by Robinne Lee
“… I so wanted to tell you then.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“So,” she said, sipping her Pellegrino, “I guess this means the Access Hollywood thing is true? I mean, you don’t have to say anything. But he’s here. And that piece was fourteen thousand dollars.”
“I know how much it was. Thank you.”
“And then that video in the Hamptons…”
I froze then. “What video?”
“TMZ. It’s not … It wasn’t a big deal. Just footage of him in an SUV with his bodyguard. And you’re in the back. You’re turned away from the camera. It’s fuzzy, and you can’t see your face, but it’s your hair, and I recognized your dress. The white one with all the little buttons up the back. I love that dress.”
I stood there for a moment, unable to speak. The idea that we, that I, had been caught. We weren’t even doing anything. And I felt guilty.
“No one’s mentioned it,” Josephine said eventually.
I nodded, slow. “I appreciate your discretion. Get the guy with a bun a drink. He may buy something.”
They had not moved very far. Although the number of guests who had gravitated to Hayes’s general vicinity had appeared to multiply, the girls were still surrounding him. They had positioned themselves strategically before SexWax, Joanna’s nod to Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans. The canvas featured a brazen image of the popular surf wax with its iconic logo. “Mr. Zogs Sex Wax,” it said. “Quick Humps, The Best for Your Stick.” Lovely.
As I neared them I could see Rose tossing off a joke with her attitudinal stance, and Hayes laughing, and I feared where their conversation had turned.
“May I borrow him for a second?” My voice sounded off to me, the side effect of my worlds colliding. The revelation of TMZ. I just needed to get through the night.
“Hayes, I need to introduce you to someone. Ladies, I’ll bring him right back. Promise.”
Hayes excused himself graciously and followed me through the crowd.
“Sorry about the girls.”
“Oh, it’s fine. They’re very sweet. She’s very sweet, your daughter.”
“Yes,” I said. And then: “I hope you’ll remember that when we’re breaking her heart.”
“Oh bollocks!” he said, which actually made me smile. “Very much looking forward to that. All right, so to whom am I being introduced?”
“No one. I just wanted you to myself for a little bit.”
“Ooo, that sounds naughty.”
We made our way into Gallery 2, which was marginally less crowded. I could see the artist, Joanna, across the way, radiant and ebullient, a vision in a black minidress. She was laughing loudly, the crowd in her hand.
“Okay.” My attention returned to the boy a half step behind me. “Just look very serious and act like we’re talking about art.”
“Can we talk about this dress?” He smiled.
“No.”
“Can we talk about your arse in this dress? Because that’s kind of like art.”
I laughed. “No, definitely not.” I stopped him in front of one of the larger pieces. Low Tide at No. 24, acrylic on linen. “I want you to act like you really like this.”
Hayes’s eyes scanned the print. “Oh, I do quite like it.”
“Even better. Act like you’re interested in purchasing it. I’m going to go to my office and return with some information on the piece, and then you are going to follow me into my office, as if you’re planning to buy it.”
He nodded, slowly. “Oh-kay. I see you’ve thought this through.”
Hayes cocked his head then, eyeing me closely. “What happened to your face?” His hand gestured toward my cheekbone.
I stood there, staring at him, looking for signs of recognition, but nothing was registering. “Really? The table.”
His eyes widened and his jaw dropped, and I wasn’t sure if he was going to laugh or cry. “Oh, Sol.” He’d never called me that before. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“It’s okay. I’m fine.”
“No, it’s not okay. I’m sorry.” He leaned in as if to kiss it.
“Don’t.”
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “No more tables. Promise.”
“I liked the table,” I said, and then turned and walked away.
* * *
Minutes later we were in my office, the door securely locked.
“Now can we discuss this dress?” He did not waste time, his hands moving over the material, my waist, my hips, my ass.
It was a clingy jersey halter dress in smoke gray. Paired with my four-inch black Alaïa Bombe “fuck me” sandals with the embellished ankle strap. He did not stand a chance.
“What is it you wanted to say about it?”
“It’s very … nice,” he said, lowering his mouth to mine, his hand traveling up over my abdomen and reaching in the top of the halter.
“I did not bring you in here to do this.”
“Didn’t you?”
“No. I just wanted to smell you.”
“Really?” He smiled. “Just smell me? That’s all?” His mouth was on my breast. I could hear voices outside the door. Ed Sheeran: “Don’t.”
“You. Are like a fucking drug. Hayes Campbell.”
He pulled away after a minute and stepped back, smiling like the Cheshire cat. “Go ahead. Smell me, then.”
I took the opportunity to inhale him. His neck, his throat, his ridiculous silk scarf. I reached into his perpetually unbuttoned shirt and ran my hands over his smooth chest, his perfect erect nipples. I could live here.
“I have gum,” he said.
“Gum, but no condoms.”
He smiled then, sheepishly. “I have condoms.”
“You have condoms here?”
He nodded.
“Yesterday, then … Were you just testing me?”
“I was enjoying you.”
It hit me intensely, the memory of it. The feel of him.
There was laughter in the corridor. Familiar. It might have been Matt.
