by L. S. Hilton
“When?”
“Today, yesterday. I can’t quite remember.”
I really didn’t have time for this elegant cat-and-mouse shit.
“How much do you want?”
He eyed the bag. “Are you planning a trip?”
“None of your business. Just tell me how much.”
“Five thousand.”
“For what? What do you think I’ve been doing?”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“I don’t have that much on me.”
“Then whatever you do have. And you’re not welcome here anymore.”
I’d like to say I hadn’t meant to do it. That I was reaching into the bag for the cash and the gun just sort of jumped into my hand. The thing was, I really didn’t have the time. I could have given him a line, that it really wasn’t his lucky day, that he shouldn’t have made me angry, because he wouldn’t like me when I was angry, but this wasn’t the moment for style either. I leaned over the desk, shot him twice in the chest, tugged off my shoes, and hit the Rue Thérèse running.
I’d been having drinks with Renaud once at the bar of the Crillon when a couple had a row at the next tiny marble table. They were young, even younger than me, he unshaven and scruffy enough to be a famous actor, she properly beautiful in an Uma-Thurman-before-Botox-happened way, ash-blond hair drawn severely off a Picasso-planed face. Her coat was exquisite cream cashmere, a little heavy for the weather. She had ordered two martinis; he arrived late with a shabby bunch of corner-store flowers. They spoke quietly for a while, then as the drinks went down she started to cry, prettily, Swarovski tears dripping from alarmingly turquoise eyes. Then she stood, and the way she did it let me know she was aware that she had the eyes of every man in the room. She gathered the soft collar to her long throat and leaned forward.
“I’m sorry, I just can’t do it anymore. I’ve had enough.”
Then she picked up the sagging blooms and cracked him across the face with the bouquet before dropping it to the floor and stalking toward the lobby. He rose slowly, plucked a single carnation petal from his jaw, and stared around, the picture of wounded bewilderment. As one, the waiters lined up like a cheerleading squad with cries of encouragement: “She went that way! Go on, monsieur, that way!” He ran after her. We spotted them later, over the river, kissing and giggling on the quai. Her coat was open, and under it she had a cheap jean skirt and a man’s pajama top. It was a beautiful way of cadging a drink. Maybe they were film students, or actors. The point being that the citizens of Paris are brand-aware—they know that theirs is a city that is supposed to love a lovers’ quarrel, so barefoot girls with desperate faces running through midnight streets rarely attract attention. As I ran, I thought of another girl, running barefoot through evening streets, but that summer’s night seemed so innocent now. It’s 1.6 miles from the Rue Thérèse to the Gare du Nord, and I made it in sixteen minutes, not bad going with a heavy bag.
I slipped panting through the usual gaggle of drunks and gypsies at the station entrance and bought a single to Amsterdam from the ticket machine. Of course, it wouldn’t take the fifty-euro note, but I couldn’t use a card. I smoothed the bill against my thigh, an eye on the clock. Not a train ticket, not now. I couldn’t get done on that. Like Al Capone with the taxes. There was a strange bubbling noise, and it took a moment to realize that it was me, giggling crazily. Twice, three times, the machine spat the note rudely back. I stood, breathed, twitched the corners hospital—neat, fed it in again. For twenty seconds I might have believed in God. Aller simple, 1 adulte. Thank you, Jesus. I even had time to punch the ticket in the dating machine at the end of the platform before my filthy soles clambered after the holdall into the train.
EPILOGUE
Inside
IT WAS THE first big night of the Biennale, nearly a year since I’d left Paris. The sky above San Giorgio Maggiore was an improbable pink and blue; everyone said that it looked like a Tiepolo ceiling, as everyone always does in Venice. A supple line of Rivas bobbed by the island’s jetty, waiting to ferry a squawking gaggle of dealers and art whores across the lagoon. Up toward Zattere, I could see the Mandarin tucked between two brushed-carbon leviathans. Their bulks squatted over the white Massari church, a surrealist installation in themselves. Steve would have to get a bigger boat if he wanted to keep up. I was to dine with him later, I wouldn’t let him take me to Harry’s, we’d have drinks on the perfect floating terrace at the Gritti, then La Madonna in San Polo for sea urchin risotto whether he liked it or not. I had three Quinn casts in mind for the garden of his new London house, magnified renderings of embryonic babies, curled in granite like mysterious sea creatures. Actually rather pretty, for once. But first there was the Johnson Chang party at the Bauer, for the Hong Kong gallerists, and I thought I’d have time to look in at the Fondazione Prada too, before I met up with Steve. I held out my hand for the water-taxi driver to grip and stepped neatly down into the boat, followed by a posse of stylists and photographers who were covering the shows for Vanity Fair. I made vague conversation with Mario Testino’s buyer on the short crossing, but really I just wanted to take great heady gulps of the view.
The Chang party was strictly invite-only; I had my exquisite scroll of antique Chinese parchment in my floppy Saint Laurent clutch. A couple paps and tourists were hanging around to gawp; I skirted them and walked up to the greeter. As she checked me off on the clipboard I looked beyond her to the long, bronze marble lobby of the hotel, opening onto the delicate Byzantine stonework of the terrace. Ranks of waiters with trays of the inevitable Bellinis stood between incongruous lumps of Shanghai street art.
“Are you going in?”
“Lorenzo! Ciao, bello. I wondered where I’d find you.”
Lorenzo represented the Other Place in Milan. He was Venetian, with the tawny hair and pale eyes of the lagoons. One of his great grandmothers had famously given Byron the clap, or so he’d told me while I was fucking him in Kiev.
“You know Rupert, of course?”
Rupert. Rounder and redder than ever, the perennial Englishman abroad in a crumpled linen suit and a jaunty Lock Panama. I looked him straight in the face.
“No,” he said, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”
“Elisabeth Teerlinc.” Lorenzo had already been whirled inside; we stood at the center of a sudden caesura in the crowd.
He offered his hand, sweaty, naturally. I scanned his eyes, searching for some flicker of recognition, but there was nothing. How could there be? This woman in her cobalt suede Céline shift, her impeccable pumps, existed in another dimension from Judith Rashleigh. One should never notice the servants. I hadn’t even bothered to change my hair in the end.
My hand was still in his. I let it rest there.
“And you’re with?”
“I have my own gallery. Gentileschi. I have a space in Dorsoduro.”
“Ah. Gentileschi. Of course.”
I extracted my hand and fished in my purse for a card.
“You should come to our opening tomorrow. I’m showing a group of Balkan artists. Quite amusing.”
“I’d love to.” He was leering at me. Rupert. Like he had a hope.
“Are you coming in—Lorenzo’s waiting?”
His skin flushed a deeper red under the claret tan.
“No, er, NFI, actually.”
No fucking invite. Oh, Rupert.
“That’s a pity.”
“Too many bodies.”
“Yes. Quite the crush. Well, see you tomorrow, Rupert.”
I offered him my cheek and then turned my back as the greeter lifted the velvet rope. I felt his eyes on me as I walked tall through the bodies and out into the Venice twilight. The lapis lazuli water shone at my feet. I took a glass, and stood alone at the parapet, and looked at the waves, and they lifted my heart.
TO BE CONTINUED
ABOUT THE
AUTHOR
L. S. Hilton grew up in England and has lived in Key West, New York City, Paris, and Milan. After graduating from Oxford, she studied art history in Paris and Florence. She has worked as a journalist, art critic, and broadcaster and is presently based in London.
maestrabook.com
instagram.com/l.s.hilton
Looking for more?
Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.
Discover your next great read!