by Cecilia Tan
“They’ve already seen everything there is to see of me,” I said angrily as I slipped the phone into my robe pocket. “I will be fine. After all, I only have to be one person.”
I marched ahead of him, down the stairs, my mind whirling. A voice in the back of my head was pleading with me not to scare him off again, but that voice was tiny compared to how angry I was at him. But maybe it was time to be angry. Maybe if we were going to start fresh, it was necessary to get it all out now.
I wasn’t sure. What I was sure of was that he stuck right behind me, never letting me get too far ahead, and he was at my elbow as we entered the gallery again, to sudden applause.
Fifteen
I’ll Place the Moon Within Your Heart
In the gallery, the coffee and wine were flowing freely. Fifty or sixty people remained out of the crowd that Michel said was close to two hundred at the peak. “Packed to the rafters!” he enthused, “and then you brought the place down! Karina, that was amazing!”
As we moved through the crowd, James stayed right at my side. I watched him, sharing a smile or a handshake with this or that person, accepting their congratulations and listening to their praise. He was used to this, I realized, this sailing through the public eye while churning with angst underneath.
Well, if he could do it, so could I. And I admit, it was very nice to hear the compliments from people who had enjoyed my dancing. A friend of Michel’s gave me his card and said he could introduce me to Richard Alston, a choreographer of high repute. As James had said, Damon was there. He was standing beside his canvas, talking animatedly to a few onlookers and yet with only a hint of his usual cocky edge. Vanette was hanging back from the group, watching him. James and I stood just beyond her, where I could get a look at the painting and hear what Damon was saying.
“I would be paralyzed for days, looking at the great works. Then I’d walk up to the canvas with a brush in my hand and freeze, thinking I can’t do this. It’s not even worth trying. I’ll never be that good.”
The painting, though, was grand. It wasn’t quite Burne-Jones, but it was luminously done. Damon had chosen one of the side camera angles, and one of the poses where my legs were together, my head back, and his expression of longing was almost one of helplessness. My skin seemed to glow in the sunset light, which suffused the dark rock and the shine of his leather armor with warmth. The way James had reacted, I thought for sure Damon must have picked one of the pornographic poses. If anything, it was the emotional content that was too raw and naked in the painting, not my skin.
The man Damon was talking to was a skinny fellow with a patchy beard wearing a red “patron” ribbon, meaning he had donated more than a thousand pounds to the ArtiWorks. “And you go through this every time you paint?”
“Well, truth be told, every time I’ve tried to paint for the past ten years, and I’ve never broken through it. Until now. And I thought I would be rusty, but no, once I started putting paint to canvas, I felt as if I had been working on my craft all those years! All those canvases I had worked on endlessly in my mind, it was as if I had trained myself with them. I can’t explain it.”
“You must be very pleased with the result.”
“I am.”
“How much for the painting, then?”
“Aheh. I’m not sure yet if I’ll offer it for sale. I hadn’t thought beyond getting it finished by today.”
Michel and Martindale accosted us then. “James and Karina are brilliant together, aren’t they?” Michel was saying.
“Certainly,” Martindale answered. “It was already a very powerful piece! But it took Karina to bring it to life. I’ll never be able to look at this sculpture without imagining her there.”
“Was it that obvious it was made for her?” James asked.
“Far from it,” Martindale said. “I don’t know that any of us would have wrung your intended interpretation from it, as we’re on this side of the looking glass. But Karina saw it from the inside, from your side. Karina, you are brilliant.”
“I agree,” Michel said. “And the brilliance of the piece is that it lends itself to so many interpretations, and yet all of them lend themselves to a facet of the vision her performance crystallized.”
“Oho, crystallized. Was that a pun?” Martindale said.
“Perhaps!” Michel said and poured more wine into Martindale’s glass. “Karina, chérie, have some wine.” He handed me a glass from the tray by the wall.
“Thank you.” Martindale clinked his glass against mine. “Oh, by the way, Karina, I have a message for you from Tristan.”
“Oh?” I swallowed the wine quickly. “Er, he told me he was going to bring his mother tonight.”
“I believe that he did. He told me to tell you thank you for a fantastic performance and, I don’t quite understand the message, but he said his went swimmingly as well?”
I laughed. “Long story. But all’s well that ends well. I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Martindale. You’ve been really awesome to me all summer. I wouldn’t be here at all if it weren’t for you.”
He smiled and blushed a little. “Art is my call of duty,” he said. “And look what’s come of it.” He gestured around. “We’ll be sorry to see you go. I was going to suggest that this week you ought to hand back all the tour duties and do some sightseeing.” He raised an eyebrow at James, as if hinting at who should be playing tour guide for me. James merely raised his glass with a small smile.
Another well-wisher took James’s attention at that moment, and I took the opportunity to finally sample one of Paulina’s mini-éclairs from the tray on the sideboard. Delicious. Paulina hadn’t skimped on the chocolate at all, and she’d made the custard intensely vanilla.