He leaned into me then and whispered in my ear. “Can I just bend you over this desk, please? For like a second?”
It was not like him to ask.
I looked at him as if he were crazy. And then I heard myself say: “You have two minutes.”
“I can be done in two minutes.” He smiled.
“Do not get anything on my dress.”
“Won’t. Promise.”
* * *
Six minutes later we were back out in the gallery and no one was the wiser. At least I wanted to believe that.
“Will you do me a huge favor?” I asked him as we made our way into the crowd. “There’s a photographer here from Getty. I would love to get a shot of you with Joanna. But if you feel uncomfortable doing that, I completely understand.”
I hated asking him. I hated everything it insinuated. I did not want him to think for one second that I was taking advantage of our relationship and his celebrity to sell art.
“Solène.” He grabbed my wrist then, pulling me into him. “Why wouldn’t I do that for you?”
I turned to look at him, aware that he was touching me in this very public space. The boy who I had just let fuck me in the office.
“I came here for you, right?”
“You came here for me. You didn’t come here for Marchand Raphel.”
“I came here for you,” he repeated. “And last I checked, that was a huge part of you.”
* * *
We shot him along with Joanna and her husband before Low Tide at No. 24. Hayes insisted on there being a third person in the photograph because Joanna was “far too beautiful” for him to be pictured alone with her.
“They’ll assume I’m sleeping with her,” he had said when I questioned his reasoning.
“What? Who are ‘they’?”
“The press. The fans. The world.”
“She’s like twice your age, Hayes.”
“Yes, well, clearly that
doesn’t stop me, right?” He smiled, salacious, chewing his gum. “Do you want to sell art, or do you want a scandal?”
Evidently, Hayes knew what he was doing.
Joanna’s husband was a chiseled Jamaican-Chinese model who had apparently spent some time at the gym and whose dimples rivaled those of Hayes. It only sweetened the photo op.
The photographer, Stephanie, posted a dozen photos of them on Getty Images the evening of the opening. By Sunday, they’d been picked up by numerous sources, including Hollywood Life and the Daily Mail, and by the following week they’d run in Us Weekly, People, Star, OK!, and Hello!. By then, our Sea Change show had long sold out. And the demand for Joanna’s work had far exceeded any of our expectations.
paris
In October, there was Paris.
Lulit and I went each year for the FIAC art fair, which typically overlapped with my birthday. When Hayes proposed to join us, I did not decline. That he was so intent on making it memorable awed me. The way he scheduled his TAG Heuer photo shoot to coincide. The way he booked the penthouse at the Four Seasons Hotel George V and insisted I stay with him instead of at the apartment in the 17th that we typically rented. The way he upgraded my and Lulit’s tickets from business class to first without either of us being the wiser—a lovely surprise greeting us at the Air France check-in. “I wanted you to be well rested when you arrived,” he cooed later, over Dom Pérignon in our hotel room. It was the most indulgent working holiday that I could recall, filled with wine and art and turning leaves. And like all time spent with Hayes, it passed too quickly.
He arrived from London Tuesday evening, hours after I did, having just returned from four days in the Dolomites, where the guys were shooting the music video for “Sorrowed Talk,” their planned first release from Wise or Naked.
“I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you, I’ve missed you,” he gushed. He was lying beside me, postcoital, propped up on one elbow, his fingers tracing my cheekbone.
And to me, it was clear: he was falling.
“I can’t do these long breaks. I think you’re going to have to quit your job, sell your gallery, and just travel around with me for the next few years.”
I laughed at that. “And what am I supposed to do with my daughter?”
He shrugged, smiling. “Daniel? Boarding school? I suppose we could always get her a room, hire her a proper tutor…”
“Yes, that sounds doable.”
“Truly. What thirteen-year-old girl wouldn’t want to come on tour with August Moon?”
“What mother in her right mind would allow her thirteen-year-old girl to go on tour with August Moon?”
“Hmm … Point taken.”
I saw Isabelle’s face clearly then as she bade me farewell the previous morning. Her wide blue eyes, her sweet smile. Clueless. She’d made me a card: “Have the Happiest Birthday ever!”
And I knew, no matter how delicately the news was delivered, it was going to shatter her.
I was going to shatter her.
Hayes was smiling, his fingers outlining my lips. “So plan A, then … Daniel? That’s not an option, I take it?”
“That’s not an option.”
“What if I quit the band?”
His voice was soft, so soft I was afraid to acknowledge it. For a moment, the two of us lay there in silence. The question hanging in the air. And then, without saying more, he rolled into me, kissing the corners of my mouth, his hand at my neck, my throat.
“I need more of you.”
“I don’t know that there’s more of me to give.”
“That’s not a good enough answer.”
I smiled, my legs wrapping around his waist, my hands in his hair. “What is it you want from me, then?”
He positioned himself. We’d become lax with the condoms. “Everything.”
