by Robinne Lee
“Sorry. It’s true…” He paused while a French couple who’d been admiring one of the Kenji Horiyama sculptures exited the booth. “So…” he continued, making his way over to me, “I’m taking her.”
“You’re what?” Lulit said.
“I’m taking her,” Hayes repeated, his hand encircling my wrist. “May I take her? I’m taking her.”
“Hayes, I’m working.”
“She’s working.”
“It’s your birthday, it’s Paris.” His angelic face broke my heart just a little.
“I know and I appreciate that, but we have all day tomorrow. We have tonight.”
“If I buy something, will that make a difference?” His eyes were scanning the walls.
“I don’t want you to do that.”
“What if I want to do that?”
“I don’t want you to do that,” I repeated.
Lulit caught my eye then, and the expression I read on her face left me cold. She was entertaining his offer. Knowing full well that he would go to extremes to close the deal. Her eyes said it all: Go. Sell. Art. To rich white men.
“No.” I shook my head.
“What’s still available?” He turned to Lulit. “She said there were still two left. Which ones are they?”
“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.”
“I’m really happy when I’m with you. I get the feeling you feel the same way. And if that’s true, I don’t think you should give a fuck about what people may or may not think of our age difference. Furthermore, if our ages were reversed, no one would bat an eyelash. Am I right? So now it’s just some sexist, patriarchal crap, and you don’t strike me as the kind of woman who’s going to let that dictate her happiness. All right? Next issue…”
Our waiter came to the table then, and naturally neither of us had looked at the menu.
“Encore un moment, s’il vous plaît,” Hayes said, dismissing him.
When he’d parted, Hayes leaned forward, grabbing both my hands. “I think when we go home, you need to tell Isabelle the truth. I don’t think we can do this again without telling her. I don’t think it’s fair to her. And I want to do this again.”
“We’re covering a lot today.”
“I’m trying to get it all in before you turn forty.” He smiled his half smile. “Plus when we’re at the hotel I can’t seem to manage a proper conversation because I have a hard time thinking about anything but fucking you.
“So…” He sat back, opening his menu. “Fancy a tea?”
* * *
After, outside, heading north on the narrow street, Hayes wrapped his arm around me, protective.
“Let’s find a tabac,” he said. “I want a cigarette.”
I looked up at him, amused. “Oh-kay…”
“I didn’t have sex with Rihanna,” he announced, and then he grinned. “But not for want of trying. Apparently, I’m not her type.”
“You’re not bad enough.” I smiled.
“I’m not bad enough.”
“You’re bad enough for me.”
* * *
We spent the early evening wandering through the Marais and over to the Île Saint-Louis, where we strolled down the Quai de Bourbon to the Place Louis Aragon, the western tip of the island that looked out over the Seine and the Île de la Cité and Notre-Dame and all the things about Paris that were magical to me. We sat there huddled on a bench, drinking in the view and each other, until our appendages were numb. It was the perfect place to watch the sun set on my thirties. And it very well may have been worth 60,000 euros.
* * *
Later that night, Hayes and I slipped into the bar at the George V for a drink and some inspired people watching. The room was insufferably old-world: cherrywood panels, stenciled parquet floors, velvet drapes. Charcoal drawings of foxhunts and eighteenth-century-style portraits gracing the walls. There were various couples dallying over thirty-dollar cocktails. Curious pairings, unexpected. Perhaps not unlike us. We surveyed it all from our perch on the chintz sofa beside the fireplace.
For all its pomp, Hayes seemed decidedly at home in the stodgy bar, swilling from his Scotch like one of the landed gentry. He was so poised and comfortable in his skin; so natural, it was beautiful to watch.
I assumed his family’s country home, somewhere in the Cotswolds, was not too different from this. And for a minute I deigned to imagine what that life would look like. A life with him. Weekends in the garden and corgis and sheep. Dinner parties in London during the Season. And then, just as quickly as I’d entertained it, I shook it off. What the hell was I thinking?
“Is this a trend?” he said. We’d been there for the better part of an hour, listening to the band’s music drift in from the Galerie. Standards mixed with watered-down contemporary pop, “Mack the Knife” and Pharrell’s “Happy.”
“Is what a trend?”
“This.” Hayes angled his head, gesturing subtly to the rest of the room. Among the clientele, there were no fewer than seven mixed-race couples. And five of them were comprised of sixty-something white men with forty-something Asian women.
“It’s kind of par for the course in California.”
“This exact age spread? It’s a little peculiar, no?”
I shrugged, sipping from my champagne cocktail. “Eva, Daniel’s girlfriend, is Asian. Half.” I had not made it a habit of discussing Eva. In all the months we’d been together, I’d mentioned her half a dozen times in passing.
He squeezed my hand. “Sorry. For bringing that up. Does it bother you?”
“It bothers me that she’s young.”
“How young?”
“Thirty.”
Hayes chuckled. “Thirty is not that young.”
“Shut up. It is.”
“Well, look at it this way: You’ve won, right? Because I’m considerably younger than that.”
I smiled at him. The thought had not crossed my mind. I’d never set out to get back at Daniel so much as I’d set out to get on with my life. It was not a competition. But that was part of the beauty of Hayes being twenty. That occasionally we saw the world completely differently, and at times it was refreshing.
“Hayes, you know when you’re forty, I’m going to be sixty, right?
”
“I love it when you talk sexy,” he laughed.
“Just stating a fact.”
He took a sip of his drink then and leaned into me. “You understand that you’re going to be attractive well into your fifties.”
“Well into my fifties?” I laughed. “That old?”
“Yes.” He smiled. “Michelle Pfeiffer…”
“What about her?”
“In her fifties. Still fucking sexy. Julianne Moore, Monica Bellucci, Angela Bassett, Kim Basinger … Not saying they’re age appropriate for me. Just saying those women aren’t going to stop being sexy anytime soon.”
I sat there, drinking him in. His cheeks flushed, his hair standing on end. His young face in this very grown-up room. “You carry this list around in your head?”
He smiled. “Among other things.”
“Have you ever been in therapy?”
He laughed, loud. “No. Are you trying to tell me something? I’m surprisingly well-adjusted. Have you ever been in therapy?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm…” He cocked his head. “Interesting…”
“How old is your mother, Hayes?”
He paused for a moment, and then: “Forty-eight…”
Shit. It was uncomfortably close. Although certainly not surprising. “Do you have a picture of her?”
He picked his iPhone up from the coffee table and began scrolling through. Eventually he handed it over. It was the two of them, in what I gathered was the countryside. Hayes was wearing a Barbour jacket and Hunter Wellies and looked ridiculously English. She, Victoria, was suited in full riding regalia. She held her helmet in one hand, and the lead to a handsome horse in the other. Hayes’s head was turned to face her, and the look in his eyes was one of complete and utter adoration.
She was beautiful. Tall, reedy, with porcelain skin and an unruly ponytail of wavy black hair. She had his wide smile, his dimples, his eyes, although the crow’s-feet were more pronounced. Her features were slightly softer, but there was no mistaking this was his mother.
“Who’s the horse?”
He smirked. “That would be Churchill. And I’m quite sure she loves him more than me.”
I laughed. “Now, that’s something for your future therapist.”
Hayes collected the phone from me and stared at it before closing the image. Quiet.