I was just licking the chocolate from my fingers when I got a hug from Helen, who called the performance “Brilliant!” and then motioned at me to turn and look at something.
Peter and Linae Simpson were locked in a movie-pose kiss, with her bent back, one toe pointed and one hand keeping the hat on her head. He had a bandage on his cheek and one on the hand I could see, but neither one seemed to be hampering him. When the two came up for air, they began saying their good nights.
“What’s the story with them, really?” I asked Helen as they waved good-bye on the way out the door.
“They’re mad, I tell you. You know how he gets so jealous? But if he doesn’t get jealous, it’s like the spark goes out of their relationship. It’s why she and I go out. We don’t even talk to men, but the fact that Peter thinks we do, that’s what gets him all hot and bothered.” Helen grinned. “I’m not sure which of the blokes here talked to Linae and set him off, but there you go. They’re on their way back to the bed-and-breakfast to make mad, passionate love. I best wait a while before I head back myself or I won’t get any peace.”
“When are you going back to York?” I asked.
“If I can manage it, I think I’ll stay until Monday. I met the nicest boy here tonight. You must know him, says he works at the Tate, too.”
I smiled. “I’m sure I do.”
“Yeah, his mother and I got to chatting about York while he was in the loo, and then when he came back we were talking art, you know, like you do, and I ended up talking him into showing me around the sights. His mum seemed all right with it, so that’s out of the way, and he’s such a cute fellow. I’ll give him the time of day and see what happens, you know?”
“Yeah. You can only try and see.”
“Cute though. Very cute. That helps.” She giggled.
“That it does. Come on. Let’s get more éclairs before they’re gone.”
I put a few onto a small plate and carried one over to James. I wondered if I could see the real James under his public veneer.
I held up the pastry without saying anything. He took it gently with his teeth and licked my finger as he pulled back, chewing it thoughtfully.
“Hmm, that’s twice,” he said, licking his lips.
“What’s twice?”
“Involving my ass, you mean.”
That made him break character. He made a silent laugh and shook his head. “I’ve missed you.” He glanced toward the others as if wondering if it was safe to say more.
I looked around the room. The crowd was beginning to thin a little. Over by his painting, Damon was listening attentively to Vanette. She was wearing an almost military-style jacket, which may have added to how severe she looked.
Then Damon got down on his knees and kissed the pointed toe of her well-polished boots. I stared. I couldn’t help myself. James turned to see what I was staring at and then looked away quickly, pretending he hadn’t seen.
“What do you suppose is going on there?” I asked.
He had an impeccable public mask, but I couldn’t miss that he blushed. “I’m sure I can’t guess.” He looked at me instead of at them, his expression darkening.
“Let’s go find out,” I said.
“Karina—”
I marched up to them. Vanette smiled when she saw me and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “That was an inspiring performance,” she told me. Her eyes flicked back and forth between me and James.
“Thank you,” I said. “And thanks for your help. I was wondering if I could ask Damon a few questions, though.”
She snapped her fingers and Damon got to his feet, his hands folded in front of him and his head slightly bowed. “Actually, I have a few questions for you, too,” she said. “Can we go somewhere private to speak? All four of us?”
There were still too many people in the gallery to do it here. James cleared his throat. “Stefan is driving one of the larger cars tonight.”
“Excellent. That would do perfectly,” Vanette said coolly.
James took a phone out of one of the many pockets in the coveralls and texted a message. A car in front of the gallery flashed its headlights. “Ah, he’s there already.”
Stefan tried hard to contain his excitement and happiness at seeing me, keeping his stoic and professional demeanor as he opened the back door for us. But his eyes were alight and his eyebrows twitched at me. I couldn’t help but give him a little smile back, squeezing him on the arm as I climbed into the car.
He closed the door behind James and then stayed on the curb, as if keeping watch. I suppose he was.
James and I sat on one side of the spacious limo. Vanette sat across from us with Damon on the floor at her feet. Other than earlier, I had never seen him dressed so casually. He was in worn-looking black jeans and a plain white T-shirt. His hair was tousled and glossy, as if he’d gotten out of the shower with it wet and it still hadn’t dried. His eyes were on the floor.
Vanette looked back and forth between the two men like a dog trainer trying to figure out which puppy had peed on the carpet. “I think there’s been enough miscommunication between the three of you to fill a couple of plays of Shakespeare and a Russian saga.” She crossed her arms. “Frankly, I’ve had enough of it. Karina, what did you wish to ask him?”
“I wanted him to explain some things to James.”
Damon looked up.
“Like first of all, my dictum.”
Vanette smiled. “Go on, Damon.”
“Penile penetration,” Damon said in a low voice, like a schoolboy being chastised by a teacher.
“Louder, please.”
“Penile penetration,” he said with a huff, looking up and meeting James’s eyes.
“And what about before she joined the society?” James pressed. “What about then?”
“As you know, she refused me when we met. Her sole motivation for getting into the society was to search for you.”
Vanette took up the questions then. “And do you remember what I said when we interviewed her as a trainee candidate?”
