by Robinne Lee
“I’ll come say hi.”
I nodded, and then remembered the rest of the table. “Excuse me. Sorry to interrupt.”
There were two women, three men I did not recognize, one who looked familiar, and seated beside Hayes was Oliver, whom I had somehow managed to overlook.
“Hi.”
“Solène.” He smiled. I’d last seen him when we got off the boat in Antibes, when I was smelling of salt and sun and high on champagne and the promise of what was to come. A world away.
I excused myself and made my way over to Daniel, but from that moment on, my mind was elsewhere. We talked about the necessary things: Isabelle, the weather. My back was to Hayes. I was out of his earshot, but I could feel him. And just knowing he was there put me on edge. Especially in the presence of my ex.
“Are you okay? You seem distracted,” Daniel said, sometime after we’d put in our order. He was, as usual, impeccably groomed—smooth skin, chiseled jaw, not a hair out of place—the years had been good to him.
“I’m fine.”
“Work?”
“Work is fine. We have a show going up Saturday.”
“Which artist?”
It was nice of him to ask because I didn’t think he cared.
“It’s a joint exhibit. Tobias James and Ailynne Cho.”
“Well, that should be good. Oh, before I forget…” He reached down and handed over two tiny shopping bags: one from Barneys, the other from Tiffany. “For the birthday girl.”
“Two fancy gifts? Wow.”
“Thirteen is a big year,” he said, sipping from his Evian. And then: “One of them is from Eva.”
He had my attention then. “Which one?”
“Barneys.”
Which begged the question: “Why is Eva buying Isabelle a gift from Barneys?”
“It’s not that big a deal, Sol.”
“It is.”
“It’s like a little ring. It’s not a big deal.”
“A little ring from Barneys can be a very big deal, Daniel.”
He sighed, turning to look out the window, the southern view. “Let’s not do this here. Okay?”
Our food arrived then, and we dropped the subject. He asked about my parents, Isabelle’s bunkmates, what I thought of the conflict that had just erupted in Gaza. There was a time when this was not so hard, finding things to say. When we were young, and kind to each other.
That first spring in New York when we were in love and we whiled away hours in Central Park, studying in Sheep’s Meadow and drinking in the lilacs in the Conservatory Garden. He was so tall and brilliant and sure of himself, and he quoted Sartre and Descartes and that was all I needed.
I had just finished my kale salad when Hayes strode up to our table. Suave and gallant in full swagger mode. A printed white shirt, top three buttons undone, skinny black jeans, roguish hair. The polar opposite of Daniel in his gray Zegna suit and a tie I did not recognize but I assumed Eva had something to do with.
“Fancy seeing you here.” He smiled.
“Yes. Imagine that.”
“Hello, I’m Hayes.” He reached over the table to shake Daniel’s hand.
“Daniel, this is Hayes. Hayes, this is Daniel.”
“Daniel. The Daniel?”
“The Daniel, yes,” I laughed nervously, and Daniel threw me a peculiar look.
“Daniel, Hayes is … um … Hayes is…”
“Hayes is a novice art collector who is very impressed with this woman’s knowledge of Fauvism,” he said, dimples shining.
I sat there for a second, drinking in the deliciousness of the moment. Daniel, trying to figure it out.
“All right, I’m going to let you get back to your … meeting. And we’ll touch base later.”
“Sounds good.” I smiled, casual.
I watched as Daniel watched Hayes make his way across the room. Heads turning, members murmuring, par for the course.
“Who is that?”
“A client.”
“Looks familiar. Is he an actor?”
“No.” I did not elaborate further.
“Ford!”
My interrogation was cut short by the approach of Daniel’s longtime friend, fellow entertainment attorney Noah Feldman. Noah was magnetic, kind, sincere, a rarity among Hollywood types. I’d lost him and his lovely wife in the divorce. Along with their three kids. It hurt.
“Feldman!” Daniel greeted him.
“Solène. This is a nice surprise. How are you guys?”
