He reaches for me. “Sssh. Go to sleep,” he murmurs.
“I can’t sleep. Listen, I’m just going to go home.”
He slowly sits up. “Now? What time is it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe one?”
“Lu, just go to sleep.”
“I really can’t. And I don’t want to keep you up all night.” I know this is going to be conversation-ending. The last thing he wants is for me to keep him up all night.
“Do you want me to walk you out?”
“No, I’m fine.” I kiss him on the cheek and quickly hop out of bed. I feel newly energized.
It’s the middle of the night to me, but outside, the Meatpacking District is teeming with people. Sharing the streets with the dressed-up revelers stumbling out of bars and restaurants, I feel out of place in the black yoga pants and white v-neck t-shirt I’d worn to sleep. My casual attire is punctuated with one of the many pairs of TOMS that have migrated to Brandt’s apartment.
I know I’ll have no trouble getting a cab, so I indulge in a few blocks of walking. By the time I reach West Twelfth Street, and pass “my” building, I know I don’t want to go to my mother’s place in SoHo. I consider crashing at my empty apartment just for the night, but if I go up there now, it will just be a repeat of the tossing and turning at Brandt’s.
There’s only one place, one person, who can help me put this day to rest.
I backtrack to Seventh Avenue, to the bodega on the corner of Fourteenth Street, and ask the Korean guy behind the counter if he sells flashlights.
Chapter Twenty-two
“I think you’re wrong about Lulu,” Inez said.
Anna looked at her sharply. “And you base this opinion on … what exactly?”
Before Inez could start making her case, Anna cut her off with, “Regardless of what happened this afternoon, creative pranksters are the least of my problems.”
Anna stood and crossed the room. Her back was to Inez; her usual stance when she was upset or irritated.
Inez jumped up and stood behind her. She put both hands on Anna’s shoulders, and was not shrugged away.
“What’s going on?” Inez asked quietly. The pause was excruciating.
Anna turned around slowly. Her face had, in the past minute, aged five years. The skin under her hazel eyes looked so thin, it was almost translucent. Inez thought that if Anna was this intimidating now, she could only imagine what she had been like at the prime of her beauty. Because Anna had had it all—youth, beauty, and power. A rare trifecta.
“Business is not good,” she said finally. A simple statement. But it chilled Inez.
“In what way?” she asked.
Anna walked to a mantel and extinguished her cigarette in a metal ashtray that Inez knew must have cost more than most people’s monthly rent.
“In every way. We’re losing artists to other dealers—dealers who are willing to practically forgo commissions. We are competing with virtual galleries online. The international end is cannibalizing our business. Everything is so fragmented.”
None of this was news to Inez. What was news was that Anna was so rattled by it.
“If this is such a crucial time, why are you sending me off to Asia? I should be side by side with you, launching the new flagship space. Let Lulu run this one. It can practically run itself.”
Anna shook her head. “I sold this space to finance the new gallery. I’d planned to sustain all three, but it’s just not possible. I’m closing it down by the end of the year.”
Inez took a sharp breath.
This was a disaster. It was bad enough when Inez thought Anna was sending her off when there were two viable galleries in New York. But now there was only one. And that space on Twenty-third Street might be big, but it wasn’t big enough for her and Lulu—that was for damn sure.
“Things might be changing,” Inez said slowly. “But you’re still Anna Sterling. This gallery still represents something. Let me be your bridge between the gallery’s past and its future. Will you let me do that?” Inez’s voice was low, a tone she used with Bianca, in bed. When she was talking about doing things that had nothing to do with business.
And then she did something she’d wanted to do since walking through the door of the gallery five years ago. She kissed Anna Sterling.
It was thrilling, of course. But Inez couldn’t let herself enjoy the moment. This was as much about strategy as it was about physical desire.
For a heartbeat, she felt Anna stiffen. But then came the response, a kiss that was so sensuous, it reminded Inez that, as always, Anna was in charge.