“You said you feared she wouldn’t make a good trainee because the real reason she didn’t allow sex was that she was saving herself for someone.”
“And was I right?”
“Yes.”
“And did we take her as a trainee anyway?”
“Yes, though now I have to wonder why we bloody bothered,” Damon snarled.
“Language,” she snapped. “Tell us why you agreed to help her reunite with James.”
“Because James is a coldhearted fucker who would never give her a second chance, and I knew she’d fall into my lap once he turned her away,” Damon said, then, “Ow!” because Vanette had seized him by the chin and slapped him across the face.
“I warned you to watch your language,” she said, then released him. “Again, please.”
“I hoped she’d come to me after he rejected her,” Damon said.
“And would you say you did your absolute best to be sure they met under fair and neutral circumstances?”
“Oh, come on, Vanette. Now you’re being—” he huffed. “Of course I didn’t. I did everything in my power to make her look bad in his eyes and I engineered every possible opportunity for her to choose me. All right? I didn’t expect to fall for her. Of course I pressed her as hard as I could.”
“And did she crack?”
“No.” He sounded quite bitter. “She isn’t interested in me in the slightest. Nor any other man. Only that one.”
Vanette looked at me then. “Karina, what would you say was the most valuable thing you learned in your short time as a trainee in the society?”
I ran through possible answers in my mind. Even the most complicated lusts still boil down to the same thing. Sometimes people can’t ask for what they want. “I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Then I will be more specific. Did you learn anything about yourself?”
“Oh. Well, I definitely learned that I get turned on by kinky things, but that getting turned on, fantastic as it is, isn’t that big a deal to me.”
She looked surprised at that answer. “Truly?”
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that although I discovered I liked being flogged and I was excited by all the blindfolds and tests and things, they didn’t mean anything. All I did was obey. It was a practice run for submission, but it could never be surrender. And it wasn’t love.”
I dared a look at James. He was staring at Damon and shaking his head slowly.
“James taught me that I had to be honest, about my desires and my feelings, and with the people around me,” I said. “Isn’t that kind of what the society is about, too? I mean, I understand why it has to be a secret, but isn’t that why people have to be honest about everything else? Isn’t it kind of an unwritten rule?”
“Yes,” she answered simply. “Anything else you’d like to know?”
It was too good a chance to pass up. “Oh yes, actually…Damon, when did you first meet James?”
“When I was still in art school,” he said. “He was sort of in and out. I met him through Paul and Misha’s crowd.”
“And how did you get hooked up with the society?”
“I don’t know about James. In my case, well, my father passed me his membership.”
So that was something people did, it seemed. I didn’t want to know more about that. “James?” I asked. “What about you?”
“I was brought in by a member I was in a relationship with,” he said quietly.
“Okay.” That sounded simple enough. But something still didn’t quite add up. “Damon, when I asked you for help finding someone who went by ‘Jules,’ did you already know who I meant?”
Damon swallowed and looked down. “I did.”
I looked back and forth between them, and James shifted in his seat. James spoke then, surprising me. “Karina. You have to understand how careful I had to be.”
I bristled, trying to listen to what he was saying, but already on guard at his defensive tone.
“When I left you in New York, I was…I thought I was in danger.”
“From me?”
“From people who might be trying to find me.” He
faced me. “I told you I haven’t been hiding from you alone. I regretted leaving you like that. But I had to know.”
“Had to know what?”
“If you were really what you seemed. I’m the one who encouraged Martindale to bring you over here. And I’m the one who set up the meeting between you and Damon.”
Damon was hanging his head so that I couldn’t see his face. James looked rather stoic, like he was holding a lot in.
I, on the other hand, wasn’t holding anything in. “You what? You mean you’re the one who sent this lech to try to test me?” I nudged Damon with my foot. “And now you’re upset that I let him?” I was so angry I could barely see. “What the fuck gives you the right—?”
James’s phone suddenly chirped. He looked at it with alarm. “I think we had better—”
I wasn’t about to let him distract me.
“How the fuck does that make sense? I think I passed your little fucking test then, didn’t I?”
“Karina,” he said in a mollifying voice, reaching for me.
It was too much. I’d worked so hard to get him back, or so I thought, and it turned out he was testing me the whole time? And now he was angry? He didn’t know angry, I decided. I’d show him angry.
I burst out of the car, nearly hitting Stefan on the ass with the door and instead running headlong into a woman I didn’t know.
“Excuse me,” she said, trying to get past me as if to get into the car, like I was exiting a taxi she wanted. She was extravagantly dressed for a London street after midnight, in a diamond choker and Chanel-style skirt suit, the edges trimmed with fur.
Instinctively I blocked her. “Oh, that car’s not for hire,” I tried to explain.
But behind me Stefan had run around to the driver’s side, and I turned to see Vanette closing the door and stepping back from the car as the tires squealed and it sped away.
“No!” The woman took a few steps toward the car, her heels clicking. She turned to me. “My husband is in that car!”
“Damon is married?” I said, looking at Vanette incredulously.