“Good. How are you? How’s Amy?”
“Fine, great. She got a writing gig.” His eyes lit up.
“I know. I saw on Facebook.”
“It’s a pretty big deal. I mean we don’t see her anymore,” he laughed, “but she’s happy. And I’m happy that she’s happy.”
I smiled. Of course he was. What a novel idea: a husband supportive of his wife’s work. A wife that did not fit in a box.
“See those Transformers numbers?” Noah directed at Daniel.
“Fucking Michael Bay…”
“Fucking Michael Bay…”
My phone buzzed then on the table. The guys continued talking shop, and I took the opportunity to glance at the incoming text.
Daniel?????????!!!!!
I snatched the phone and hid it in my lap to respond.
Fauvism???
Shot in the dark.
Meet me in the lavvy in 5 min?
Ha!
Absolutely not.
Fuck.
I looked up. Daniel and Noah were still talking.
“I don’t think that deal’s going to close,” Noah was saying. “Ryan’s got one foot out the door.”
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Weinstein.”
I returned to my texting:
Later …
☺
You look beautiful, btw.
Ditto.
* * *
Hayes was still winding up his lunch meeting when I left. We locked eyes as I crossed the room, and the moment was so intense I almost reconsidered his lavatory proposal. But in this clubby place where everyone knew everyone, it was far too risky. He inclined his head and smiled. It was enough.
I was making my way back through the dark, narrow corridor when Noah came up behind me on his way out.
“So…” he said, low, “Hayes Campbell. Nice.”
“What?” I turned to look at him in the shadows.
He smiled. “Your husband might be oblivious, but I’m guessing that’s how he lost you in the first place.”
I stopped, under the gaze of a thousand Polaroids. Stunned. What had he seen? Heard? Fucking Soho House.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “your secret’s safe with me.”
* * *
Hayes was late. He’d texted no fewer than half a dozen times from his dinner, apologizing. I’d had instructions to go to the front desk at the Chateau Marmont and ask for an envelope that the general manager, Phil, would have put aside for me under the name Scooby Doo, which was apparently Hayes’s alias.
“Scooby Doo? Is that a joke?” I’d asked when he first told me via phone. “Scooby?”
“Hey, it’s Mr. Doo to you.”
But forty minutes later, when I was still alone in the somber suite, I was becoming restless. I’d already itemized his closet: two pairs of boots, one pair of sneakers, six dress shirts, two suits, four pairs of black jeans. All high-end (Saint Laurent, Alexander McQueen, Tom Ford, Lanvin) and smelling faintly like Hayes. That woodsy, amber, citrus scent that he owed to Voyage d’Hermès. The fragrance I’d learned during our romp in Cannes. I did not open his drawers, or riffle through his bags, or his toiletries, or the leather journal he’d left on the night table. Because that, I thought, would be crossing the line. But the closet—in which I had hung tomorrow’s dress and placed my shoes—the closet was fair game.
He arrived shortly before ten. Ravishing and apologetic. He was wearing a dark suit, white shirt partially unbuttoned, no
tie, and just the sight of him filling up the doorway was enough. I wanted him. And even though I’d spent the past week doubting him, and being angry with myself for not clarifying the boundaries of this arrangement, the moment he stepped over that threshold none of that seemed to matter. I had come there for a reason, lest I forget.
“Hi,” he said, making his way across the room to me.
“Hi, yourself.”
He stooped before where I was lying on the couch, took my head in both his hands, and kissed me. Like I’d wanted to be kissed. His lips were cool and his breath was sweet and his mouth was wonderfully familiar. And he was twenty. And I didn’t give a damn.
“I’m sorry I’m late.” His thumb was rubbing over my lips. “Are you hungry? Thirsty? Did you order room service?”
“I’m good.”
“You sure?”
I nodded, watching as he peeled off his suit jacket, and pulled off his boots, and removed the various accoutrements from his pockets: iPhone, wallet, lip balm, gum. Now all recognizable as Hayes paraphernalia.