Not for long, Inez thought.
*** ***
When I arrive at my destination, there isn’t much foot traffic around the sidewalk hatch. Still, I wait a few minutes until I’m certain I’m alone. I think of how pissed off GoST had been to find me down there. But we’re friends now, right? But if we were friends, why did I have the nagging feeling that if I didn’t go down there, I might never see him again. That’s the thought that kept me awake in Brandt’s bed. That if I don’t somehow find him tonight, when we are still loosely connected by the events of this morning, it’s over. As for the near-dizzying surge of self-preservation that told me I was a fool to risk my mother’s trust and confidence over this? Gone. Now there’s only one thing I’m worried about, only one person I’m thinking about.
I bend down and pull the metal catch and go down.
The hatch closes on top of me, and I’m in total, heart-pounding darkness. I fumble with the switch on my flashlight, and have a moment of panic that it won’t work. But the switch catches and it turns on. I make my way down the ladder.
The descent feels longer this time. I hold my breath until my feet hit the landing.
I feel a little panicked. Last time, he’d been standing right here. I hadn’t had more than a few seconds alone. Now I’m completely cut off from everything. I direct my flashlight at the graffiti wall, shining light on the classic tags. The sight of the artwork calms me a little.
Very little.
I didn’t come here to stare at thirty-year-old graffiti, so I force myself to turn in the other direction. In the distance, from somewhere within the bowels of this network of tunnels, I hear a rumbling train. But it’s very far away.
I shine the light on the cement ground. I hear rustling behind me, movement on top of old newspaper. The hairs on my arm stand on end. My light strikes red eyes, little pink glow-in-the-dark beads.
“Fuck,” I say. This is madness.
I shine the light beyond the rustling newspapers and see stairs.
If there’s another level below this one, that’s probably where GoST makes his escape. He doesn’t just sit around this boxy area under the stairs. I have to either go deeper, or go home.
I’m not going home.
It’s only half a dozen steps to the lower level, but it’s a much narrower space. And it immediately feels twenty degrees hotter. I don’t know where I’m going, so I follow the tunnel, just taking it slow. The smell is musty and foul.
The air is so still it’s hard to breathe. I’m about to turn back, when my flashlight catches something on the wall next to me. From the edge of the grimy cement ground to the very top of the tunnel is a mural. It’s a fence, and in big black letters is spray painted DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS. Human hands are holding the fence, but the person’s face is not visible. GoST’s tag is at the bottom.
I’m in the belly of the proverbial beast, and I have to keep going.
I follow the mural to a bend in the tunnel, which then branches into different directions. It’s like the catacombs down here. Light is shining down one of the passageways, so I head in that direction.
I shine the flashlight along the walls as I walk, unwilling to miss a painting. But there’s no more art. Not until I get to the end. And then, I hit the jackpot.
It’s the first three-wall enclosure I’ve seen since the upper level, and every inch of the concrete is covered with painting
s. The light source is a bunch of bare bulbs shining out of a square wall casing that probably once housed an exit sign.
Clothes hang neatly from wire hangers dangling from the long rows of piping running along the wall. A thin mattress rests on a row of crates that have been turned into a makeshift bed. It’s covered with an army blanket. On the end of the bed are books. Charles Bukowski’s Factotum and Italo Calvino’s If On A Winter’s Night a Traveler. Something called The Long Emergency.
“Oh my god,” I breathe. Does he live here?
One entire wall is a mural like the one back in the earlier stretch of tunnel. It’s repetitious images of a woman, old-fashioned, like a cameo silhouette. It’s done in black and white stencil, dozens and dozens of images. And at the bottom in red-stenciled letters it reads, AND I DON’T KNOW HOW TO STOP. On another wall, there’s a gold frame, and painted inside is the KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON sign but the crown is a gas mask. American Girl dolls are tied to helium balloons, which lift only their arms. Colorful plastic crates are arranged vertically to look like a robot.
