by Robinne Lee
There was another couple on the banquette not far from us. A group of Basel types across the reflecting pool. We were not alone. And yet I did not stop him.
“I take it we’re done talking about Penelope…”
He chuckled, sly. His fingers pressed up against me, inside me. “We are very done talking about Penelope.”
He leaned into me then, his mouth near my ear, his breath hot on my neck. The thought occurred that I would miss this when he moved on. When he was with someone ten years my junior, and I was somewhere invisible. I was going to miss his hands.
This.
His thumb on my clit and my heart in my throat and the humidity enveloping us like a blanket.
When I thought it might happen, that I might come right there in the courtyard of the Setai, he stopped, pulling away. I reached for his arm. “Where are you going?”
“I’m not going anywhere,” he said. And then he took his hand from between my legs and rubbed his wet fingers over my mouth. My lips, my tongue … I sat, speechless.
He smiled his half smile, took a swig of Scotch, and then kissed me. Deep.
“You,” I said, when I found my voice.
“Me.”
“You. Are so fucking dirty.”
He leaned in again to suck on my lip. “Am I?”
“Can we go back to the room now?”
“Not yet.” He was smiling when his hand returned between my legs, his fingers slipping beneath my underwear, sliding up inside of me, effortless. “You. Are so fucking wet.”
I sat there for another minute, lost in him. And then I grabbed his wrist. “Pay the bill,” I said, “and then meet me upstairs.”
“Okay.”
* * *
It took him longer than I would have liked to arrive at the suite. But the sight of him at the bedroom entrance—black dress shirt slightly unbuttoned, glass still in hand—gave me such a rush, I forgot to question where he’d been.
“Candles?” he said, taking in the room, taking off his boots. “Were you hoping for something romantic?”
“Actually, I was just hoping you’d bring your mouth.”
He smiled at that. “I bet you were.”
From my position on the bed, I watched him make his way toward me, his body long, lithe, beautiful. He took a moment to hook his iPhone up to the speakers. Then, as the music started, some evocative baseline I did not recognize, he took a sip of Scotch and drank me in.
“Are you going to make me wait, Hayes Campbell?”
He grinned, setting down his glass. “Maybe. Just a little.”
The vocals kicked in then. A haunting, familiar voice. Bono. Although nothing I’d ever heard before. Raw, sexy, disjointed lyrics.
“U2?”
“U2.”
Hayes joined me on the bed, took his time unzipping my dress. His fingers warm against my flesh. A driving guitar, his hands unclasping my bra, his mouth on my breasts. His tongue … He lowered himself, eventually, index finger running along the waist of my panties, from hip bone to hip bone and back. Bono’s voice, lulling. Sleep like a baby, tonight …
He paused for a second, his eyes finding mine, and then he bowed his head, took the material in his teeth, and slowly, slowly pulled them off. When he’d succeeded in getting them down to my ankles, he sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. His expression almost smug.
“What? What are you thinking?”
“I want to see what you do when I’m not with you.”
It took me a minute to register his request. “Now?”
“Now. Show me.”
* * *
When i got to our booth at the fair just before eleven the following morning, Matt was already there poring over his laptop. Lulit had yet to arrive.
“You want the good news or the bad?” he greeted me.
“No ‘Good morning’?”
He smiled, pushing his glasses up onto his face. “Sorry. Good morning. Good news: We’re going to sell a lot of art today.”
We’d been doing well thus far. Glen Wilson’s installation Gatekeeping was striking. Salvaged chain-link fences, with large-scale portraits woven throughout the steel mesh, symbolic of the gentrification transforming the artist beach community of Venice. The pieces representing the remnants of once-affordable properties and their displaced residents. It was political, powerful art.
“So what’s the bad news?”
“You’re a blind item,” he said, positioning the laptop so I could view the screen.
“A what?”
“Jo just sent this.”
The browser was opened to a website I didn’t recognize. Blind gossip something or another. At the top of the page there was an item titled “Naked Lunch.”
Which pretty boy with a penchant for mature women has been moonlighting as a collector in South Beach this week? Is he fulfilling his artistic desires or that of his amorous dealer?
I stared at it for a moment, trying to compute. It seemed so esoteric to me, random. “Is there a photo?”
“No.”
“Is my name up there?”
“Not yet. But it’s a matter of time before someone guesses.”
“How did Josephine know it was us? It could be anyone.”
Matt sighed, shutting the window. “The clues: Wise or Naked, August Moon, Petty Desires. It’s all in there.”
“Fuck,” I said. We’d been so careful. So lucky. “Who reads that thing?”
“Pretty much everyone who cares about gossip,” he laughed. “Sorry.”
I nodded. It was bound to happen. “‘Amorous dealer.’ Great.”
Matt smiled. “It could have been much less favorable. Lulit doesn’t know. We don’t have to tell her.”
“Okay,” I said. “Maybe that’s best.”
* * *
My pretty boyfriend showed up sometime after two, wanting to see me, to see the fair. There was something of a lunchtime lull, and so we slipped away with Lulit’s permission.