“How was dinner?” I asked.
“Long.”
“And your day?”
“Long,” he grunted. “We’re doing a movie. Like a hybrid between a documentary and a bunch of tour footage. A rockumentary, if you will. Or a popumentary”—he smiled—“because it’s us. Anyway, just a lot of meetings about when they’re releasing it and all the promos they have to do and when they want to be able to release the new album and then schedule our next world tour. And it’s all happening sooner than you would think possible. And I’m fucking tired. I’m really fucking tired.” He sat down beside me on the sofa, reclining his head.
“I’m sorry,” I said, reaching for his hand.
“I hate complaining about it, because it feels like I’m being unappreciative and I’m not. I know how lucky we are, how lucky I am … I know that I’m living this dream life and I don’t want to be this bastard who’s like whining, but we could all use a couple of months of just doing nothing. And if they continue to stuff us down these fans’ throats, they’re bound to lose interest. Right?” He looked to me then, sincere.
“I don’t know. I kind of like having you stuffed down my throat.”
His eyes grew wide. “You’re naughty. Come here.” He pulled me into him, my head on his shoulder, legs over his lap. “Wherever did I find you?”
“Vegas.” I smiled. “So is there nothing in your contract that addresses vacation time?”
“Vacation time. What a quaint idea. Most groups get months of downtime with the natural ebb and flow of putting out an album and supporting it, touring, and then the time it takes to gear up to do another one. We just don’t have that luxury.”
“So you’re just beholden to the record company?”
“We’re beholden to our management first, and they run a very tight ship.” His hand was in my hair, comfortable. “Oh, Graham says hello, by the way.”
“Who’s Graham?”
“Graham, with our management company. He was at lunch today. You met him in New York.”
It clicked then, the nattily dressed laptop fellow from the Four Seasons. The one who could not have been more dismissive. I’m sure he was surprised to find me still in the picture.
“Speaking of lunch…” Hayes raised his head up from the couch. “Daniel!”
“Daniel. Yes. So that’s Daniel.”
“Wow. So lunch with Daniel?” There was more than a hint of suspicion.
I laughed at that: the idea that I would entertain anything with my ex-husband ever again. “Trust me, it was just lunch.”
“I’ve seen your ‘just lunch.’ I’ve been on the receiving end of your ‘just lunch.’” He smiled. “It’s not always ‘just lunch.’”
“With Daniel, it’s just lunch,” I said definitively. “I’m going up for Parents’ Weekend at Isabelle’s camp at the end of the month and he wanted to pass on a couple of gifts for her birthday.”
He let that sit there for a moment, and then, satisfied: “How is Isabelle?”
“She’s fine.”
“What did she say when you told her about us?” His hand was on my knee, beneath the hem of my linen skirt. It had started.
“I didn’t…”
“You haven’t told her?” His eyes widened, huge blue-green pools. “What are you waiting for?”
“The right time. I was dropping her off in the wilderness for seven weeks. I didn’t think it was appropriate to lay that at her feet before heading out the gate. ‘By the way, I’m fucking one of the guys from your favorite band. Have a great summer!’”
He was quiet for a minute, thoughtful. “‘Fucking’? Is that what we’re doing?”
I paused. “Well, not right this moment. But I’m guessing soon, yeah.”
He nodded his head, slow. “And what about the in-between times? When we’re not having sex and we’re just enjoying each other’s company. Like now. What do you call that?”
It felt like a test. “Friendship?”
“Friendship,” he repeated. “So we’re just friends?”
“I don’t know. That depends.”
“Depends on what?”
“On how many friends you have…”
He nodded again, weighing his response. “I have a lot of friends,” he said slowly. “Most of them I’m not fucking.”
I didn’t say anything.
“What is it, Solène? What is it you don’t want to ask me?”
“I want to know if there are others.”
Hayes took his time responding. “Right now?”
I nodded.
He shook his head. “There are no others.”