But the one that makes me cry out is a stencil of my father’s sculpture, one he called No. 12. It’s one of his larger pieces, done in bronze. I’d never seen it in person, but it’s one of the more prevalent images on the Internet when you search Shane Holland. But it’s not just an image of his sculpture: it’s the sculpture behind bars.
My father has a real cult following, and a lot of them see my mother as the Yoko Ono to his John Lennon. If GoST is a fan of my father’s work, his attack on my mother’s gallery takes on an entirely different meaning. It’s personal.
“You can’t be here.”
The sound of his voice startles me so badly I scream.
“Jesus. You scared me.”
His face is hidden under his usual hat, tightly pulled sweatshirt hood, and sunglasses. Down here, it’s no longer quirky. It’s menacing. He looks like the Unabomber.
“What are you doing?” he asks in a tone that is aggressively pissed off. “This is no place for you. Don’t you know how dangerous it is?”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to, like, invade your space. But there’s no other way for me to get in touch with you.”
“You don’t need to get in touch with me. Now come on—time to go.” He walks close to me. I think he’s going to grab me, but he lifts up the mattress and pulls something out of one of the crates, which I now see are filled with cans of spray paint, paper, foam rubber paint rollers, and all sorts of other tools. GoST retrieves something that looks like a cross between a wrench and scissors and stuffs it in the pocket of his sweatshirt. Then he picks up a piece of cloth to protect his hand while he unscrews the light bulbs. We’re in pitch darkness.
He takes the flashlight from my hand.
“You walk ahead of me,” he says, shining the light back toward the outer tunnel.
As eerie as it is down here, I don’t want to be dispatched like this. Being near him thrills me.
His footsteps are heavy behind me. I am acutely aware of his presence, even in the near darkness. At one point, I forget which way to turn to get back to the stairs.
“Right,” he barks.
He walks even closer behind me. I imagine him stopping in his tracks, grabbing my arm. Turning me to face him. He’d press me against the filthy wall, pinning me with his hips, my face pressed against his chest, his strong arms around me. I would give in to it, long enough to lift that mask, to touch his face and kiss him.
“Watch the steps,” he says. And we are almost back to the upper level.
The air already feels cooler against my skin.
“Can you see?” he asks, shining the light upward. We’re at the base of the ladder.
“Yeah,” I say. I don’t have a sense of the stairs, but I don’t want to make him impatient, so I climb faster than I should. Somehow, I keep my footing, and when I reach the top I press my hands against the hatch. “It’s stuck.”
GoST moves up a few steps until he’s so near I can smell him, the way I was able to when he pulled me onto the roof this morning. Was that only today? The hours between that moment and now feel like an empty, meaningless week I had to endure only to get to this point.
“Move over so I can get up there,” he says. “And hold this.” He passes me the flashlight. I squeeze over to the left, clutching the thin metal railing. Our sides are touching, hips grazing one another’s. As he reaches up to open the hatch, I glance down just enough to see his t-shirt lift. It’s too dark to really see his stomach, but just the hint of his skin gives me the urge to touch him.
A rush of fresh air, and the streetlights flood in.
It’s like waking up from a dream that I don’t want to end.
Chapter Twenty-three
“Hurry up.” GoST reaches down for me. I don’t need his help getting onto the sidewalk, but I take his hand just for the contact.
He bends down, quickly closing up the space. “Stay outta there. You’ll get hurt.”
The street is empty. A police siren wails in the distance.
“Are they looking for you?” I joke. He doesn’t smile.
“I’m totally fucking serious,” he says.
“If it’s so dangerous, why are you down there?”
He starts walking away, toward Houston.
I follow him. “You know, you make me feel like I’m being crazy. And maybe I am. But if you would just talk to me like a normal person, it would be a lot easier for me to act normal.”
“I don’t know what you want from me, Lulu.”
The sound of my name on his lips thrills me to my core. “I want to keep working with you. I … I think you’re a genius. And I don’t want to walk away and never see you again.” It’s hard to keep up with his long strides.