“This dress,” he said as we meandered through the neighboring booths.
“What about it?” It was a cream-colored crepe shift. Sleeveless, short.
“It’s rather … wee.”
“That it is.” I smiled over at him.
As always I was aware of the eyes on Hayes. Poufy curls, skinny jeans, boots. A walking exclamation mark. But for the first time, and I wasn’t sure if it was just my imagination, it seemed that people were looking at me as well.
When we finally snaked our way over to the Sadie Coles booth to see Urs Fischer’s Small Rain installation—a thousand cartoonish green plaster raindrops suspended from above—I leaned into him. “We’re a blind item.”
“You and I?”
“No, you and some other chick you were with the last couple of days in Miami.” I paused. “You weren’t with some other chick the last couple of days in Miami? Right?”
He smirked. “I’m trying to imagine when I would have squeezed that in. Perhaps when you passed out after your eighth orgasm? I slipped out and headed over to Soho House to see what trouble I could get into. By the way, that, I think, might be our new record. Although I can’t truly take credit for the first two because you were pretty much on your own … Can we do that again, tonight?”
“Can we not discuss this here?”
“You’re being very short with me.” He smiled. “Almost as short as this dress.”
“I’m a little on edge.”
“Because of the blind item?”
“Yes.”
He nodded slowly. “Can I give you some advice? Ignore it. It’s going to get worse. It’s going to get really bad.”
I turned to him. “What do you mean? How bad is it going to get?”
“It’s going to get bad.”
Up until now I had assumed the worst that could happen was Isabelle finding out and losing her mind. And I had barely survived that. I could not envision how anything could possibly be more traumatic. Clearly, I had just been naïve.
&nb
sp; “That’s it? That’s all you’re going to give me? You’re just going to send me out into the world with your psychotic fans and tell me, ‘It’s going to get bad, just ignore it’?”
He smiled, but there was something sad in his eyes. “Solène,” he whispered, taking my hands. “There’s no instruction manual for this. We make it up as we go. Here’s the deal: I don’t talk about my private life. Ever. I don’t release statements. I don’t comment on it. I don’t discuss it in interviews and I don’t address it on social media. You can choose what you want to do, but I find that’s the best way to deal with it. Otherwise, you’re just giving them fodder. Let them speculate. People are going to say a lot of things. Most of them will not be true. And much of it will not be nice. But you have to be strong enough to not acknowledge or address any of it. If you can ignore it completely, that would be best. But if you can’t, you just have to remember that these are people who don’t know you and don’t know me. And for the most part they’re just making things up to sell advertising. Got it?”
I nodded.
“And whatever you do, never ever, ever read the comments.”
“Okay.”
“You look terrified.” He smiled.
“Because I am. I wish you’d told me all this before.”
“Before when? Before you started falling in love with me?”
“Who told you I was falling in love with you?”
“It’s just a hunch.”
“It was the eight orgasms that gave it away, wasn’t it?” I deflected. My eyes were threatening to tear. There, among raindrops the size of pears, in the middle of Art Basel. “Fuck, Hayes.”
“Shhh.” He held my head, kissing my cheek. “It’s okay. One day at a time. Today we ignore the blind item.”
“Today we ignore the blind item.”
* * *
When we returned to our booth, Lulit was in the midst of showing the Invisible installation to a curator from the Whitney. They were deep in conversation about Anya’s work: part of a larger series of striking black-and-white portraits shot with either extremely high or low exposures, so her subjects, all women, were either blown out or reduced to shadows, both effectively rendering them near invisible.
“Lulit is sounding very serious.” Hayes came up behind me, close.
I shushed him. There were a handful of others admiring Glen’s gates. Matt had evidently stepped away.
“You know,” he said, low, “I adore you both, but you are not the women to sell this whole invisible rubbish. Have you looked at yourselves?”
It took me a moment to register what he was saying, the audacity.
“I know you probably mean that as a compliment, but I’m not taking it that way.”
“I’m just saying, it is quite likely that people will think you are taking the piss.”
“That we’re what? Taking the what?”
He smiled, adorable, even when infuriating. “Like mocking them. You are the two least invisible women in this entire convention center.”
“I’m not sure that’s true. But if it were, for the reasons you’re insinuating it is, it would give us more impetus to support this project.”
He was quiet for a bit, mulling the idea.
“You realize that we are currently the only gallery of our size owned by two women? If we’re not the ones to back this, I don’t know who is.”
I was proud of that fact. That Lulit and I had managed to make it work despite the odds. That we’d garnered a certain amount of respect, success in the ten years that we’d been doing this. That we’d birthed this idea—to fight for the underrepresented, the underappreciated—and we were winning.
“I did not know that. That kind of makes you hotter.”
I laughed at that. “Okay, go away. I need to work.”
He drew me into him, both hands on my hips. A motion that was decidedly suggestive. “Tonight I think we should go for nine.”
“I think you need to leave.”
“I think you need to lose this dress.”
“Go.”
“‘Look how sexy I am. But for the rest of you who are not so sexy, here’s this wonderful installation that addresses all your insecurities.’”