“What does ‘right now’ mean to you exactly? Today? This evening? This week? What does that mean?”
He took a moment too long to formulate his answer.
“You know what? Never mind. I don’t want to do this to you. I don’t even know that I want to know.”
“Okay,” he said, slow, careful.
“You’re trying not to hurt me.”
He nodded, biting his lip.
“Fuck.”
“I’m trying not to mislead you,” he said, soft, his hand moving in my hair. “I just want to make certain we’re on the same page.”
“Hayes, I haven’t done this in a while. I don’t even know what the page looks like.”
He chuckled at that, kissing the top of my head. “It looks like this, Solène. We get together when we can, and we really, really, really enjoy each other’s company. And I wouldn’t say we were just fucking.”
I took a moment to process that. “Are you doing that with anyone else?”
“That? Right now? No.”
“Right now this week?”
“Right now this month. Does that work for you?”
I nodded. “If it changes, will you let me know? I’m not going to lose my mind, I just want to know.”
“If it changes, I will let you know.”
He kissed my head again, and I could feel him breathing me in. So much lay in what we were not saying.
“What’d you do while I was gone?” he asked. His hand had found its way back to my knees, rings cool against my skin.
“Went through all your stuff. I sold your underwear for ten thousand dollars on eBay.”
“Only ten?”
“Turns out fourteen-year-old girls don’t have that much money.”
“They do in Dubai.” He smiled, his fingers traveling farther up my skirt, prying open my thighs. “Are you splitting the proceeds with me?”
“I wasn’t planning on it.”
He laughed then. “Somehow that doesn’t seem fair.”
“Life isn’t fair.”
“It’s not.” He’d arrived at my underwear, the tips of his fingers tracing over damp cotton. “You know how I know that? Because tonight I get to have you … and no one else does.”
“You’d better earn it. Hayes Campbell.”
“I always do.”
<
br /> * * *
It might have been the ghosts of the Chateau Marmont, and the feeling that wild things had happened there. It might have been the fact that we’d been separated for two weeks. It might have been my sudden determination not to be replaced. But that night, although Hayes might have had another word for it, we fucked like rock stars.
He was thorough and intense and insatiable. And the third time he handed me a new condom package to open, while he simultaneously disposed of another, I paused.
“Do you never need recovery time? Ever?”
He smiled, shaking his beautiful head. “I’m twenty.”
I tried to remember what sex with Daniel was like in the beginning, and sex with my two boyfriends in college, and sex with the boy from Saint-Raphaël, all who were in the realm of twenty, and while I could remember the appetite, I did not recall this level of stamina. But maybe that was just me getting older.
“You tired?” he asked, taking the condom from me and slowly rolling it on. Just watching him do that was a turn-on. Hayes, with his dick in his hands.
“Yes. But don’t let that stop you.”
He laughed. “Do you want to stop? We can stop, Solène.” Even as he was saying it, he was lifting me by the hips, hoisting me above him, determined. Round four.
He took his time guiding it in. Eyes peeled to mine, teeth sinking into his bottom lip, hips rising. “Just say the word and we can stop.”
“Really?” I smiled.
“Really.” His hands moved up over my hips and around to my ass. “Although, I’m no expert, but … it feels to me like you don’t want to stop.”
“Is that what your dick is telling you?”
“Fu-uck.” He started to laugh. “I think I might love you.”
“Don’t say that.”
“I’m just putting it out there as a possibility.”
I stopped moving then, folding into him, close. “Not even as a joke.”
“Okay,” he said, serious.
“You’re trying not to mislead me, remember?
“I like you.” I kissed him, deep. “A lot. But as long as you’re fucking other people, you’re not allowed to make jokes about being in love with me.”
“I’m sorry.” His hands had moved to my hair, holding it out of my face.
Neither of us spoke for a moment. And then: “Are you angry with me?”
I shook my head, rising up off his chest, moving on top of him again, not wanting to lose this precious thickness. His gift that kept giving. “Does it feel like I’m angry?”