
She was quiet for a moment, filling in her sky.
“Why? What made you ask?”
Isabelle shrugged. “I just wonder sometimes. I don’t want you to be lonely.”
“Lonely? Do you think I’m lonely?” I laughed, uneasy. “I’ve got you.”
“I know, but…” She stopped to look at me. “I just want you to be happy.”
I was not sure where all this was coming from. In the beginning, I’d spent a great deal of time letting her know that I was all right. That the divorce was best for all of us. That Daniel and I would be happier people apart, and how that, in turn, would make us better parents. It took much consoling and eighteen months of therapy, but lately the topic hadn’t reared its head.
“I am happy, honey,” I said, returning to my makeshift easel. “I have everything I need.”
It sounded truthful.
She watched me for a while. Scrutinizing my horizon, the meeting of violet and cerulean. And then: “I think Daddy’s going to marry Eva.”
It was a kick to the gut. “Why do you say that?”
She shrugged, noncommittal.
“Did he say something to you?”
“I think he’s feeling me out,” she said.
I sensed it: the familiar tightness in my chest. It had been years, but there it was, that thick, heavy feeling of something lost. “Why? What did he say to you?”
She shrugged again, looking away. I could see her struggling to make this easier for me.
“Isabelle?”
“He said that you would always be my mother. No matter what happened. That nothing would ever change that.”
She’d said it flatly, with little emotion. But it was all there.
“Oh.”
We sat for a moment, neither of us speaking, lost in our thoughts. The sound of the waves. The sun flaring white on the water.
“I just thought it sounded like he was trying to prepare me for something. I thought you should be prepared, too.”
* * *
It stayed with me, Isabelle’s concerns. I did not bring it up with Daniel because it wasn’t my place. But it felt a bit like waiting for the other shoe to drop. And so I left for Europe with a little bit of a hollow in my heart. The one that I thought had mended. And I tried my best to forget it was there.
* * *
Hayes and his bandmates were staying at a fabulous villa on the Cap d’Antibes. They were there for only a week before heading up to record at some state-of-the-art studio in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. This was a luxury, he’d conveyed, as more often than not they found themselves recording in hotel rooms in between shows. Hayes and Oliver and occasionally Rory doing the bulk of the songwriting with their producers at odd hours of the night; the boys laying vocal tracks in their makeshift studio, mattresses propped against the walls for acoustics. No rest for the weary.
In the time since I’d last seen him, they’d wrapped up the North American leg of the Petty Desires tour, spent two weeks decompressing at home, and were gearing up for their next album. It was a machine, he’d explained. They were milking them, twelve months a year, to feed a growing fandom that seemed to not be able to get enough of these five boys.
“There’s like a clock ticking. An expiration date,” he’d said, late one night on the phone from London. “I think they’re afraid we’re going to grow hair on our chests and our fans are going to just up and disappear. So they’re trying to get as much money out of us as they can now. But really we could use a break. Take That are working on yet another album, and the New Kids are still doing cruises and they’re in their forties. They still have die-hard fans. But they both took breaks.”
“Do you want to still be doing this in your forties?” The idea seemed absurd.
“I don’t know. I think I just want to do it until it’s not fun anymore. Sometimes I think that could be sooner rather than later. But then, look at the Rolling Stones. They’re still having a heck of a good time.”
August Moon was not the Rolling Stones. But I did not want to be the one to tell him that.
* * *
The Monday morning after the closing of Basel, I flew directly to Nice and barely had time to unpack and shower at my hotel in Cannes before Hayes sent a car and driver to retrieve me. I’d rejected his offer to stay at their villa, not liking the impression it gave, but I’d agreed to join him for the afternoon.
The estate of Domaine La Dilecta was breathtaking. Iron gates rolling back to reveal a rambling drive, acres of lush lawn, a sizable guesthouse, a majestic villa perched atop the hill—stark white against an azure sky. I could get used to this, rock star living.
He was standing there beneath the portico. Tall and slim-hipped, in head-to-toe black and Wayfarers. His jeans, skinnier than mine.
“So…” I said, stepping out of the car. “This is you?”
He smiled, leaning into me. Oh, the smell of him. “This is us.”
“It’s not a bad pad you’ve got.”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Thirty million records will do that for you. Welcome. No bags?”
“I told you: I’m not staying.”
“Right.” He smiled his half smile, dimples beckoning. “No pressure.”
He took my hand then, leading me into the house, through the foyer, and up the stairs to the main floor, past room after oversized room. The architecture was Art Deco, the décor ornate. Not particularly my style, but impressive nonetheless.
“So all is well in Basel?”
“All is well in Basel.”
“Did you sell a plethora of art?” He smiled. His skin was bronzed, kissed by the Riviera sun.
“A plethora of art.” My laugh echoed over the marble floors.
It had been a week of wining and dining and posturing in a variety of languages: English and French and Italian, a smattering of German and Japanese. Lulit had bemoaned the fact that, despite the three Ivy League degrees between us, it still came down to the length of our skirts, but we’d stuck to our mantra—Go. Sell. Art. To rich white men—and sold out our entire booth at the fair.
“This place is massive.”
Hayes and I had happened into a drawing room. There was a baby grand piano in the center, and he ran his fingers over the keys as we walked through. The motion was simple, and yet the melody he’d produced was so pure, it stayed with me.
“You have to see the rest of the grounds,” he said as he continued across the space. “The record company’s treat. A little ‘Well done, lads! Have a spot of fun and then back to work, all right? But if you’re inclined to do some writing in the interim, we won’t stop you.’”
He threw open a set of doors, opening onto a grand terrace, revealing
the yard in all its vast verdant glory. A bit of a ways down there was a sizable pool, a handsome pool house, and way, way beyond the rolling hills and the horizon of trees, there was the Mediterranean.
The two of us stood for a minute, soaking it in. I could barely make out a few bodies prostrate on the lounges poolside. But other than that, it felt like we had the place to ourselves.
“So,” Hayes continued, “we’re here for a few more days, and then we head into the studio to work on Wise or Naked.”
“Wise or Naked?”
“The new album.”
“Oh. So which one are you?”
He laughed. “Which one would you like me to be?”
“Ideally, both.”
“Ha! That’s a flirt, not a spar.”
“You’re getting good at this.”
“I have an exceptional teacher. Come meet our friends.”
I followed him down to the lawn and across the wide expanse of grass. “Where is everyone?”
“Liam and Simon took the boat out to go jet-skiing with Nick and Desmond, a couple of our security guys. Oliver is playing tennis down at the courts with Raj. Trevor and Fergus, also security, are in the gym. And Rory … I think Rory is taking a well-deserved nap.” He laughed at that.
And then I understood.
Lying out by the pool were three young, sublimely formed females in various stages of naked. If I hadn’t had a heart-to-heart with myself about being comfortable with the fact that I would likely be twenty years older than all the other eye candy offered on this trip, I might have reacted differently. I might have run back to my hotel. Back to L.A. But I’d rationalized it shopping for swimsuits at Barneys. And on the flight to Switzerland. And again, just now, in the drive over from Cannes. I was here because Hayes wanted me to be. And being near forty and having birthed and nursed a child did not change any of that.
Hayes proceeded to introduce me to their guests. In one corner, Oliver’s girlfriend, Charlotte: a porcelain-skinned, bikinied brunette who’d separated herself from the others with the aid of an oversized sun hat and an iPad. She smiled up at me from her place in the sun, sipping Vittel and cracking pistachios with the finesse of a duchess.