“Get out of here, Hayes. Being a woman is a complicated thing.”
“I bet it is.” He leaned in to kiss my nose. “Have a good day. I love you. Good-bye.”
“What did you say?”
“Nothing. I didn’t say that. Fuck. I didn’t say that. Good-bye.” His face was red as he backed out of the booth. And for a fleeting moment I considered following him. Anywhere.
* * *
“What is it you’re doing?” Lulit approached me shortly after the curator from the Whitney had departed. “This Hayes thing. What are you doing, Solène?”
I looked at her, not understanding. Was she not the one who’d fully endorsed this? Who’d told me to go and get my rock star?
“I thought this was just going to be a fling,” she said, soft. “Like for the summer … I thought it was temporary and you were having fun and that was great. And important. For you … to move on, and grow. But it’s now like serious, and you’re completely falling for him, and it’s affecting your decisions in not the best way. And he’s twenty, Solène. He’s twenty.”
I was speechless.
“And he’s going to fucking break your heart and I can’t sit and watch that happen again. And don’t tell me it’s just sex. Because it’s not just sex anymore. I’ve seen the way you look at each other … It’s not just sex.”
I wanted to be angry with her. I did. But I was terrified that everything she had said was right.
* * *
On Sunday, after a late brunch in the Design District, Hayes and I returned to find no fewer than two dozen young girls congregated outside at the front of the Setai.
They’d found us.
We managed to evade them by looping two blocks down to Eighteenth Street and using the beach entrance at the back. There were a handful of fans lingering there as well, and Hayes stopped and took a few photos. And then, just as we were about to maneuver our way through the gate, one of them asked, rather politely, “Is that your girlfriend?”
I felt it, every single hair on my arms and the back of my neck standing up. I spun to look at him, which was probably a rookie move. Hayes waved to his fans and smiled. “You guys have a good day, all right?” And then he shut the gate and it was over.
“Crisis averted?” he asked.
“Crisis averted.”
We were meandering back through the sultry lobby when I spotted her: a striking brunette, with olive skin and exquisite bones. She looked to be early thirties, slender, sexy. Not the kind of person you could overlook, and yet Hayes did not seem to see her. He was doing that thing that celebrities sometimes do, purposefully avoiding eye contact with strangers so they wouldn’t assume they had permission to start a conversation. I’d seen him do it before, in crowds, in public spaces. Shutting out the world. This time, his iPhone was the distraction.
But I noticed her right away. I saw her see us, see Hayes, and then I watched as a million emotions washed over her face. She looked away quickly and then turned back, as if drawn against her will. Her eyes scanning, scrutinizing, looking away again. And then I understood. She was too old to be a fan. She knew him. She knew him.
“Do you know this woman who’s riveted by you?”
He looked up, his eyes landing on her just as she glanced over. I watched it register on his face. The recognition, the history. He’d slept with her. He might have even loved her. Whether or not he would call it that.
“Fee,” he said. “Yeah.”
She smiled faintly, and he, we, made our way in her direction.
“Hey,” he greeted her, slightly flustered, leaning in to kiss her cheek. “Fee.”
“Hayes.” She said it slowly, the hint of an accent.
“How are you?”
“Good. I’m good.”
“That�
�s good.” He was tugging at his hair, uncomfortable. “Um, Solène, this is Filipa. Fee, this is my friend Solène.”
She smiled at me, her eyes missing nothing. And likewise, I found myself assessing her, wondering, reading between the lines. Whatever it was going back and forth between them, it was intense.
Is this how it would be, were I to randomly bump into him years from now when at least one of us had moved on? Would he be anxious and awkward and pulling at his hair? Would my eyes betray both my desire and contempt? I saw my face in hers and it scared me.
“Are you here in town for a while?” she asked.
“Just a few days.”
“Work?”
He shook his head. It was painful to watch.
“Um, I need to check in with Matt,” I said, excusing myself. I wanted to give them a moment alone.
But even from my perch a few yards away, where I was scanning aimlessly through emails, I could feel the weight of their conversation. Of them. And it struck me, how much she looked like me. How he had a type. How perhaps we were all versions of this Hayes Campbell ideal. Yasmin, too.
Eventually, they parted and Hayes collected me to head up to the room.
He didn’t speak until we were in the elevator. “Sorry about that. That was…”
“Yeah, it was kind of obvious what that was.”
He sighed, and then reached for my hand, squeezing it.
When we got to the suite, Hayes made his way out onto the balcony, where he stood staring at the ocean for a good ten minutes before finding his way back inside to me.
“So, Fee…” he said, clearing his throat.
“I don’t need to know,” I said.
“I need you to know … Full disclosure: I kind of fucked up her marriage.”
I looked over from where I was standing near the bedroom entrance. “You kind of fucked up her marriage? Either you did or you didn’t.”
He paused, tugging at his lower lip. We were back to that. “I did.”
“I thought you said those were just rumors.”
“Most of them are. That one wasn’t.”
I took my time processing. “Just so I’m aware, are we going to continue to bump into people who you’ve fucked … up?”