“Did you see anyone else underground?” he asks.
“No.”
“Exactly. I don’t want company.”
“But sometimes you need help, right? Like the setup for today.”
“Yeah. And I find help when I need it.”
“What I’m saying is that I want to be that person. So let’s figure out a way for you to find me. Do you have a phone? E-mail? Anything?”
“I’ll tell you what,” he says. “If you want to help, I need a car. You got one?”
“Yes,” I say, without hesitation, even though my access to the car is highly questionable. It’s my mother’s—a sleek but temperamental Jaguar convertible. Even if I can get access to it, I have no idea if the engine will even start.
“Then let’s go,” he says.
“Now? Tonight?”
“Right now.”
*** ***
Inez loved being with older women. They were so into it. They knew what they liked, and that made all the difference. She could only imagine what a woman like Anna was like in bed. Either she’d be completely dominant or she’d totally get off on kickin’ back and letting someone else take her on a ride for a change.
Just as Inez was getting ready to segue this little party into the bedroom, Anna pulled away. “Are you prepared to be an adult about this, Inez?” Anna’s cheeks were flushed, but her facial expression was neutral, unruffled.
Inez waited a beat, then smiled a slow, sexy grin. “You might still have a thing or two to teach me about the art world. But when it comes to affairs, I’m a pro.”
“I have to think about this.”
Anna. So controlled. So unyielding. But Inez knew she couldn’t back down now.
She stepped forward, cupping Anna’s ample breasts over the heavy, expensive fabric of her dress. Anna’s breath caught in her throat.
“Why don’t you let me do the thinking for tonight,” Inez said, willing to wager that when it came to sexual dynamics, Anna was a beta dog.
Anna’s dress closed in the back with a dozen small buttons running the length of her spine. Inez turned her around and slowly undid each one, resisting the urge to rush. Each moment that Anna stood in acquiescence gave Inez more confidence.
Inez didn’t have a clue about Anna’s sexual orientation. Anna would occasionally show up on the arms of wealthy, high-profile men at parties or museum events, but she never had a boyfriend to speak of. Nor did she seem to run in any of power-lesbian circles that were prevalent in the art world.
Of course, there’d been the husband. Lulu’s father, Shane Holland. The guy was a genius, and from the few photos she’d managed to find online, a hottie. But Anna never, ever mentioned him, and for all Inez knew, Anna had just been fucking him to snag him as a client. Inez wouldn’t put it past her.
But tonight, Inez would remind her that, sometimes, pleasure was enough of a reason.
The dress parted like a curtain, and Inez eased it off Anna’s shoulders, to her waist, then to the floor. Anna stepped out of the pile of fabric at her feet, and turned to Inez, stunning in her cream-colored La Perla bra and matching panties. Her body was slammin’—and not just for a woman in her forties. That scary Pilates instructor of hers—her name was Hauna, but it should have been Trauma—was clearly doing something right.
“I’m dying to eat your pussy,” Inez said. She was going for shock value, and it worked. Anna’s fair skin flooded with color. Inez pulled down one of the lacy bra straps, brushing her thumb over Anna’s hard nipple. She bent down to tease it with her tongue, noting that it was the same color as her favorite lip gloss, Honey Pink.
A noise came from somewhere deep in Anna’s throat. Inez reached around and unclasped the bra, then stood up to unzip her own dress. Time to show Anna what she’s got—because she knew her own tits were really something. Even Anna, with her discerning eye, would have to admit they were flawless.
Anna reached for her, cupping her breasts and expertly playing Inez’s nipples with a light but commanding touch—a touch that told her Anna was not on unfamiliar territory.
“I’m going to fuck you right here on this floor,” Inez said, her fingers skimming the lace edge of Anna’s panties.
A jarring, operatic tune rang out. Inez recognized it as one of Anna’s ringtones. And she had a sinking feeling she knew whose call it heralded.
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