* * *
I spent all Wednesday with Lulit on the second floor of the Grand Palais, where our booth was situated for the Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporain. The VIP viewings began at ten a.m., and from that moment on our day was jammed with esteemed collectors and dignitaries, the crème de la crème of the art world. Each visitor slightly more fabulous and well-heeled than the next, speaking myriad languages, all slightly high in the presence of art. And once again I was reminded why I loved what I did. Because to be surrounded by such varied, intriguing types—to be a part of a community where it was admired for bending, nay, expected to bend the rules—was, for me, to be at home.
Hayes spent his day in a studio shooting portraits with a watch.
On day two of the fair, the first day it was open to the public and no fewer than 18,000 visitors filed through, Hayes’s shoot ended early, and he surprised me by dropping by the Grand Palais shortly after five. In a world of iPhones and texts, it was such a shock to see him pop into our booth unannounced, it took a full three seconds to register who this handsome stranger was, and it made me wonder how others saw him. His notable height, his hair, his eyes, his jaw, his broad mouth; black jeans, black boots, and a three-quarter-length dark suede coat. Even if he weren’t famous, he’d be difficult to overlook. And the fact that for this moment he was mine …
“What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see what you do when I’m not with you … And I thought perhaps you might like some macarons.” He smiled, proffering a Ladurée bag.
I hugged him then. Tightly. And in that brief moment I did not care who saw us. Or what they might have thought. “You know, you’re acting suspiciously like a boyfriend.”
He laughed at that. “As opposed to…?”
“As opposed to someone who just ‘really, really, really’ enjoys my company.”
“Ha!”
Lulit approached us from across the booth where she’d been communicating with a Chinese collector. “Well, to what do we owe this great honor?” She kissed him in the double-sided French way, and with her it did not look awkward.
“I thought I’d see what the hullabaloo was about.”
“But the lines must be crazy. Did they make you wait in line?”
Hayes shook his head, an amused expression on his face. As if he’d ever in his life had to wait in line for anything.
“Thank you, again, for your very generous upgrade.”
“You’re quite welcome. And I brought macarons. You’re to share them.” That last part he directed at me.
“You’re not rushing off, are you?”
There had been nonstop foot traffic at the fair all day, but that late in the afternoon there was a bit of a lull and so I offered to give Hayes a quick tour, starting with our booth: the canvases by Nira Ramaswami, the sculptures by Kenji Horiyama, the mixed-media works by Pilar Anchorena. At turns haunting, inspired, political.
Anders Sørensen, our long-standing art preparator who was responsible for installing our fair booths, had flown in from Oslo at the beginning of the week to set up. We’d sold seven pieces alone during the private viewing, and Anders had already rotated out the sold works and reinstalled the booth. If we managed to sell all eighteen pieces that we’d shipped for FIAC, it would be a banner week. I explained all this to Hayes.
“So your mission here is to sell as much art as possible?”
“It’s not just about the sales.” We were circling the corridors of the second floor, surveying the other midsized galleries. “The fairs are an opportunity to make connections, see what new artists are emerging, how their work is being received. And it’s great exposure for our artists and the gallery. Not all those who apply get in.”
“Who decides where they put your booth?”
“There’s a committee. The larger, blue-chip galleries are always on the main floor. Better foot traffic.”
“Is that something you aspire to? A larger gallery?”
I smiled up at him. I loved that he had questions. I loved that he cared.
Daniel had never been fond of the art world. The proverbial camel’s back had broken four years earlier at MOCA’s annual
gala, The Artist’s Museum Happening, where he was content to schmooze with the likes of Brian Grazer and Eli Broad but had little desire to peruse the actual exhibit. When I’d asked him what he thought of the show, he’d swilled his wine and said it was “overrated and self-indulgent,” and I wondered how I’d managed to marry someone so fundamentally different from me. I’d spent that evening fighting back tears and knowing it was over.
“I kind of like where we are,” I said to Hayes now. “If we had an operation like that, we’d have additional gallery spaces in New York, London, Paris, or Japan. Not so easy to manage as a single mom.”
He thought about that for a moment but said nothing.
We descended to the main level. There was so much I wanted to show him, so many spaces and bodies to navigate, that even in three-inch Saint Laurent booties, I was moving fast.
“Don’t lose me,” he said at one point, reaching for my hand. But when he gauged my reluctance, he dropped it and laughed. “We’re going to discuss this eventually. But just … don’t lose me. There are a lot of people here.”
“I won’t. Promise.”
There were a lot of people, although very few in his target audience and so I assumed he would be safe. But I did not know what it felt like to be him, to imagine that at any moment the throng could change and that panic might ensue, especially in the absence of a Desmond or a Fergus. I had no clue what it was to live with that reality.
I slowed my pace and walked beside him, and tried not to think about how people perceived us. Assuming they were paying attention at all. But the thought occurred that maybe we did not have to be holding hands. Maybe our chemistry was palpable enough.
“Are you going to show me what you love?” he asked.
“I’m going to show you what I love.”
I led him to two stunning works by Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson. The New Planet, a large rotating steel-and-colored-glass oloid. And Dew Viewer, a cluster of myriad silver crystal spheres creating multiple reflections. Both mesmerizing, memorable.
“There’s quite a lot of us in there,” Hayes whispered into my ear before the Dew Viewer installation. “All the little Hayeses and Solènes … like two hundred, at least.”